Player in the Dark by loyance



Story:
You are the creature of Light. One of many. Light is your 100% body component and is essential for your survival.
Something happened at the power plant near your hut. Something so powerful, that even day turned to night.
You equip your favorite flashlight and decide to investigate what's going on.
Good thing emergency chargers around the town are still in a working condition.
Theme: Running out of Power
Features: - Simple typical platformer controls - Light powers of your favorite flashlight - Speed element as a part of the gimmick - Four neatly designed platforming levels - Enjoying boss fight with the Creature of Dark Powers - Dark and calm atmosphere
Controls: - Left arrow - move left - Right arrow - move right - Shift - jump - R - quick restart - Z - save or shine the flashlight - F2 - restart game - Escape - close game
Cheats:
Since this game includes time limiting technic (which can be punishing from time to time), I've included some cheat keys:
- 1 - grants invincibility
- 2 - grants infinite flashlight charge
- Page Up - goes to the next level
- Page Down - goes to the previous level
- Ctrl - moves the character to the mouse cursor position
| Windows | https://github.com/HaselLoyance/LD39/releases |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/player-in-the-dark |
Ratings
| Overall | 269th | 3.417⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 395th | 3.028⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 342th | 3.057⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 266th | 3.611⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 264th | 3.444⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 92th | 3.588⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 376th | 2.129⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 43th | 3.912⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 63🗳️ | 9🗨️ |
The sound effects are a bit too load and you really shouldn't have put jumping on shift, since it turns on sticky keys after hitting it five times. Also I'm not sure if I can use fullscreen mode, which would definitely be a plus. But other than that I can't say anything bad about this.
So the timers feel pretty tightly tuned and it's very enjoyable to try and reach the next one. Normally I don't like 'not seeing much around you' mechanics, but here it works, since memorization of the path to the next lamppost is part of the game.
You're definitely getting high votes from me for the mood as well.
This is an awesome entry overall. Great work.
I kept dying before the ending of the first screen because I wasn't noticing the energy bar.
Nice work!
But other than this, quite a fun game.
But it's pretty cool, I liked the atmosphere and the graphics. The battery bar is unloading pretty fast though, I felt the game was all about getting the information by camping at the charging station and then rushing as fast as possible across the map :D
Very nice little platformer, I didn't expect much when I read life was calling during the jam :D But I was surprised !
The only thing I have to say, appart from "well done", is that the game is waaaaaay too difficult and more precisely, too unforgiving of mistakes. It gets very close to a "die and retry" kind of game, except you don't die because of the traps ahead of you, but rather because you checked if there were any with your suicide flashlight ;) Otherwise the controls are fine, maybe increase the jump height a bit ? Some jumps were hard to make, the first one for example.
Good entry !
Feel free to check our game out : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/berzerk-hunt We need the criticism too !
The mechanic of flashing with the flashlight is a lot of fun to use. From getting the stage to light up to burn down opponents, it is a great tool that makes the game quite unique. The atmosphere of the game is also fantastic, with fantastic sprites and backgrounds and a music that sets the mood perfectly. Also the use of the Thinking Emoji to block the path made me laugh way too much.
The issues I had with the game were the RNG element of some of the challenges (the falling boulders, for example) and the use of Shift as the jumping button. Besides that, this was a great game. Keep it up!
A couple of tips:
The distance between savepoints was too short compared to the power meter. Give the player some slack, so that one or two misshaps or even jsut a small break do NOT immediately result in a restart. When there were enemies, I even had to go back and forth to kill them and then have enough power to reach the next savepoint.
As a rule of thumb, the game should be darn easy for you to play, at least the first couple of screens, if it starts getting difficult for you, the player will have a very hard time.
Introduce only one mechanic at a time. Here are some examples where you introduced two at the same time:
* double jump - going backwards
* moving platforms - falling rocks
* climbing from movable to movable - movables that go behind spikes
Use separate keys for separate actions. I would like to use my flashlight from the savety of the savepoint, so that I can see the area before I start walking.
Do not use the z key for anything, it moves around in other very common keyboard layouts. (E.g. french and german). X and C are fine (at least in qwertz, qwerty and azerty, to my knowledge the three most common layouts).
Have contrast between background and foreground, I like to see where I can go. (When the flashlight is on, of course)
Have contrast between hazzards and background, dark grey rocks on black background are really hard to see
Have a full screen version. I prefer huge pixels over a tiny game window everyday.
Do not make insta-kill hazards random. I can not best it with skill, since they are different each time and in the worst case they are impossible to beat. When they are scripted patterns, muscle memory let's me beat it.
My only suggestion for you is to make things more clear about what we are supposed to do. Like point with an arrow or something where we should go for example.
Otherwise, graphics are good so thumbs up for that :^) Perhaps avoid making things so dark, it's a nice concept, but it's hard to keep players interested when they can't see very well.
Good Job Nonetheless!