Echo by ManBeardGames
## Description
You wake up and find yourself trapped in a room inside a ruined structure. The ceiling is closing, and you have no way to climb out. You're a slime after all, how can you climb. Once the ceiling has closed in, it will fall, squishing you like it has done to so may before. You're only hope is to find some way to stop the ceiling from completely closing in on you. Are you only going to be prolonging your eventual death?
The theme for Ludum Dare 42 was to "Running out of space". In this game, the ceiling is sealing itself off. You have to scramble to find active nodes to delay the inevitable. Eventually, the ceiling will close off and fall on you. While managing this, you also have to fight off a horde of dead slimes who have died before you. They close in fast and overwhelm quickly if not dealt with.
## How to play
THERE IS A TUTORIAL IN GAME, IT IS RECOMMENDED COMPLETING IT
Controls
Keyboard and Mouse. No Gamepad.
Esc will pause the game
Movement
You can move using the Up, Down, Left, or Right arrow keys, or WSAD on your keyboard.
Holding Shift will allow you to move faster
Attack
Pressing Left Click on mouse will allow you to swing your sword to attack. You attack in the direction you are facing.
How to win
As the ceiling closes in, nodes will become active. Standing on an active node will push the walls back, but only if you have energy to do so. Energy is gained by killing enemies.
Can you survive? Is it possible? Will you eventually die? Find out.
## Tools Used
Sound Effects
"Squish" sound effect was recorded with Audacity, and the vocal provided by my friend ehrgeiziges
Graphics
Graphics were done using Aseprite https://www.aseprite.org
Level Maps Level maps were created using OGMO Editor http://www.ogmoeditor.com/
Frameworks
The primary framework used is the MonoGame framework. http://www.monogame.net/
Along with that, I have a custom framework called Psiren which is a combination of my own code and Monocle
Psiren: https://gitlab.com/manbeardgames/Psiren
Monocle: https://bitbucket.org/MattThorson/monocle-engine
And lastly, I used MonoGame Extended for Bitmap importing. https://craftworkgames.github.io/MonoGame.Extended/
## Notes
I'm submitting to jam, but this was a solo endeavor. The only assets I was unable to create my own was the music, as usual. There is music in the game, I just didn't make it. Credits to music are below. As such, I am removing the Audio category for voting.
## Music Credits
Title Music
"Man Down" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Game Music
"Grim Idol" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
# Change Log
This fix was made at 5:50 PM EDT: 10 minutes before time closed for page submission. There was a small audio bug in the game where the background music would not loop, it would play once and stop. It was a simple "IsLooping = true" adjustment. No other changes were made to the game except this. As such, I have provided two downloads for the game. The one I uploaded at ~4am Monday morning that has the audio non-looping, and the one I'm uploading now at 5:50 PM Monday, 10 minutes before submissions close.
Even though I have opted out of the audio category for Ludum, I wanted to be completely transparent about this. Again, there is no difference between the original build and the audio fix build except the one line of code telling the audio to repeat. You can view the source code at to verify
| Windows | https://manbeardgames.itch.io/echo |
| Source code | https://gitlab.com/manbeardgames/Echo |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/echo |
Ratings
| Overall | 169th | 3.823⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 326th | 3.5⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 205th | 3.629⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 55th | 4.226⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 348th | 3.806⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 208th | 3.414⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 205th | 3.621⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 27🗳️ | 32🗨️ |
-Make the controls better (attacking could slow down, not stop ?) (the sword attack up and down directions should be as cool as the sides one)
-Go for a less eccentric music :)
-Make a nicer sound design in general / stronger feedbacks
-Running could be way faster, but cost energy.
Good job finishing the game !
* @smithy Watching others play it on streams, I am seeing that the tutorial was a bit long. It's one area where I need to get better at. I had originally planed to have the "tutorial" be something that was there from the start of the game, but as development went, I decided to break it out into it's own thing. Thanks for the feedback
* @randdir I wanted to add controller support, but ran out of time to properly test it.
* @wheffle Not enough actual playing the game and realizing that only one active node a time is what did that. I spent way to much on polishing other things that I neglected polishing that aspect. It was one of those things that kind hit me after submission, I really should have done maybe 3 active nodes at a time.
* @g4mr Ahhh WASD in the menus, how could I have left that out. Thanks for letting me know.
* @shredmer The black and white can be a bit of a strain for some people. One thing I would like to do is add alternate palettes, keeping it in the 2 colors only motif, but with different variations that may be better for the player to use.
* @danielpancake The rectangle around the credits was actual a product of (1) copy/pasting code from one scene to the next and (2) doing the credits last and needing sleep. I agree, it would have been much better without the border around it. Thanks for the feedback
* @bustosman I mentioned it to wheffle above, but I agree about having more than one node. Just my lack of proper play testing on that one. Thanks for the feedback on it.
* @thomas-olsson Slowing down while attacking instead of stopping is a great idea. Could definitely change it to something more akin to that. The sword up and down animations were difficult for me. Doing pixel animations are a huge weak point of mine. I made the left/right animations first and struggled to find a way to make that animation vertical, so I just did some placeholder rectangles. Originally, running was actually faster and the energy bar was a stamina bar, and nodes were just free to use. I changed it to energy for the nodes kind of last minute, and slowed down the speed of running a bit to compensate for the lack of stamina. I've heard others ask about the run speed as well though, so it's good feedback that maybe I shouldn't have slowed it that much. Thank you
Thank you all for playing and the feedback so far. This is definitely something I'll be doing more with outside of the jam. It was a lot of fun to create.
I like the visual, the music make go in the feel been in a trap. The wall closing and desperate to find the node while there is many slimes follow me, help a lot to feel more trap. Only think I can say is: When the enemy die, is saying "squish"?
It's too bad that we cant attack while walking and i think that it's a little bit slow
The tutorial was at point, nothing to say, clear with good humor
Overall it's a cool game :D
It's weird that you have to use the arrow keys for menus, WASD to move, Click to progress in the tutorial, and click to use the sword. I think streamlining the controls a bit more would be really helpful. The collision boxes are bit too unforgiving, meaning you often are hit during times that it looks like you shouldn't. Additionally, there's a pretty big bug causing the game to essentially teleport the player to another spot at times. I'm not sure if it's just trying to make some type of correction by snapping you to a point, but it often sends you over walls and into enemies, which is just frustrating. The tutorial is admittedly too long, with way too much text as well. It would be nice if there was some animation when your energy is draining in order to make it clear that you can't attack.
* @darkrabbitgames Honestly, i'm not even sure what my thought process was for making you stop to attack. It's definitely an intentional line of code, but lack of play testing it over the weekend didn't make me realize how bad it felt. Very good point, and will be changed in the post-jam version.
* @zlou-kote Thanks, i'm really glad you enjoyed it. I've heard the minut comparisons some, but I've not actually played that one yet. 1-bit art style games fascinate me.
* @rafael-endo I'm glad you enjoyed it. The squish was is the voice of friend of mine. Kind of a late addition to it, but I felt it lightened the mood just a little lol.
* @thomas-olsson I'll try that out. In my mind that looks weird, but I lack a huge artistic skill, so maybe it won't be as bad as I'm imagining. Though for the post-jam version, attacking is going to be very very different, so I may not even need the animations at all.
* @iballs Thank you, i'm glad you enjoyed it.
* @vlashikito The music stops because I was dumb and forgot the one line of code for 'isMusicRepeating = true". Just completely spaced on adding that in. I mentioned it above to @darkrabbitgames, but the attacking while walking thing should definitely be taken out, just didn't play test enough to realize how bad it was. I'm glad you liked the tutorial, it almost wasn't added in. I was trying for compo, but ran out of time for it, so since i had the extra time for the Jam, I spent time on the tutorial.
* @kyle-kaehler Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it. It's nice hearing that the tutorial was good, for some reason I really enjoy doing tutorials like that (see my LD40 entry, did a similar styled one there).
* @joe-sycalik The menus should have been controllable using arrow keys, that was an oversight on my part. Currently, I don't have mouse support baked into the engine for the UI, but it's on the list of things to add. I can see how it gets confusing with left click supporting continuing text. The teleporting is from code that should have been removed. Originally the ceiling was just walls, and you couldn't walk under them. They would push you back if you were in the way when they closed in. Didn't realize they were still doing that, so it's technically a bug. Thanks for letting me know.
Nice game
Good luck, Don't forget to take a look at ours if you don't mind and see what it's like when we just focused on graphics in this game jam!
Game Link: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/spacelab-42a