found myself accidentally entering a lot of passcodes because I didn't know what the doors were when I pressed e- could be nice to have option to back out

Great art and aethstetic especially for the timeframe this is great

Thanks @BenPeterson, I am glad you enjoyed the game, I will agree that being unable to exit the passcode menu was an oversight on my part. That is definitely a fix I will want to make!

REALLY nice clean art and aesthetic. Wouldn't be able to tell this was a game jam game at all

Awwe thank you @katie! I appreciate your kind words! ;)

Love it. not too theme heavy but that's fine. Great game and great feel to it. If you don't mind sharing what did you use for your music?

Very good art and nice music. The only thing I didn't like was the sound the letters make when reading a sign. Solid game.

@BenPeterson Thanks again for the insight. I immediately fixed that issue, you can now back out of the passcode menu. (At least in the html5 version. Will update the win32 version that no one will likely download later)

Glad you enjoyed it @el-pepi! You win some and you lose some when it comes to audio design. (Honestly was trying to mimick the older gameboy games with textboxes when they'd play a sound for each letter and such, however I do see how it can be annoying to some people) Thanks for the insight! ;)

Very nice game! Pretty hard with those damn rats running around when you're going back to look for hints aahah
Loved music and the polished graphic assets.
There is a button to skip text? It was a little slow, and sometimes I had to wait for the writings to go away when accidentaly pressed two times in a row.. but maybe I didn't noticed how to stop it!
Thanks for your work, awesome entry!

@Memel06 , I'll be honest, skipping text is at the bottom of my priority list with this game, however it is definitely something I'll look into. (Rather then trying to get it to work when I was making the game, I wanted to make the game first, haha)
Anyways, glad you enjoyed the game! Your insight is very much appreciated!

(don't know if you get a notification when I update these, but just so you know I did implement text skipping, it honestly was 2 lines of code, and should have been in the game originally, so I apologize, for my previous statement, like I said, I did have a much different intended focus then, however come to think of it, it might have sped things up, as playtesting would have been much quicker... haha! oh well!)

The graphics and music is good, and they both fits the game idea really good. The game idea is fun, but the jumping mechanic is not always working, and for me the puzzle got to difficult to fast.

Overall a fun little game.

I feel like I'm missing something,
*SPOILERS*


i got that the first number isn't 1, and that 2 is after 1, AND that 3 is before 2 and after 6 but at best that only gives me 4/5 numbers I need to solve the puzzle?

@jk5000 from what I understand, if you happen to just barely fall of a ledge while trying to jump, you won't jump, that is deliberate, as you can't jump in midair in this game. I have also noticed that there are occasional moments where you won't jump when trying to jump over an enemy, however, in all my playtests, they were very infrequent, and as for the cause or fix, I have no idea how to go about fixing the problem.

Thanks for your insight, and I am super glad you enjoyed the music and graphics! Always appreciate the kind words!

@Pixelhurricane, you are actually missing a sign. (Spoilers)


It should tell you "...6 is the solution..."

Also please try to avoid spoilers if you can. :)
Hope you are enjoying the playthrough so far!

(There is also a possibility you are overthinking, as that is a tendency in escape rooms, which is good, that means I succeeded) ;)

(A Note for anyone reading this, 'This is not a hint for the second passcode door!')

Argh, i need that second code :D

@karmo Keep at it, you'll figure it out! :D (And then you'll slap yourself so hard, not joking, my friend actually did that when I had him playtest it, haha) ;)

Yay I escaped! The art and music are really nice and overall, I thought it was a really solid game jam entry :)

The controls were a bit fiddly though and the first spikes part was pretty frustrating since the two platforms were slightly out of sync.

Also, somehow I mashed keys too fast and got this to happen:

Congratulations @Herman Chau, that is quite the interesting bug you found! haha!

Anyways, glad you escaped!
The out of sync platforms are intentional, as they follow different cycles that overlap, so I'm sorry if that was frustrating, but I felt it added necessary challenge to that section. Thanks for your insight again! ;)

(Also, out of curiousity, what was your time, if you remember it?)

Clever! Didn't get to the end (got stuck at the "look at your surroundings"), but I really liked the look, and controls were easy to get used to.

Thanks for the kind words @ebbasuke! Glad you enjoyed the game, even though you weren't able to finish it. :D Try to get back to it if you can, I can hear those puzzles calling you to come back!

Gratz on this game, you did a really good job!! The art and music were very polished, especially for a game jam

I keep getting stuck on the 2nd passcode. ill come back to it later

Awesome game! I'm stuck at 2nd passcode aswell, but I'll get back to it later. If that's not a spoiler, can you tell me if by "after" and "before" you mean directly after and before or anywhere in that direction?

Game looks very polished. I love text effects and music. It looks just like a retro game.

There is a bug. After you run out of time and you try to start new game screen keeps shaking, text gets mixed and every time it moves you back to main screen. Nothing gamebreaking, reseting webpage solves it.

Keep it up!

Impressive work, I wish I could skip the dialogues.

Love the Gameboy graphics, well done

Had trouble with figuring out the 3rd door but I must say that the game is pretty good for the time you had. Interesting concept, the controls were a bit hard for me though. The art is definitely the most impressive about the game and overall it comes together quite nicely.

congratulations, you have stumped me. I haven't been this frustrated in a long time (no, that is not a good thing). Just because a puzzle is so obscurely difficult that only 1% of the players will succeed, doesn't mean that you have succeeded. If anything, it shows you've failed in that, for an early puzzle, you expect too much from the average player, and they will give up rather than press on to continue. Stop being cocky and address the issue. Multiple people in this thread have gotten stuck here, and it wasn't for lack of trying. Sorry for ranting; It's fun, but needs work.(spoilers?)

Of course, this is assuming that the hints after each sign are for the second code door (in the bottom of the third room). I went through all the possible permutations of 1, 2, 3, 6, and # (0-9 inclusive) that followed the rules laid out and the door didn't open. those permutations were #6132, 6#132, 61#32, 613#2, 6132#, #6312, 6#312, 63#12, 631#2, 6312#, and #1632. I scoured the rooms and couldn't find any other hints; there was no sign saying "6 is the solution" and even if there was, it would not help. What am I missing? Do I have the wrong door? Did I interpret the hints wrong? Again, it's a fun game, but it is marred by the fact that this door is WAY too hard to open.

@infinitycore , I do apologize if you confused. The way the escape room's rules are laid out, is the hints are found in that room, and to escape the area, the hints are found in the entire area, and since you asked, I will address the issue you are having. The second door's clue is sign in the room that the second door is in, the hint is in the way I spelled it, and honestly that's all that I should hint at...

but spoilers...

Escape rooms aren't supposed to be super easy, especially since you can only solve them once, and then it's straight forward from there. To give you an idea, the game's runtime is literally about 3 minutes if you know how to do all the puzzles (And by that I mean still taking the time to look at the required hints). The design of the second door is to get you to read the signs which not only are required to solve the last door, but gives you a hint to the second door, which is "-hELLO-", just like any Escape Room, overthinking can be your, and is your enemy, and in this case the passcode is 'hELLO' backwards and upside down... or 07734 ;)

Again, sorry that the game frustrated you that much, and that definitely wasn't my intention, however stumping you was indeed my intention, and I am not going to apologize for that.

@gamekrazzy Thanks, I wondered if that had something to do with it, I tried 43110, but that makes more sense

beat it finally, you might want to make the platforming a bit easier

@infinitycore damn, you ruined my secret... and here I was trying to rule everyone's downloads by giving them a useless screenshot of them at the end (which congrats btw, glad you managed to escape!!!!), it was intended to take a screenshot of the previous text, however I haven't been able to figure out how to get it to do that without proceeding to the next text yet. (I do plan on updating it in the future so that it works correctly however!)

Just finished the game. Two issues I ran into were that the game sometimes ate my jump, especially at the corner of boxes. I would even get the sound effect and still not get the jump. The other issue I ran into was that if you lose and try to start again, you start with the game exploding the world, which makes for short playthroughs XD. Once I realized what was happening though, it was easy enough to refresh the page.

The little puzzles were good, in general, moving platforms over spikes caused most of my time losses. I really liked the mouse sprites especially, and the screen read very well, even given the restricted palate. Conceptually, the final door at least, could have been set up so that it was locked with a different code each time (the digits could have been chosen dynamically. Text skip might have been nice, although I may have missed the first clue if it was in =P.

I feel too **dumb** (or tired) to finish this game. At least I can say that overall it's awesome, just tweek sound on Construct 2 with -10 or -20 DB and the game will fell better.

wow! the art is very nostalgic, and the music is catchy! i like!

Thanks for the positive feedback everyone!

@Dumivid, I totally get you... I got about 6-7 hours of sleep over the weekend working on this, so there is that, also I do feel the sound problem you have might be for that reason to, I always design my sound to not be blaring at 100 volume on my computer. (Either way, I do plan on possibly making a much bigger project out of this, and if I do that, I will add a volume control option)

@GameCarpenter @ryzy27 Thank you for your feedback on the problem when losing and restarting! (it should be fixed now. It wasn't even a logic problem, but rather an oversight on my part to turn off a switch... haha)

The game seems pretty well built and the art is spot on, but it's definitel lacking on the level design, though.
The hint on the 3rd room is simply not a hint... Had to come to the comments to find it just so I could progress on the game and maybe change my mind on it. Do you know that feeling of finally seeing the answer that was always on your face the whole time? That "OOOOH, why didn't I see this before"? It simply didn't happen (and it totally should). And I stared at that -hELLO- for quite a while still.

Next room was the platforming challenge and frustration again, admit that it was partly my fault for sort of trying to rush the game by now. But sending me back to the first room on every fail was very annoying and losing the 5 minutes on top of that felt too penalizing. I had a little less than 15 minutes by now, failed twice, decided to focus and tryhard on my last chance but ended up failing and restarting (had the feeling that passed through the moving platform when shouldn't, maybe a glitch but not sure).

So I restarted because I really loved the idea, the art, the overall gameplay and the escape room nostalgia. Had to go through the Intro text again and it felt too slow on the second time, there should be a way of skipping or making it go faster by holding a button for those noobs (like me) that had to restart the game. But right after the text, began walking right (was already holding D as text kept going) while also tapping E (to make the intro text go faster) and when I walked past the first sign, the text popped up but the character kept on moving right. He locked in the text screen and kept walking, clipped through two doors and got stuck on the box of room 3 (screenshot). Sadly I gave up after that :/

I realize that it's a jam game and it's expected to have some flaws but (to me) the flaws made it unplayable (at least for now).

Anyway, congratulations on finishing the game, on it's concept and art (tried to find out who did what but only found @Gamekrazzy's name. Did you do it all by yourself? If so congratz on that too, wow). These still made me like the game after all and maybe I'll give a try again later. Good job :)

@NovaBSL That is a huge oversight on my part with the broken controls... (I believe that is caused because originally when I made the controls, I used toggling....) I fixed most of those, but it's easy to miss when you are having to go back and fix a ton of previously written code (Noob programming... :P) It'll be a pain, but I will look into what is causing this. Glad you enjoyed the game! ;)

And yes this was originally intended to be a compo submission, but switched to jam for more time.

Interesting idea. Liked the color palette, the beeps were a little jarring. I like the puzzle aspect, but I kept running into mice while trying to jump over them.

Really enjoyed this one. Those aha! moments were really satisfying. Combining it with platforming definitely fit the theme.

I did run into two bugs, one where I ran out of time at the last door, and the game just looped the "time up" sound and music. And on the next playthrough, the "reward" at the end didn't capture the text. (Sorry if that's vague, don't want to risk spoilers BECAUSE I was really tickled with that particular mechanic. Great idea!)

I'd post a picture of my little note sheet, but that's definitely full of spoilers.

Well done!

;) Glad you enjoyed the game @fitz13. it's okay if you don't want risk spoilers, it sounds like it's possible this might be a bug caused by trying to fix my previous bug, or it may be a new one entirely. I'll look into it! ;)

Nicely done; the gameboy aesthetic was wonderful, and the game was very well done. The only complaint I had was that the platforms weren't timed together, so you needed to wait a while sometimes to get them lined up in a way that you could actually make the jump. Also I think it was just me, but I got the possible end codes down to two from all the clues, as 3 could be in two positions and match everything. I swore I put in both codes and failed, but came back later and put in the correct code with about 4 seconds to spare.

I did find one convenient bug. You can pause on the passcode dialog and still control, so it pauses the timer while you put in a passcode.

Also not sure why but the game automatically took a screenshot of this at the end. Was it there to prove I finished it, or am I missing a secret somewhere?

Really neat game, the difficulty seems a bit hard. The riddles were awesome, but platform jumps are too unforgiving. Cute arts too.

Appreciate the bug find @dalbinblue, that passcode bug should probably be fixed.... so it doesn't get abused, not that it matters too much.

And yes getting live feedback earlier, I found that there were 3 possible solutions to the end puzzle... gonna fix that too!

Thanks for you kind words! Glad you enjoyed the game!

(update: found that during the stream, the discussion overlooked one of the clues, and that there is still only 1 possible solution)

And the screenshot is saying you beat the game... it's original intent is to take a screenshot of the text before that shows the time you finished at.

i really like the colors and pixel art of this game. a really nice concept, with polish this will be a really great game. nice job

Very neat game, but the letter sounds was really aggressive.

@JCMonkey is there not enough Polish?! JK Thanks for your kind words! ;)

Yay!! I escaped at last!

Nice work! The game is very good. It's true that the clues for the puzzles are there the whole time. The second door was a hit wall for me, but once i get pass that, I could finish very quickly.

The graphics are very good, in fact something like those graphics was what I was looking for designing my game. Too bad I'm a terrible artist, getting better though.

The platforming could fell a little better and the player animations could be better too, but nothing that opaques the really interesting things of this game. I feel that now I want to make games like this, simple but interesting and cool.

The sounds and music did the job too.

One minor thing, some times when you smash a couple of keys, the game goes crazy. For instance, in the second door of the I press E + A simultaneously and the character start walking to the left while the text displays on the screen, and I could stop it because I've to wait for the text to finish its animations. Something you could look up maybe.

I hope you finish up in the general rankings. Great job!

@acoto87 thanks for you're awesome feedback! Also guess what, although it doesn't benefit you much, however I fixed that bug you mentioned, as it's very gamebreaking!!!! I also hotfixed this amazing feature it's called skipping text, not really a bug fix, but I thought it was a necessary update for everyone's benefit! ;)

@Gamekrazzy Yeah, I tested it right now! It fell much better. Congrats again!

Really nice and well polished game! I got stuck in the 3rd room but that's mostly because I'm terrible at puzzle games haha. Great game!

That was really fun. I love the crypticness of the puzzles. I just wish I could move with the arrows instead of wasd since its awkward jumping with space and wasd

So please tell me when you publish this game.

Its one of the ones I plan to go back and play again after the Ludum Dare. I will likely have my friend play it and see if they can figure out the puzzles.

This is a fully fleshed game. It has an intriguing story with a resolution to it, clever puzzles that are not too easy so they make you feel smart but also not too hard (and dont use a moon logic as well) so you dont sit there scratching your head in frustration for hours. They are just spot on! I'll totally play a fully featured game like this on some mobile device.

nice entry. I like the gb look.

Great execution. Really solid for a jam.

Ah, the graphics and the audio feel so good! Really would like to see this developed with some more "levels"

So cool! Good theme, graphics and game, good work!

@detectiveLosos The idea of making a fully featured version for mobile has crossed my mind. ;)

And thanks for all the positive feedback everyone! ;)

Cool looking game, I'm realy like graphics and gameplay. Overdone for jam!

Great job on the graphics and the audio, nostalgia city right there ! I really like the first few rooms as you nicely "force" the player to use and learn the mechanics (for example looking up to see the passcode). Had a lot of fun, keeping this on my list!

Dang. Really fantastic game here. You did a swell job combining the two genres and capturing a doable aesthetic within the time alotted. The puzzles can be a bit misleading but once my entire twitch chat just gave me the answer it was much easier. Lol Thanks for thinking outside the box. Really fun!

Gameplay was too long for me for a ludum dare submission. Good job on finishing it anyway.

This is a really wonderful little game! The puzzles I found quite hard, but I'm teeerrriibbllllee at puzzles :joy: Absolutely loved the retro graphics and music. Nice work!!

Graphics and audio are top notch and do very well what they set out to do. The atmosphere created by the assets is also fantastic. The hints for the puzzles are a little confusing in their design and I feel like a different approach would be more fair to the player.

Difficult it is! Love the style and music, the rats could be a little cuter and a little less aggressive though XD

Saddistic game =)
Not the puzzles. They're pretty simple. But penalty is very hard. Five minutes for death and respawn on start TOO much cost with sticky controls...
Gave up on room with spikes and floating platforms.

@saintheiser first I have heard of "sticky controls" with the game, can you please explain, so that I could possibly address the issue, as it could possibly be an overlooked bug, seeing as I haven't heard about it from anyone else really?

Great job! :v:
https://youtu.be/-F2xtdJ56Ow

Thanks for playing @Indie Gaming ! Great video! I appreciate the feedback!!! ;D

Pretty fun, although frustratingly hard at times. Had to look through the comments to get the second passcode - I think maybe the difficulty curve was a little too steep there. Just gave up when trying to think of the 3rd code, maybe I'm just too stupid for these kind of games :laughing: The music was nice but got quite annoying after a while, I have to say. Also the letter sound was kind of jarring. Very nice art though!

Great mood, graphics and music! Really got me back to the good'ol Nintendo days! I had some issues with the controls, they felt a bit wrong to me, I always ended up pressing other buttons. Great work, keep it up! :clap:

Great job ! I love puzzle games and platformers ^^ I like too the mecanic of lose time when diying especially for an escape game ^^
I think the music is a little bit repetitive.

I liked the puzzles, but the platforming was just frustrating.

This is really, really nice. Love the style and puzzles. It is hard at times, but the kind that makes me wanna keep trying, so pretty much exactly right.

Difficult, but very nicely done entry. Not my type of game but I do appreciate effort put into this. I liked the passcode number interface very much. Very nice effort in details such as the number interface using keys to switch numbers.

Nice game, good art style and puzzles. The controls could be smoothed out a bit, but it's well made and fun to figure out. Great work!

Cool idea, reasonably well executed. I think the way the clues for the final door are interleaved with the hints for the other doors was a mistake, as unless you know it was intended this way you don't know which clues to combine for a particular door.

really fun idea! i like all the clues and everything. definitely can see this kind of concept included in a larger game, or perhaps more fleshed out i dont know. great work tho!

I wish the game was easier. I honestly could not solve the third room's puzzle and I had to use a guide to solve the second room's puzzle. I do like how the second room's puzzle was structured in that the player had to use a seemingly useless mechanic to find the combination. The audio and art were decent and it made it feel like a Gameboy game. Overall, this game was pretty unique and decent.

This is a pretty clever game. I felt that the puzzles were tricky but do-able enough for me to reasonable be able to figure them all out. I like how the puzzles were very faithful to escape the room games, being more about thinking it through rather than traditional video game block puzzles or color matching puzzles. I also like how the clues to the last puzzle were sprinkled throughout the game, letting the player slowly piece together the puzzle as they go along. The gameboy inspired aesthetic was also nice, and the audio was fitting. Overall, this is a pretty nice game. Great job!

I got into this one and enjoyed the puzzle solving aspect of it.

This was a really fun little game! It made me think, and when I finally found the first clue with six minutes left, I kicked myself for not seeing it before. Nicely done!

This was one of the best entries I've seen so far. It had those great puzzles that make you kick yourself after you figure them out. Loved this one!

I really don't get how to solve last door and just randomly enter numbers from all previous signs, all i know that 1 is not first and 9 is last. I have only 5-6 minutes and it work on my last attempt! And i really never can open 2nd door, if not the spoiler from you. So, puzzles is really hard, but actually i enjoyed trying to solve it. Love the visual and sound, good job!

Very good Gameboy Style platformer, the puzzles for the rooms were clever, I ended up dying a lot to the rats.

Very nice gameboy graphics! Music fits that 8bit era perfectly. Puzzle was too hard.
Platforming wasn't fluid. Gave up on the 3rd.

Managed to get to the end! Had to look up the hello puzzle solution because - I don't think there is really anything that would make me think "oh yeah if this was a calculator I could turn that word upside down and..." feels like a logical leap that needs a bit more of a hint to it, whereas all the other puzzles feel much more logical and solvable, and I enjoyed those ones, I especially like the final puzzle has to be completed with hints throughout the other areas.

Neat game! I think the puzzle was as others said, a little obtuse although I guess that's how escape rooms are? Nice artstyle. Puzzle platformer isn't very incompatible to me, but that's just the theme, otherwise this was a fun little entry!

Thanks again for all the positive feedback everyone! ;)

@tifu Glad you found the last door enjoyable! ;)

@randomphantom Glad you found the game fun! I understand what you mean bout puzzle platformer not being incompatible, and I have heard that comment before, but never really addressed it to much.

As stated in the description, this game is an "Escape Room" + "Platformer", not "Puzzle + Platformer".

"Escape Room is a subgenre of Point and click adventure" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_the_room

I know it feels like I mixed puzzles and platforming, but if you play a game that is normally defined as a puzzle platformer, that usually entails moving blocks, and pressing switches to progress. My game on the other hand, tries to implement the concept of point and click by allowing the player to control where they look, and focuses on logical puzzles to escape the area in a set amount of time, hence Escape Room.

So by design, doing an escape room and platforming is not common, and if I had done this in an entirely different way, would have felt incompatible, but because I executed it in a way that I felt was fun and interesting, it feels compatible, which by the way can be said about puzzle + platformer if you remove the fact that the combination is common currently, seeing as the genre's themselves aren't compatible unless executed properly.

Love the genres you've picked! The music and graphics are great, I need to give it time to beat it though.

Congrats on the entry!

I really like the art and the atmosphere in this game! Puzzle difficulty was a little out of order, but it was great. A little on teh hard side.

The 8 bit music are so cool i love it and the atmosphere in this game also is good 5 out of 5 Good Job!

Good job! Cool game!

I left my rating of your game, if you can leave your feedback in our game, Witch's Escape.

I hope you continue with the project.

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/witchs-escape

had this open on one of my internet tabs meaning to play it for over a week now XD. really luv the gameboy gfx & the crispy sfx. i can imagine playing it as a kid sitting in the back seat on a long car ride taking my time trying to crack the puzzle. the "hELLO" had me stumped for AGES! lol, in the end i thought "it has to be sumthin to do with the hello coz ther's nothing else about!" lol. & then, suddenly after a loong time i had that EUREKA! moment wen it just clicked in my mind & i knew wat i was suppose to do. & it felt really satisfying wen i finally got my freedom! i cud almost smell the fresh air XD

great job dude! ^__^


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