Short Lived by Matt Fabius

[raw]
made by Matt Fabius for LD 39 (JAM)

Short Lived is a puzzle-platformer in which you take control of a robot with very limited energy resources. Navigate to the end of the temple before its too late.

Screen Shot 2017-08-01 at 12.28.58 AM.png Screen Shot 2017-08-01 at 12.30.04 AM.png Screen Shot 2017-08-01 at 12.31.03 AM.png Screen Shot 2017-08-01 at 12.31.45 AM.png

Ratings

Overall 601th 3.091⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Fun 342th 3.273⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 612th 2.727⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Theme 241th 3.773⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 679th 2.773⭐ 24🧑‍⚖️
Humor 273th 2.75⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Mood 601th 2.857⭐ 23🧑‍⚖️
Given 21🗳️ 23🗨️

Feedback

ThatRumme
01. Aug 2017 · 13:14 UTC
Already from the start where I got called a "LOSEr" i knew this game would be interesting ^_^. The only problems I came across was that the "Press Space to start" didn't work instantly and it took some time to figure out that I could survive a bit of time in the "energy-water" thing, otherwise great game :)
BSO
01. Aug 2017 · 13:21 UTC
Hello there... I hope your participation at LD was satisfactory...


Here is my rating:

Overall: 3

Fun: 4

Innovation: 2

Theme: 3

Graphics: 3

Humor: 3

Mood: 3


The game remind me to "Don't give up" or something like that... Jajajaja... it's a bit hard too...
With a font like MSDOS or something pixelart font... the part or the talk of the robots can have more ambientation :D I guess the standard font gives the feeling to me that are part of another game... you know, the game design and the font seens to be from two diferent games...

I was thinking on give up at the second level :v I though it was some kind of bug, but then I see the battery :'D

PD: I give up some levels later :v I lose my pacience xD


Here is my entry: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/39/runoutofenergy-the-game rating me please! :D
There my game link for Windows… enjoy https://www.dropbox.com/s/dpapwuoscuiu9eq/RunOutOfPower.zip?dl=0
tomasara413
01. Aug 2017 · 13:22 UTC
Cause I have no idea how to start a quality critique I'll dive right in.

The levels are the right size and winable so that's a plus, but also there was hardly any challange. Yes, there were two challanging levels - The third one (until I found out there was a battery) and the one with the pulsating blue to white spectre water?

Another good thing was the lil' tutorial at the start on movement.

Hovever this kinda gets me into some second problem, it felt like the FOV was too small to really have enough information where the batteries are. On third level I haven't noticed it and I spent around three minutes until I seen it in the full scene (I thought it was supposed to be challenging so I didn't look for it though).

Movement felt really not standart almost as if it isn't using the interpolation, but I think this is more about personal preference. Another thing to add is that if you press space at the start of the round it sometimes jumps if you press it too quickly and you'll lose some energy.

The dying seemed dealyed. Few times I have burned on one flame, walked a out and died (sometimes I walked free), but more importantly this was more problematic inside the spectral water or whatever that was. Sometimes I jumped out and haven't died and sometimes I have.

The whole mechanic of this water seemed wierd, mainly beacuse there was one whole level based around it and I had no idea how you should avoid dying. It took few tries.

I didn't really catch into the story, I have no idea why was this robot different, but hey, it doesn't matter.

The graphics are monotonous and sometimes things (the battery for example) blend with the reapeating background.

The levels have no standard platform height and it feels wierd, but again cannot blame for this one, it's thing of preference.

My vedict:

O: 2

F: 1

I: 2

T: 5

G: 2

H: 0

Mo: 2
xel
02. Aug 2017 · 16:23 UTC
RAMBO!
Lamm
03. Aug 2017 · 03:35 UTC
Good gameplay Good Job
rEaX
03. Aug 2017 · 03:45 UTC
Fun to play! I would have enjoyed if there was a timer, so that you could race against your own records.
dob
03. Aug 2017 · 04:17 UTC
Well-executed platform game without a lot of complexity other than the battery part. A little frustrating to have to start over all the time. The art was cute and effective, and the plot/story at the start was a nice touch, although the dialog should be able to be clicked or keyed through - I read a lot faster than it was presented. Nice work!
TheFlyingKeyboard
04. Aug 2017 · 10:40 UTC
Really fun game, but needs a little bit more polishing. It is nice, that it has text dialogues between scenes. Good Job!
Sarah
07. Aug 2017 · 18:24 UTC
I like how to showed the controls for the first bit of movement. Great idea for a tiny built-in tutorial :) It's a bit difficult, and you can keep jumping just by holding the button down.

I also had a weird glitch where I was holding the jump button and I got stuck on the ceiling until I let go! But maybe it's just a cool feature I missed reading about :P
paracatgames
07. Aug 2017 · 22:13 UTC
A pretty simple platformer. I found the blue fire tiles to be a little frustrating to navigate, but I think that was by design. Very challenging once I got a few levels in!
elmismopancho
11. Aug 2017 · 21:31 UTC
Nice simple platformer.
Here is some feedback:
- You really need another kind of camera. No modern platformer uses the kind that is locked to the player, and for a reason, it's confusing and makes you dizzy.
- For jumping, holding the spacebar to jump becomes frustrating, platformers are about dexterity and control. Use [Input.GetButtonDown](https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Input.GetButtonDown.html) to detect only when the key is pressed.
- It's not clear that you die if the energy level reaches zero, in fact, I didn't even notice the small counter on the bottom left corner until I started dying "for no reason". You could put the energy meter on a more visible spot, or at least mention it on the tutorial.
- Finally, there is a small bug on the first level, if you stand exactly inthe middle of the two NPC's both dialogues appear at the same time.
![Screenshot 2017-08-11 17.10.53.png](///raw/ee7/8/z/8d9b.png)
bombjack
17. Aug 2017 · 19:33 UTC
I saw your post. So I'm here :smile: Just to let you know that many people only play games with web version. It's much faster and safer for a lot of people.
As for know you received a 15 votes for 19 given which is quite good. If you want to receive more votes just rate more game. Especially the early days of votes.
I hope it will help you for the next LD.
Piotrek
17. Aug 2017 · 20:05 UTC
It's nice that you included a story to it and the platformer controls work pretty well.

As it was said before you should add some smoothing to the camera's movement. Since the game is usually played on fullscreen you should also make the power indicator nearer the center and make it more visible and readable. If you want to make your game look more polished you should add more effects like particles, player animations and add some detail to the map. Usually just a few sprites rotated in different directions with different scale can make the map looking busy, lively and more appealing at small cost.
simonhutchinson
17. Aug 2017 · 20:54 UTC
Cool game. I like the in-game tutorial. Very clean.

A little detail in your platform graphics might go a long way. The robots and energy fire thingys seem a little out of place in the solid grey backgrounds.

That said, this is awesome work for the weekend. Keep it up!
ToonTeamJ
17. Aug 2017 · 21:33 UTC
I liked it. The short tutorial was especially helpful. Two things that could be improved are that the text should be advanced by a button in place of a timer and the controls seemed a little sticky.
gmfk07
17. Aug 2017 · 22:11 UTC
I like the idea of having a movement-based limit instead of a timer-based one. I would've loved to see more mechanics that played with this idea, but given the development time constraints, this game is pretty good.
IndieAlchemist
20. Aug 2017 · 13:26 UTC
I like the story of the game. It's simple and nice. The "tutorial" that you can jump out of the water was nice.
Nice job! Some sound and music would be nice.
Jupiter_Hadley
03. Sep 2017 · 17:15 UTC
I like the robot graphic! I included it in my Ludum Dare 39 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMCKWv94MN0