Penelope by Denifia
A story of love and loss. Follow the stars to reconnect with Penelope.
Basics: * Arrow keys to move, space to jump * Takes about 10 minutes to finish the game * HINT: When your faith is tested, you are left with few choices

This is the first Ludum Dare my wife and I have participated in. It's also the first game we've made together. We hope you enjoy playing it; finishing the game is possible but if you sacrifice too much you will never see the ending.
| HTML5 (web) | https://lukewale.com/LudumDare/43/jam/index.html |
| Windows | https://lukewale.com/LudumDare/43/jam/LD43_Penelope_Windows.zip |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/penelope |
Ratings
| Overall | 403th | 3.554⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 193th | 3.696⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 521th | 3.143⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 170th | 4⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 785th | 2.964⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 376th | 3.288⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 169th | 3.625⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 473th | 3.375⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 14🗳️ | 22🗨️ |
As for lives per level - we considered this but for the time constraint, we decided to have a live pool for the whole game to make the experience short and concise. If we were to expand the game, we were thinking either adding lives per levels or adding life pickups to allow you to gain back some of what you lost.
I understand why you can't just restart the level when you die - but perhaps if the game was bigger it would be useful to retry a level with the same health you started with... But for Ludum Dare, knowing that you had to do it all again if you messed it up made it super stressful/exciting!
Audio was great, the sound effects made me smile every time. Great job!
And I must say- the sound effects were amazing.
Only issue I came across, in the last level, the audio stopped? (Probably because I paused it and left it for a while) Then when I moved around sometimes it'd fade back in/out.
Anyway, amazing job! Loved it :D
I really like the general feeling - voices are great and the little zoom ins when you get to a star is great. The 8 second music isn't even overbearing but kinda funny in the context.
On the one hand I really like that there's a bit more at stake compared to most indie platformers these days where you can only lose ~10 seconds of work if you die, there's more tension this way of trying to make it to the end. That said you do feel a bit defeated after dying and the gameplay would likely have to have some more juice to have you want to try many times and replay the initial part.
I enjoy the mix of puzzle and dexterity. it may of course have many additions later, but for a first version it is fun and balanced. Great !