Ghostscaling

Very cute. Might I ask how the ghost died though? D-:

A small ghost can be killed by big and small fireball and a big ghost can be killed by big fireball... (I know, ghost are invincible but... yeah...)

I don't know if the collision system is working or not, I didn't find a way to past the first level. I used the big block but I couldn't levitate with it and it was impossible to activate the switches.

I didn't like the camera as it's field of view was to small unless you scale a lot. if you're small then you can't see if the enemies are attacking you.

Hope I was just dumb and didn't realize the puzzle and not the game's problem. but I liked the concept and would like see the ghost possesing more stuff for other abilities.

Neat interpretation of the theme, but the sound is really grating, the movement feels awful, and the collision is too buggy and inconsistent for me to feel confident I can actually beat it on one of these tries. Keep working at it, and this could be great down the line!

Good job, it feels very different and unique, I don't think I ever played anything like it! I got a bit frustrated though (probably because it's very different to the usual stuff). Maybe the first level should be simpler to get the player used to it?
Oh, and the rules text seem to be cut off or something, it ends with "If you want to left"

@maldo19 Humm... Did you resize your ghost? It's the whole point of the game.

@nuria-fl I must admit that the level design was rushed...

@chris-delta "the movement feels awful, and the collision is too buggy and inconsistent for me to feel confident I can actually beat it on one of these tries"
Can you explain why and how it feel?

I like the design of the ghost, but I wish he was animated a little bit more. It feels like maybe this needed a little more time. I tried a little, but I couldn't figure out what to do in the first level.

Sorry if I'm being too harsh, but while it was a great idea, it was _very_ poorly executed. The audio in general is kind of annoying, the physics were broken, and there were a bunch of other glitches.

The pixel art looked good, except that it was put together poorly. Try to keep everything the same size. Next time, try to make sure you're idea for a game is something you can complete properly within the given time. Try to add a little extra time for polish too!

It was a good effort though! :slight_smile:

@studiocraftapps-developpement I booted it again, the thing is that the switches didn't gave the feedback that they were pressed so I didn't noticed that the passages were opened(As I didn't think that a ghost is able to touch switches). But the most important thing is that I couldn't move the blockie vertically (their gravity doesn't allow them to go up) so I couldn't use them at all to "kill" the flames (Maybe you tied the gravity to the framerate?). And please don't think that I don't get your game (In my previous comment I said: "I didn’t like the camera as it’s field of view was to small unless you scale a lot", so clearly I did scale the ghost), I really gave it time but it's frustrating to not have some basic feedback when you touch switches just make them change sprites with one with less length. Sorry if you think I'm too harsh and for the wall of text.

Ok, so this is what I need to improve for my second Ludum Dare: Polishing the game (Animation Frame to the player maybe?), Make a less annoying audio, Every action need some feedback, The levels should be easier and should be guided with arrow and explanation (In the first level, there's one blocky for each fire ennemy), better camera because it suck (larger fov), Make a less awful movement (Don't put icy mouvment or something that take a while to accelerate).

Did I miss something?

I can see you already got some good feedback, i have nothing to add. Rather i would take away: an arrow is not really needed in my eyes. It would be better if the player is forced to learn that he can push a button to remove blocks. This was the biggest hurdle in the beginning.

I got stuck after getting the first blocky - i couldn't ascend further. The level feels very big in the beginning - ist there a supposed route the player should take, or "open world"?

A really nice entry in any case! The ghost was especially neat, i think some more animations on him would be very satisfying.

@rongo-matane By arrow, i didn't mean physical arrow but ways of attracting the player where they should be.

I like the little pixel ghost and fell in love with his animations. Game target is a bit confusing, but you have to be patient and will get success. It's a very good work in Compo mode, Congratulation.

I won't talk about the first version even though I've played it since people have already given you enough feedback.
My feedback on the improved version: the collisions are still buggy. I think you should look for a 2D platformer tutorial so you can program your collisions and movement in a clean way, that'd be an amazing improvement!
The level design is much better compared to the first version but your goal is still not clear. I didn't understand why there were thought bubbles coming out of the walls, for example.
The zooming in/out should be smoothed too.
Keep up the good work!

Really good job. The concept is great and I really like the character. I would have preferred to start as a big ghost to have a better visibility on the level at the first glance but this is not really an issue. There was still some collision issues unfortunately but with your concept collision has to be tricky to handle!. Great job!

I read your post on the front page where you asked for input. I'm going to give you some feedback on the post-compo version. I'm not going to rate that version obviously. This is only to give you some ideas on where to improve

First of all, I think you had a very solid idea with your game, using the two modes as ghost and rock works fairly well as a puzzle mechanic and zooming the environment was a really neat idea.

The graphics are nice, however personally I prefer true pixel sizes over mixed-pixel sizes. What I mean by that is that you should choose a game resolution (e.g.640x480) and everything on screen must fit into that resolution. You can still scale up objects by integer factors (2x, 3x), but they cannot be smaller than your game resolution allows. As an example, look at the visual effects when the stone blows out air. The pixel size of that effect is really low, and much lower than your character's pixel size, which gives it an inconsistent design.

I really liked the ghost animation. You can give it some more personality by creating a 3-frame idle animation that keeps playing whenever the ghost doesn't move.

Your camera motion is quite nice. I noticed that you precede the motions of the ghost, which is cool. However you should fix the camera wiggle you get when hitting a wall and when you change direction. Try a more inert camera that can only move a maximum distance each frame. Also when you scale, the step size is too steep. Lerp the scaling between your current and the new size, that way it will feel much smoother. The sound you play while scaling was too long, it can't be longer than the scaling actually takes and should probably be much shorter than that. Definitely so short that it doesn't sound choppy when you scale multiple times quickly.

Your terrain collision detection needs some work. When in stone form, I was able to move through certain blocks and got stuck in others.

Background music is missing, so maybe play around with some spherical music, or maybe go with some ambient sounds. [Agaric Abyss](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/agaric-abyss) created some nice wind sounds in bfxr for example. That could be an alternative if you don't feel confident composing. The music you do have isn't too bad but a bit too loud which can seem jarring.

When introducing your game mechanics, never ever confront the player with a wall of text. You could have achieved the same thing with under 30 words if you just clicked together an image containing your assets, some arrows and a few pieces of text. Players are not stupid and have likely played games before. The brain can pick up these image overviews very quickly, but reading a long instruction manual is really boring. I only skimmed the text and totally missed that the mouse wheel plays an important part in the game.

The thought bubbles were for the most part superfluous. Again, people are not stupid. When they see a red wall with something interesting behind it, they assume they have to get past the wall. When there's a red switch later on, they'll figure out how it works. Some of the fire monster had a thought bubble which appeared to indicate that you have to kill them and not the others. This is totally confusing. Get rid of the thought bubble and give the invincible monsters different graphics, best design a completely different monster/turret for that so the player can distinguish them from the soul-giving foes.

Personally I would have preferred to have lives in the game. That way you can make the experience more challenging without being too frustrating by getting insta-killed.

Finally I had trouble finishing the first level. I didn't figure out how to turn back into a ghost. I assume the stone form locks the scaling, so I didn't fit into narrow spaces afterwards and since I couldn't turn back into a ghost, I was stuck. The first level requires 3 souls, but I was only able to find 2 of them. Maybe this was due to the scaling, maybe they could have been more visible, maybe I was just frustrated.

So, I guess this is a lot to take in.

I would suggest you start with the most important stuff (collision, camera movement, improved intro screen). Maybe get some of the low-hanging fruits as well (music volume, thought bubbles). Once the game mechanics themselves feel more solid, I'd go on to the nice to have items (idle animation, background music)

If you have a new build with significant changes, you can drop me a line here and I can check back with you if you want.

I found why the first level was unplayable: There's a part missing in the wall of text. (Press down arrow to leave the blocky)

Even knowing how to leave the blocky, I couldn't complete the first level. The controls were too hard, I couldn't kill the fire enemies, and there were all these little spaces I kept getting stuck in.
The graphics were all right, not terribly consistent (and was the shine on the tiles intentional?), and the audio was a little harsh (especially for headphones).
All in all, good job on completing a compo entry!

Yes, the shine was intentional but it was supposed to be pixelated... A bug maybe?

Ghosts can die, who knew :-)

A very unique combination of game mechanics, I like it. :-)

The learning curve is for my taste too steep, more dead easy levels at the start would really help.

I really like the idea, and the graphics were really great! I noticed you even added a pixellated dust cloud for the fireballs! I do have some criticisms though:

The physics were a bit slippery. What I mean by this is the block physics, specifically: when I tried to jump onto a ledge and held right for too long, the block ended up bouncing onto the ledge and going across it at super speed to the point that I hit a spike before even having time to react.
I also think the spikes were a bit too hard to see. It would probably be a bit better if they had a stronger color that stood out more from the background.

I didn't manage to make it through the first level. I figured I had to use the small block on the left to jump onto the right ledge, but I only managed to get up there once out of every ten tries, most of which ended in me rocketing off straight into a spike. I tried using the large block as a stepping stone, but when I exited the block I ended up pushing it around to much and couldn't get it into the right place.

Overall I think this game has a lot of merit - the only real trouble is some physics stuff that I think could be ironed out if you'd had more time to repeatedly test and adjust it.