Soul Gun by EX3

A game for the Malaga Jam Weekend VI & Ludum Dare 39
A game made in 48h!
Play online on itch.io (HTML5/WebGL): https://ex3.itch.io/soulgun
CONTROLS
- A / Left Arrow - Move Left
- D / Right Arrow - Move Right
- Space / Right Ctrl - Shoot & switch gravity
HISTORY
You control the gravity by using your Soul Gun! But be careful, a Soul Gun is feeded by your own soul, so don't let your trigger too loose or you will die. Go through limbo and discover what kind of person you are.
CREDITS
Soul Gun has been hastily handcrafted by:
- Pablo Dapena (@pablodap) as The Lord of Pixels (Art)
- Carlos L. Hernando (@risingoat) as The King of Papers (Analog Game Design)
- Alberto Sageras Román (@sageras) as The Master of Engines (Digital Game Design)
- Jose Miguel Sanchez Fernandez (@ex3) as Himself (Coding)
Music:
- 'Ancient Curse' theme by nosoapradio.us (we reversed it to add flavor)
- 'Black River' theme by nosoapradio.us (not reversed!)
- Sound effects made with Bfxr (http://www.bfxr.net/)
POSTMORTEM, by Carlos (@risingoat)
- Soul Gun Post Mortem I: A button to respect
- Soul Gun Post Mortem II: One pixel at a time
- Soul Gun Post Mortem III: Sleep is the enemy
- Soul Gun Post Mortem IV: Unity matters
SCREENSHOTS




| HTML5 (web) | |
| HTML5 (web) | |
| HTML5 (web) | |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/soul-gun |
Ratings
| Overall | 510th | 3.234⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 499th | 3.031⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 529th | 2.891⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 804th | 2.484⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 366th | 3.672⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 285th | 3.317⭐ | 65🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 549th | 2.02⭐ | 53🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 365th | 3.323⭐ | 64🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 53🗳️ | 43🗨️ |
> It was tough for us, we barely slept
Sleep? What is that? ;P (the last night without sleep, programming zombie, listening “ghosts” in the main music theme when we try to reverse it, some/much Unity crashes… It was very hard, but it was worth it xD)
@bruins - We wanted to make the control a little hard,but responsive. Guess we've got to work a little more.
@matkubik - VVVVVV was indeed our of our main inspiration, being Downwell the other one.
@johngun - Thanks! We reservesed the main menu themeto give it an uneasy vibe.
@nekonemo - The death counter is a great idea! Thank you.
@sparewizard - Thanks,we also think that PabloDap, our artist did a great job. And thanks for reporting the bug. We'll work on it.
@matkubik:
> The gravity control makes me think to VVVVVV. I don’t know if that game was an inspiration for you.
Really the game is based on an some ideas and is inspired in some popular games, VVVVVV is one of this. Other game proposed by me to take ideas is an old NES game called Astrorobo Sasa, a game where the player shoots bullets to impulse over the level platforms, and each bullet drain player energy/life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xu9d5l5qag
@dob I agree with you. We didn't have enough time to polish the difficulty curve. We aim to do it aftefwards. Maybe a level system too. And a bit of bug killing too :D.
I had to give up after being sent back 5 screens or so in the room full of those invincible turrets, I think for something like this you need to give players a safety net after a really tough section (more checkpoints, probably).
Still, it's pretty good. Keep it up!
I haven't beaten it yet, but I'll git gud :triumph:
It is really hard though! Colliders feel a bit too big sometimes, and the "insta reappearing" is a really good choice, altought it's a but janky sometimes, bouncing and teleporting.
Overall, however, it was fun! Interesting game, that with some more level design and polish, could get really far! Nice work!
The idea to use the eye as health indicator is clever. (I wish enemies wouldn't kill me instantly though :P)
Level design is good, but it was a bit too hard for me, but I'm not the one to complain, my game is no easy too.
P.S. Good sir @pablodap, in comments to my game you said there was a problem with it. I'm not sure if notifications are working, but I wrote a reply.
@felixmcfelix Thanks for the feedback, and thanks for calling the game a semi-remake of VVVVVV. We know there are several issues, but you know... 48 hours :D. We'll work on that. We'll keep it up!
@galan I feel you. There's still a lot of polish to implement, but I'm glad you got a good vibe from it.
@rulrite Thanks a lot. It's good to hear that we did good with the atmosphere.
@pikas96 I'm sure you'll do it! Good luck :D.
@toonteamj Thanks, it's where everything starterd.
@vulpem Great! We want to get far with this game. And we agree, polish and level design are the path t follow.
@holyblackcat If it's only "sliglthly weird" and not "so fcking weird" we are happy! We wanted that character control worked together with graphics and music to create an uneasy vibe.
Loved the graphics, got a very ZX Spectrum feel. *loved* the level design, despite too few and far between checkpoints. Frustration is part of why I like old-school games.
Lovely lovely entry, thank you!
@simonhutchinson Great! It's so awesome when every aspect of a game work together to convey a particular aesthetic, so we are glad that you felt that way playing.

I really like the idea of merging VVVVVV with classic platformer shooting, but the unforgiving hitboxes (especially on the violet blob shooting blue circles) and the super-hard part above made me give up.
I did finish VVVVVV & Super Meat Boy back in the day, I guess I just lost my mojo since :P
Some level collision issues in one or two places, and the obstacle design needs some work, I think. You'd like something that's challenging but in a clear and fair way -- try to isolate your obstacles a bit more especially, as you have one or two parts where bullets come unexpectedly from off-screen while you are trying to parse some other part of the level.
In practice the soul-draining mechanic, while spot-on in terms of flavor, didn't really come into play. I realize this prevents you from spamming the shoot button repeatedly to just hover while travelling forwards, but that was never an option in the narrow spike-filled corridors anyways. I only ever died from this when intentionally trying to.
You also have some minor glitching with respawns -- particularly, make sure you don't trigger any further respawns or deaths after you have died (and are waiting for the timer).
Despite all that, this is a pretty nice start!
@ddrkirbyisq
> Uhh…is there an “end”? I went all the way to the right =(
This is a secret only revealed to the brave players who reach the end of the level :rolling_eyes: :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
About the respawns, yes, along with many other things, we have to work on polishing them better for the future (the respawns are implemented in the last minute and not full tested) :slight_smile:
@sinclairstrange
> I also liked the fact that when you die you gory green goo and still move.
Well... really this a little bug at the last minute of the soul gun particle implementation... but... on second thought, sell this like a "feature" sounds better :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
---
FYI. I see some feedback refer to the level collisions issue. The game not implementing a tile base system for build the level. The collisions are made using a large box colliders, that overlap a group of tiles, and these are put by hand.
With the rush of last minute, It seems that some boxes are not set on the final tile group position. This is the reason of the some parts, the player little pass the tiles :upside_down:
Really, thanks a lot for the all great feedback received, we appreciate a lot! This is great see so many people enjoying our game :smiley:
- https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/soul-gun/soul-gun-post-mortem-i-a-button-to-respect
- https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/soul-gun/soul-gun-post-mortem-ii-one-pixel-at-a-time
> I might have been able to deal with the difficulty, but the game ran pretty poorly on my laptop
Interesting :confused: What is the configuration of your laptop? (CPU, RAM & GPU). It's interesting for my in a way to consider for future HTML5/WebGL projects with Unity. I'm surprised that this little project not running properly in current machines (the programation and the art are simple and not used any camera filter effect).
> I recommend making the respawn time extremely short
Yes. Many people coincided in that. We take note for the future :upside_down:
@nick-blackwood Unusual and fun are two words that a like to see together when talking about a game! Cheers to you!
**Positive stuff :**
- The graphics, really neat aestetics here a nice mix of NES character/enemy design and Spectrum palette (at least that's what came to my mind ^^)
- The atmosphere was pretty cool, the added rain was a nice touch !
- The music was great and complemented the atmosphere
**Negative stuff :**
- The checkpoints were a bit far in some places, having more would help with the challenging level design without sacrificing too much on the difficulty
- Bit more of a nitpick, but i didn't really feel the "losing power" theme in the game, but honestly it's not that important i.m.o
On the whole it was a really fun game !
So well done guys :)
Thanks for playing the game and for your words. We'll definitely work on those checkpoints.
Cheers
@oab Checkpoints are too far apart. Checked! Sorry for the bad joke... We'll definitely work on that, balancing frustration is key for a game like this.
> my laptop is a toaster, to be fair. It has an Intel pentium, fairly recent, integrated bay trail graphics, I believe.
I presume that your latop is an Intel Atom or setup before 2010 :slight_smile: My oldie Macbook 13" from 2007 and my netbook Intel Atom from 2009 (both using a poor integrated Intel GPU) can't run any 2D simple Unity game (and Unity WebGL required much GPU than any HTML5 standard game).
> It has an Intel pentium, fairly recent
Sorry, I think I misunderstood your comment before (the problem to quick reading in middle of hour works :stuck_out_tongue:).
Your laptop is recent but using a integrated GPU, is it? In some test that I did on various range of integrated Intel GPUs since 2013, a game like this should be run properly (this integrated GPUs are decently powerful for most of today casual games).
What it's your latop configuration? (CPU & GPU). Maybe my laptop from 2011 (where I programmed this game) has an integrated GPU (shared with the main NVidia GPU) like your laptop, and this can be useful to me for future performance testing.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/soul-gun/soul-gun-post-mortem-iii-sleep-is-the-enemy
Likes:
- mini Zerglings, ahahaha!
- solid gravity Shift mechanics (not my favorite genre, but still good job)
- fairly consistent art style, that is worth a lot!
- fine sounds!
Challenges:
- gravity gameplay isn't really rewarding in most situations, and doesn't feel punchy and juicy (yay vor vague terminology...)
Overall:
- cool entry
- that Málaga Game jam must have been awesome. Didn't know they had one! Hasta luego!
@thygrrr Thanks for the precise review. This is a game that needs to drink a lot of juice (if you know what I mean), you are accurately right. Málaga Game Jam is probably the biggest game jam event in Spain. Anyways, it's the best I've ever been: nice people, great food, free transportation, the beach is really near... AWESOME!!!
@simplepotential It's cool that you love the concept although you died a lot. If you shoot like a mad man, the gund drains the protagonist's soul and it dies.
The death is a bit odd: I managed to get to a checkpoint while controlling the character's death particles. Still a good entry :)
But I didn't get where it was related to the theme!
The relation with the theme is subtle, perhaps too much. If you shoot a lot, the gund drains your soul (aka energy) and you die.
the gravity flip mechanic was interesting. there were a few spots that felt like they needed almost pixel perfect activation of it to make it through. would have been nice if some of the check points were closer together.
game needed some explanation on how to actually play at the beginning.. some sort of tutorial 'level.' had I not seen the gifs of it being played, I would have had no idea that you could swap gravity around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9W8Ji5YhVkA
@jason-kennedy The indication is the eye,it fades when our soul is being drained and the Spul Gun starts to produce particles to represent that it's being fed. However, I think it's too subtle. And perhaps we should have reduced the shooting time until you die... We needto work on that.
You are so right about the checkpoints issue, they were included in the last hour and we did not tested them.
And about the control explanation, the Main Screen tells you to use Space, which is the main button, and you can't start the game without pressing it. For moving right and left you can use A and D or left cursor and right cursor, so we think it's really hard to miss with a little bit of experimentation. In addition, the beginning of the level is a safe place without enemies, so the player can test controls and see how the game works. We always prefer that the player experiment and discover the controls rather than tell her directly. And the character starts upside down, so he understands that something happens with gravity. We tested with about twenty people without saying anything and everyone learned the control with a little trial and error. However, we can keep working on the execution, of course.
Thanks for taking your time writing such a long review.
@carsen-d Those were two of our references (VVVVVV is pretty obvious). Can you tell us what computer did you use? Some people are having performance issues and we haven't figured why yet. We are glad that you enjoyed the mood.
@insomnia Thanks. Could you be more specific about the camera? So we can improve it. I personally would like to have some shaking when the character dies.
@elysiagriffin Thanks a lot for your streaming, Elysia. It was a great show and I'm glad I was there! Thanks to it, I discovered a bunch or great games, like 'Plug me' which has an over the top game design.
I felt the theme matches more what GameMaker's ToolKit Jam did which is "Dual purposed design" since you change gravity and shoot with the same button. :)
Anyways, thanks for playing it. That makes not sleeping worth it.
Btw, loved the screen with the fake quote, that was cool :).
Good job!
Nice movement mechanics that feels unusual in a good way. It was fun to match jumping and shooting before actually doing it. thanks for the game!
@seconddimension Rain, music, gravity switching and weapons. Sounds like a great weekend to stay at home! Thanks a lot for playing it, we will improve those pesky checkpoints.
@coauctor Jose Miguel, our programmer (aka himself) is a huge Contra fan (in fact made the code wearing a Contra T-shirt. You made him happy, thanks for that. And thanks for saying thanks, it's so good to know there are people like you, having a good time with our little game. Cheers!
> Jose Miguel, our programmer (aka himself) is a huge Contra fan (in fact made the code wearing a Contra T-shirt. You made him happy
@coauctor I'm very happy! :smile:
