Beam Right In!

Absolutely love the graphics and movement mechanics, such a great idea! Would have been so much better with sounds though, is time supposed to be able to be bought with the specimens?

@zachster Yes, through the pause menu, you can purchase time with the lifeforms. I agree, sounds are a major short fall. I had some issues in key areas and didn't get them in on time. Thanks for checking it out!

The art is great, and the game feels like something new which is wonderful! I do take issue with the sound design however that is just personal preference and not reflective of the game as a whole. Great work! :)

@shaner421 Thanks for giving it a try! At the very least, the post-jam update will include sounds, and hopefully more of the features that I wanted to include.

@arkinrev I'll definitely keep it on my radar. :)

What a nice game!

I love the graphics, it's so polished :smiley:

I don't understand gameplay a little bit, but it is quite interesting to walk around freezing those creatures :D

If you updated this game and added something I will like to play it once more :smile:

Nice work, this looks really good, and plays responsively. Yay wall sliding. Freezing the specimens feels a bit slow, relative to the pace of the action, but I get the gameplay value of having to stand in a spot vulnerably for a couple seconds. Have to agree that playing in silence is less fun. Does the slime have an effect? I couldn't quite tell.

@trevor-shoe The slime is worth more time, but a feature I didn't get to was that they would jump around, making it more difficult to freeze. In addition, the intent was that killing them would have dropped the pink goo to spawn more mushrooms. On paper, it didn't seem like much, but I spent the majority of the first night getting the controls to feel responsive, and to include something more than just a normal jump. I've loved wall jumps since Strider NES, and since that seemed simpler than the grappling hook idea, I went with that.

@noobexception For the gameplay, I was really focused on creating systems. On my whiteboard, they seemed simple enough that time would not be a factor. I would expect that the confusion might be from the cut bits.

**The plan that didn't all make it in:** Sawbots kill mushrooms and lifeforms, but are difficult to kill (need to slap them) Lifeforms bounce around randomly to protect themselves and avoid sawblades, if they are killed they would have spread the pink goo. The goo would have randomly spawned mushrooms (needed the spawning mechanism for that) The mushrooms served 2 purposes - static things that sawbots would harvest, and you could freeze them to get an iceblock to block sawblades. (expendable obstacles if frozen) All of this, also, was intended to be in a randomly generated level. I knew, however, that the random generation was on the "It could really use this for replayability, but I should be realistic" column.

**Compromise to Have a Game**: I spent the first night ensuring that I had a simple tileset and responsive controls. I knew if I was doing a platformer, that controls responsiveness is a make or break kind of feature. I can say, however, that it plays much better with a Steam controller than a keyboard+mouse, which I almost expect of platformers. The spawning was added for randomness of the levels (still ends up strange) but it was a late addition. A random point is selected somewhere around you, and as long as the distance from you is greater than a "safe distance", a random robot or lifeform spawns, so long as there are no terrain features there. That gave me a randomized, but not too random experience with each game. Try to sample as many things as you can, avoid the bots, and trade in your lifeforms for time.

The robot "AI" has them patrol ledges and turn around if they hit terrain, but when I noticed them walking into each other, I decided to keep that. There was something that felt right about the boxy sawbot endlessly walking into another bot. When they are standing on a single block, they go haywire, and change directions rapidly. I decided to allow it, although I would have liked to create a special condition for it.

Thanks all for playing, and I'll put up a post-mortem at some point soon.

I love the graphics, they feel very polished! I also like that you can break the walls of the cave, that is very innovative. However, as a game, I didn't really have a lot of fun. It took a lot of time to discover that you have to continuously freeze the life forms for it to work. That would have been ok if there was sound or even different particles indicating that your actions are having any effect, so that was a off-putting to me. I also missed the ability to maybe shoot down with your laser to open pathways on the cave downwards (but of course that could have just been me not being able to figure out the level design - I function really badly under time pressure :P ). Overall, I think this has a lot of potential and with some adjustments could become a really fun platformer! I think the main character sprite is really funny, I love that I can't figure out what he is, just that he's a heartless mercenary with tentacles. Keep up the good work!

@douglima Shooting on an angle was the list of Todo items. I wasn't sure I could get it in time, so the gun doesn't rotate. To compensate, I made sure that there was always at least one route down within 1-2 blocks of another path. I think both particles, sound, as well as a sprite adjustment would make the freezing a little bit more clear. I was working on it with the terrain destruction and had to stop and move on. It's very difficult for me to hold off putting sounds in, but I didn't make it in time for them and it's nagging at me. Thanks for giving it a try!

the graphics are just awesome. I felt that the controls are a little strange. Its hard to understand what tick "`" you have to press to close the menu on a cyrillic keyboard like mine :D

@datagreed The ` key was a little bit tricky, and I changed to that since Esc would leave full screen mode when you played on a keyboard. On my keyboard I had to quickly find another key at the last minute and that was nearest key. Trying to do a platformer has shown just how important it is to allow players to set the keys at runtime. What works for this keyboard layout makes it unplayable for others. Even if it's a Jam game, if I make something that relies so heavily on quick controls, I'll make sure that the controls are able to be changed. Thanks for giving my game a try!