Finding your loved one by Laaph
Finding your loved one Shrink and grow and jump all over the world to find your way.


Story by Laaph, code by Laaph and McFearless, art by Evrim, yet another game where sound is an afterthought. I'd like to opt out of sound judging, since no one on this team did sound.
Just a few bugs you are likely to encounter: - Blue enemies should be squishable. I don't know why they aren't. - The yellow enemies and hitboxes are all wonky. I know why, and fixing that might fix the blue problem, but even so it's awful. - The controls are dreadful. I followed the tutorial on the Unity website. - Due to time crunching, only the first level has background music, and there is no other sound. - And the other bug that irritates me to no end, the button at the end of the game that says "Restart Game", does not work!
Links
- SITE: https://laaph.itch.io/escape-from-small-world
- SOURCE CODE: https://github.com/mcfearless999/SmallWorld
Ratings
| Overall | 698th | 2.722⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 705th | 2.389⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 569th | 2.778⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 406th | 3.389⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 444th | 3.333⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 394th | 3.222⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 21🗳️ | 40🗨️ |
I do love the theming. Two childhood mascots tied together into an artstyle and mechanics set fitting for them both. The sound didn't play for me so I can't comment on how that tied in.
Unfortunately, the most noticable aspect of the game is the controls. As a rule, you should never control a platformer's character with physics. I know it makes intuitive sense to try that, but there are many issues in practice. Just check the "make kinematic" checkbox if you're working in unity, or disable physics interactions on the character in whatever engine you're using, and use custom code for the movement.
In the last level, you have a leap of faith. It's good that you postmarked it, but at the size I attempted to jump (pretty large) I wasn't able to make it. It's not a minor oversight, but it meant I had to guess at what size the invisible ceiling would allow me to pass.
It seemed like I could only jump on the yellow enemies but couldn't damage the blue ones. At first it wasn't too clear if that was a bug or intentional, and it took me a couple levels to work it out. The wording of the tutorial made it seem like I should be able to jump on all the enemies, though I may have missed some text because of the control scheme.
I realize that larger Alice could jump higher and that makes sense to me, but it seemed like the increase in jump height was much larger than the increase in Alice height. Nothing wrong with this mechanically, but it felt a bit off.
I did enjoy the game overall, despite the wonky control scheme. The levels are well designed and short enough not to be irritating if I failed. I may have liked the hitboxes to be more obvious. Some of the platforms that weren't rectangular could have done with a flatter top.
Nice work.
Anyway, thank you amras0000 for your feedback and I'm glad you enjoyed the game!
The graphics are great for the amount of time you had, and the gameplay is solid. If you have more time I'd love to see this fleshed out into more puzzles, some backtracking, and more of this great art!
I liked the music while it was there as well! Really nice work.
As you said, the physics is very janky and the monster hit boxes are off. It also seems pretty short -- it could do with some more levels, even if there were no new mechanics added. I imagine that was due to time constraints :P The game seems unfinished at the moment but I think if those were changed it'd make a big difference.
Also, game mechanic wise, I'm confused as to why being hit makes you lose cookies... it seems like either that would make you get stuck in some places, or it wouldn't matter at all because you just get more when you defeat the enemy. Maybe having health would make more sense for that.
Overall, not a bad little game prototype. Good luck for next LD!
I think it would be a good idea to move the tutorial point about getting bigger meaning you can jump higher to the point where you are told about the cookies in the first place. I had to work out that I could eat the big cookie again in order to be able to jump to the next platform and not just get stuck on a rock.
and at one point I ate two small cookies and wound up attached to the bottom of a platform, upside down until I ate a big cookie.
If you use this to make something better or just use what you learned here to make new things, good luck! You could make some very interesting things!
Also, I was a little confused at the decision to include a single 3D object in an otherwise stylised 2D game.
The protagonist could have done with some animation and the game's physics were a little janky (I got stuck on walls and enemies a lot), but other than that, it was a pleasant game. :)
Keep practising and best of luck with your future game projects!
-Skruffye
- The music is so soothing. I've been playing LD entries all day getting beeped, bopped, and screetched at, and this makes up for it.
- Playing on OS X / Safari on a late 2013 Macbook Pro, the background is a bit stuttery during jumps which makes it hard to read the floating text. My suggestion would be to position it a bit lower and 100% visible from ground level so the player doesn't have to jump to see it.
Overall lovely game, hope to see a post-comp version of this!
Well, you and the first comment tells you a lot of the problems already, but there are also a lot of good stuff:
* The graphics are beautifully drawn
* I like the music
* The size mechanic is really cool, and I can't even think of how to make it (I dont use Unity, yet.)
If you want to improve the game I'd also check the movements of the monsters, sometimes they just stay on one place constantly turning around. And I sometimes get stuck in a place but I don't know why.
But the art part is really great, and I wouldnt be able to make such a game in Unity in a weekend.
Nicely Done!
@g12345 I was thinking the controls on your entry were so solid and so smooth that I could never pull that off, and here you are saying you can't think of how to make things I did! (Unity does make it easy, I just scaled it, and I don't think I did anything else, leading to the oddities of jumps get bigger and movement feels faster when small.)