Railroad to Hell by Ferminho

made by Ferminho for LD 38 (JAM)

Our particular approach to small world is a lonely survivor in a destroyed world, trying to make a last stand on a train that keeps running around the world.

"On a world ravaged by the madness of nuclear fire, a single train darts on hardened tracks through the desolation.

A single remnant of a once glorious civilization and a testament to the will of the only survivor that still proudly rides on it.

Not a single creature in this accursed land will ignore its passing. The blood of the survivor drawing them like moths to a flame. Their numbers are infinite. You're the only survivor.

Let the ride begin."

Rating information

We did the music with abundant-music (some tuning to get it right -pun intended-) but SFX are downloaded with public domain license, please consider it when rating Audio.

Controls

CURSORS / WSAD = move and jump
SPACE / O = punch

About the game state & plans

The game is quite unfinished and we expect to keep working on it. You will notice placeholder backdrops and even the animations are the first draft versions. The gameplay should be HARD (it's a railroad to hell after all) but not THAT hard, wish we had some more hours to polish it a bit. Now, see the "1" in the left bottom corner? That's the current cycle around the world. Try to get to cycle 2 at least, the game gets even harder!

Right now our plans are to keep working on it and upload new versions at some place like itch.io. Some of the important features we didn't do include a recurring nemesis/boss, other enemy types and dangers, more combat moves and a train that actually feels like it's moving fast.

Hope you like it!

by @ferminho & fimbulwinter (@heilfingd)

Original URL

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/railroad-to-hell

Ratings

Overall	755^th	2.421⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Fun	750^th	2.158⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	725^th	2.211⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Theme	724^th	2.389⭐	20🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	703^th	2.263⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Audio	459^th	2.474⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Humor	340^th	2.706⭐	19🧑‍⚖️
Mood	692^th	2.474⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Given		15🗳️	5🗨️

Feedback

Flaterectomy

01. May 2017 · 22:07 UTC

A very clear concept, but the stun effect after you get damaged kept escalating into me getting damaged even more without being able to do anything about it. I would've liked some more agency.

The wind on top of a speeding train should probably affect jumping in some way. Right now the train itself is a setting without a real function.

The graphics are pretty basic, but I really enjoyed how the player sprite's hat comes off when he dies. It was a nice touch of character. I'm glad you had music, though it could've been more threatening in atmosphere.

I hope my feedback helps you guys! Overall a nice entry.

tdennist

01. May 2017 · 22:49 UTC

Some nice old-school feeling animations for the characters. I agree with @flaterectomy that not being able to fight back after taking damage is a little hard to deal with. I did enjoy the Snowpiercer movie (which I assume this is partially inspired by) so it's a neat way to tie in with the theme.

Lino

01. May 2017 · 23:23 UTC

The music, in my opinion, supports the game's theme very well. I think shortening the stun effect, as has been noted, would make gameplay feel much better. Graphically I think a little more effort in the look of the terrain would be a significant improvement.

Steve Johnson

01. May 2017 · 23:39 UTC

I had the same experience as Flaterectomy. Once there were 2 monsters onscreen, I couldn't do anything because I kept getting tossed back and forth.

Also, I never figured out the punch hitbox, so I couldn't hit anything. Very frustrating. I only played for about a minute because of these issues.

I did like that you didn't just use bfxr for everything.

sgstair

03. May 2017 · 09:44 UTC

I like the truncated train, it's a great setting. But it's very difficult. I'm still not quite sure what the "1" in the bottom corner is. After playing a dozen times, I finally found around the right timing / inputs to actually kill the enemies and recover from the enemy stun. I'm not great at this kind of game and didn't really make it that far. My observation is that the attack rectangles for everything are just huge - your attack is really short, but if you hit it at the right time your attack precludes the enemy attacks.

(Edit: Played on stream at https://www.twitch.tv/videos/139750250 - at 1:23:30)

🎤 Ferminho

03. May 2017 · 19:54 UTC

Thank you all for the constructive comments! I wasn't expecting any positive feedback considering the current state of the game, so you really boosted my motivation to keep working on it!

I agree with all you said, most of them are things we want to address first for the next version. Unfortunately we had to publish with placeholders and worst of all with a gameplay that still needed polishing even for a first playable version, as you have noticed, especially better hitboxes and damage recovery process.
Seeing it now we didn't even do a proper game description here, gee. I'll fix that now.

@tdennist I enjoyed Snowpiercer as well, but @heilfingd did come up with the concept without knowing it!

@sgstair the 1 in the bottom corner is the current cycle around the world, we didn't develop the idea further but we will. Yeah, currently is a nightmare to get just to cycle 2, I can manage just once in a while :smile: the game gets EVEN harder with every cycle

heilfingd

04. May 2017 · 19:16 UTC

I'm with @ferminho, it was a great morale boost to read your comments. Thank you guys for the feedback!

I certainly didn't know about Snowpiercer, but now I know where to turn to for more "inspiration" to complete the game ;)

@flaterectomy I liked your idea to add the wind as a gameplay element. We originally intended to make the train directly affect gameplay by having two different "stages": one on the train roof and another inside, each with its own threats and ways to face the enemies. I would love to recover at least a few of those ideas for the final version and turn the train into something more than an empty setting!

@sgstair as @ferminho mentioned the number is your current cycle around the world. The train is supposed to be traveling on a Little Prince-esque kind of world where each cycle is one revolution around the planet. This tied in nicely with the theme of a "small world" (on top of the train being a self-contained world too)

We are aware of the insane difficulty caused by the enemies swarming and stunning you without possible reaction and that's one of the things we definitely have to fix first.

Again, thank you everyone for your great feedback!

brandann

09. May 2017 · 04:27 UTC

when I got hit I would just keep getting hit. kinda frustrating.
otherwise when I wasn't getting mowed down I had fun, the art was good and humor was even better

Azargaz

09. May 2017 · 19:13 UTC

The music and sound effects are really cool and fit the game, but as others have said the stun is annoying. I would suggest adding invincibility after getting hit and maybe bigger punch hitbox.

KevTukk

10. May 2017 · 18:54 UTC

I think there is a lot of potential for a fun beat-em-up-like game. I have two big problems with the game in its current state.

1.: The jumping. It feels a bit too floaty and should be more "snappy", giving the player character a bit more weight (or something like that).

2.: Right now it is too easy for the enemies to get me in a stunlock and it is very difficult to get out of it. The knockback is the main problem.

But I still had fun while playing it, the graphics are nice and the soundeffects were funny. I would love to see a post Ludum Dare version of this. :smile:

neontropics

16. May 2017 · 09:26 UTC

Fun game, very hard though. It's a very solid start to some nice 2D action, I like the design and movement of the enemies! The jump is maybe a bit too floaty and the graphics could do with a much more cohesive design. I see 3 different styles here - the flat design of the grass and mountains, the gradient/blurry texture design of the train and sky, and the low res sprites of the player and enemies - would be nicer to just commit to one of them I think! You wrote in the info a lot of them are placeholder though so I'm sure you could make some cooler stuff with more time.

ccglp

16. May 2017 · 11:22 UTC

The stun effect from castlevania... nooooooooooooooooooooooooo! :D

Fun game and good effort.

Nergle

17. May 2017 · 19:30 UTC

Cool setting and graphics.

Odefus

17. May 2017 · 22:46 UTC

Well done with the scope of the game. Quite difficult though. It was easy to get stun locked and even knocked off the train without being able to do much about it once initial damage was taken.

Aaron Peddle

19. May 2017 · 04:17 UTC

As a lot of people are saying I think some adjustments to the stun effect would be beneficial

doomshmuck

19. May 2017 · 05:03 UTC

I loved the graphics on this. The gameplay wasn't doing it for me though. The punch hitbox and the enemy hitbox didn't seem to mesh well together, combined with the exceedingly big knockback and stun made this game way too difficult. It felt like that aspect needed to be tuned more to make it more fair to the player.

theslate

19. May 2017 · 06:07 UTC

The two frame run animation works great! Punching is really hard though. The little dudes running along side the train is great.

TacomaBert

19. May 2017 · 06:18 UTC

Can't say more than has already been said, but my first run through was horrible and I hated it! LOL. I decided to give it another go, and when I timed my punches just right, I saw the potential in the game. There is something satisfying about punching a monkey in the face as its jumping across the screen at me! I bumped up the humor a star because of this.

Good start. If you decide to do the interior of the train, check out the game Outlaws Level 3 (I think) for inspiration.

Look forward to an updated version...