Vikrifice by Lucidus
Game link: https://lucidus.itch.io/vikrifice
Why the viking is in tropics?!
These are the early adventures of the vikings. They were sacrificing the most dangerous beasts like pigs, goats and others to their gods. And these very gods were choosing the next place to sacrifice. This time, our brave viking with helmet on his eyes needed to go far far away to make the sacrifice. The animals which he needed were hidden by the enemies in caves! And from these caves only one thing could get them out: THE MEOW OF A KITTEN!
From our team
We did it! It is our first LD Jam! In 72 hours we created 5 levels where you can completly immerse in real viking world. The whole truth about they real hunting is shown in this very game! After the game you will know how vikings were using kittens to hunt the most dangerous beasts! You can be sure that you will need to sacrifice a lot to pass these levels!
You'll find there the most endangered species like pigs, goats, sheeps and MORE!
And did you know that in the end there are TWO endings?! Which one you choose?!
(hint: choose the right one)
(hint 2: there is no right one! hahaha!)
P.S. The game uses saves so you can come back and play further!
Btw we made a poll to find out what happened to you on 5. level if you managed to play that long! It would be awesome for us to know the answer of this question. The poll is here: link
Everything inside this game is created within 72 hours, including idea, mechanics, art, music, sound effects, levels and code!
We hope you'll love it as much as we do. ;)
Controls
We think the controls are intuitive but we'll write it here:
Move: A/D or Arrow Keys!
Jump: Space!
Double jump: Press space and than second time when you need it!
Pick up / put down pigs and other very endangered species: E!
Sacrifice: Q! (Only near the altar and don't sacrifice the kitten you bully!)
Have fun: Just play! :P
Hearts = your life (the level will be restarted if you lose all of them)
Skulls = collectables
Are you stuck? Are you lost? No worries! Here are maps for the levels: link
Some gameplay gifs
Meet our animals which volunteered to be sacrificed!
Meet our hunting friend! The ancient technique to lure the animals!
We present the Vikrifice Easter Egg! Level 5: The SKULL ISALND!
Walkthrough
Level 1 walkthrough:
https://youtu.be/qG1KEh2-dsM
Level 2 walkthrough:
https://youtu.be/HKDDIEQbMv0
Change log We needed to update the game in two places: - there was a typo in the game over information, it was scaled down in the big screen and had wrong color which was almost unreadable - in Level 2 we got rid of one spikes which we found behind flowers. That was causing sudden death of the Player because of the wrong collison there :/
| HTML5 (web) | https://lucidus.itch.io/vikrifice |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/vikrifice |
Ratings
| Overall | 177th | 3.836⭐ | 182🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 245th | 3.614⭐ | 182🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 704th | 2.93⭐ | 181🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 280th | 3.829⭐ | 183🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 160th | 4.196⭐ | 183🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 193th | 3.626⭐ | 180🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 233th | 3.442⭐ | 173🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 216th | 3.701⭐ | 179🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 101🗳️ | 137🗨️ |
Those hidden plateform that just pop above your head sometimes are fun x)
Cool graphics too !
It may need a bit of explanation for why am I sacrifing those animals but heh... I know what it is to it in 72H :)
(That's said... I think I'm gonna add more explanations in our game description ... :p )
I like the not being able to double jump whilst carrying an animal.Changes up the mechanics and rewards you for killing the enemies.
Invisible platforms are a bit too invisible. But I guess you need to make them secret!
And you're right that invisible platforms are too tricky, we have to change this. Thank you for your time! We really appreciate it!
Cats are able to conquer the heart of everyone, it is because of that! :P
Thank you for your playing! :)
Although i totally missed the cat at first and watched your walkthrough to progress.
Very well made game!
Another thing: Very clever putting game trailer + itch link in your profile description (i stole that 😅).
I would link to the LD game page directly too!
Oh, yes, and when I see a viking in a game, I give upvote! ;)
We will also try to submit the walkthrough of them on youtube so you will be to play them or watch them ;P
And we are happy u liked it! :P
We are happy you liked it anyway!
Thank you for feedback about the music! We are glad you like our game and art! :D
@keshav-sharma , @ratatosk777 , thanks!
We didn't know about this game, haha!
It would have been nice for an explanation on what was happening in-game, but wasn't too bad just figuring it out.
I noticed pixel tearing/gaps between your art tiles:
I had this issue too, and found an easy way to fix it is to have a 1 pixel border around your tiles (i.e. 64x64 = 66x66) in whatever program you have and just extend your tile by 1 pixel. When cutting the sprites in Unity just go to whatever your sprite size is meant to be and it will behave properly.
Sorry if you knew this already and it's another issue, I was so annoyed with it until I figured it out when I was messing about with sprite sheets.
The music was a bit too repetitive. I think most of the games could have been fine with this music, but the fact your game has (comparatively) so much content means the music had a bit more time to grow stale.
It feels like it could have benefited from being just a little bit faster (especially the moving platforms)
It felt a lil' weird having the game as polished as it was (you even had footstep sound effects!), but then for the big bloody sacrifices to be so quiet.
There was a visual bug of somekind where I could see the sky for a split second behind the bits where one ground tile ended and another one began? Just these lines of blue going through the ground.
Asides from that, the art was great, the platforming movement was well done (particularily happy that nothing bugged out when I put myself between the roof and a lift going up!). I am so happy there's a save game system.
The real crown though was the level design. So much decor, nothing about it felt rushed, and I had a habit of always winding up in the right place, so I feel like the level was directing me really well.
Well polished, thematic, fun!
@hannaesthetic - thanks for such a long review! You are exactly right about the big blood sacrifice being too quiet. On the other hand, groans of the poor animals being murdered in the exact moment wouldn't really fit into the game ;) We save all the feedback to use in our future games and in the post-LD edition of Vikrifice!
@furtive-pygmy @kirke I also noticed the lines between the tiles. The actual solution to this problem in unity is to use the 2D Pixel Perfect Camera package (still in preview). This way you don't need to modify your art at all + you will improve the crispness of the graphics in general. The glitch you are observing is because your tiles are not exactly aligned to the screen pixels (especially when the camera moves around) which will be fixed by the pixel perfect camera.
Making several levels also is quite impressive given the time you had. I commend on that.
Something I could find to criticize is your coherence : what do vikings, jungle tribes, cats and pigs, etc... have to do together ? Maybe you would gain from defining your universe more precisely.
Good work, congrats :)
Good job :thumbsup:
You set the mood really well with the viking theme. The pixel art was amazing and worked really well.
I reached the third level before I got frustrated with waiting for platforms and restarting from far away.
Here are some thoughts for next time:
* A slight parallax effect in the background could make the playable plane pop out nicely.
* UI elements (hearts & skulls) could be larger (I played with a gamepad, far away from the screen).
* There is no gamepad mapping for picking up/dropping creatures.
* I liked the (E) prompt on animal pickup. Consider making it even more obvious (e.g. colored, animated or larger).
* Spikes look like fences :). I'd make them more messy, e.g. set diagonally.
* Adding even more visual feedback for pickups (hearts, skull), e.g. animate them to the UI corner, particle effects,...
* The level and puzzle design was great, but maybe a bit dense. The lore is really nice, so you could add breathing room between challenges and add tiny bits of lore in the middle (just short text notes would do).
* Short transitions between levels would be nice (or a "Level complete" text). It felt like we were teleported randomly and was a bit disorienting.
Overall, this was super awesome and fun, well done!
Overall great work!
Music is repetitive because this is one of my first steps in music and I just start learning how to do it (and of course during game jam there was no time for long tutorials xD). I swear, for next game music will be better! :D
Yup, moving platforms should be faster - sorry for that, our designing fault :)
And of course during sacrifice should be some sound - does it sound weird if I say we completely forgot about it? xD But, honestly, as @tiar mentioned, some brutal sounds could be too creepy for this game... Especially in the end :P (But we will try to find most... ee... positive-death-scream-sound(?)! Haha, thanks!)
Thank you for your playing and comment so rich in good advice! <3
And the viking is on tropical island... Holidays, sport, blood - as usual :D
(...that said, I did notice one tiny bug where two tiki men caused each other to run stuck in place, but that was only once in the entire game, and it was hardly a problem to deal with.)
I played it on my x360 controller, only using E, Q for animals. So you can add that to the description.
I like the gameplay and level of detail.
No major bugs for me. One enemy in last level did not move (Movement animation played but position didn't change). Also you could tweak settings in animation transitions so that when you tap left/right animation stops when you release the button instead of going all the way to the end.
We wanted it to behave like that to make you know if you encounter such platforms, it'll be something additional, like skulls or hearts but you have only one chance to get them!
Thank you for your comment! Now I believe this sentence can be true! xDDD
Congrats on your game. Keep rocking and see you on the next ludum ;)
@morriss, @meskaline, @game-mon and @vincent-blot - thank you very, very much! I'm really thrilled y'all like graphics :D
@ryzy27 - We're sorry that you got lost. We swear - we were trying to make quite intuitive way for level, but this is our beginning with level design and we still have to learn a lot. We hope our next levels in next games will be more intuitive! Thank you for your opinion! Thank you also for your information about x360 controller! =(^.^)= We will be working for better animation :) And this one enemy, who is walking and is always in the same position - he was so tired because of sleepless night that he now just sleeps and raises his legs habitually. Yup, that is true xD
See you on the next ludum! :D
Bugs:
You can get hit by one of the enemies, then keep walking into them and not lose another life, maybe you should respawn after being hit?
I think the spikes look a lot more like fences than spikes, I was confused when I first died to a spike, maybe if they were all silver and shorter? just an idea.
Love the game though!
We're glad you liked our game :)
Considering the time frame - it is a LOT of game. Perhaps, one of the longest I've played in any jam.
This is not the most constructive comment. If something constructive comes to me, I'll let you know but take it as an appreciation of your collective talents.
The audio could use a little more polish and variety, and sometimes the idle animation of the viking didn't work (he used the walking animation instead, despite not moving in any direction). Great job on accomplishing this much in such a short time, however!
Good entry !
@hugonun @nekonyo @narudgi thanks!
@flashviper yes, the hearts are your lives. You don't need to replay the whole game, just the level. I'll try to update the description to be as clear as possible in that matter. And thank you for your nice words and support :)
Overall a really nice game, congratz ;).
I love vikings and hate cats!
Nice job.
The levels are quite long, though.
Really nice job for the jam short time, unbelievable good!
Congratulations!
You can watch how I did here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PAOgJlbt3Y
Thanks for sharing, it's a nice-looking game!
Side note: You can walk off the screen on level 2 behind the cave the sheep comes out of, not sure if the collision is slightly out of view or if continuing in that direction would break the game (via falling off the map, etc)
@lucecyl and @beardmage - We are so glad you like our game! This gives us a motivation! :)
@aim - Thank you for your time and comment! We split making levels into three people - and this was really great and fun part of developing game! <3
Could you give us more info about this bug, you mentioned? Because we tried to reproduce it and everything is as we planned. Do you maybe say about moment when "kitten hunting sheep with hearts" and camera doesn't follow player? Because if yes, when camera starts to follow player again there you can see a solid wall of ground :D (But if it is not this, we would be really grateful for screen or sth!) Btw, thank you very much!
One thing I noticed, maybe it's just me, I thought the screen was flickering with lines at times, not sure if it's the pixel art?
Art is very cool and animation is so nice. I wonder if you slept at all? :)
We know the issue with flickering. This is because we have pixel art graphics and move the camera in continuous space. Now we know we could use Pixel Perfect 2D to get rid of this flickering. :-) Thanks for caring!
If you'd like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/346056936?t=03h11s
Good luck on your ratings, see you next LD! :D
💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady
https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin
The gameplay is clean, and works pretty well. It's pretty fun until it gets hard, but other than that, it's pretty well done! My rating: 4.5 stars.
Innovation... It's Mario but with Vikings, tropical rainforests, and sacrificial animals instead of plumbers, mushroom kingdoms, and flags. Oh well. My rating: 3 stars.
The theme fit well, but the interpretation of the theme is, of course, generic. My rating: 4.5 stars.
The graphics looked really nice! They did have some technical issues though. The flicker is the most obvious one, but aside from that, the player's animations had some problems. If you were using Unity, this would be because exit time is enabled on all the transitions, but in any case, they had some difficulty transitioning when you jumped, started walking, or stopped walking. My rating: 4.5 stars.
The audio sounds nice and fits very well with the game! My rating: 5 stars.
I hate having to tell everyone this, but unless your game is specifically humorous, opt out! The cat interaction was the closest the game got to "funny," but this was a stretch. My rating: 2.5 stars. I'm not going to put that rating officially though, because I think you need to opt out.
The mood was quite nice. Everything meshed to create a rather convincing mood. Of course, none of this is even close to historically accurate (although Vikings did sacrifice animals), but whatever. My rating: 4.5 stars.
Overall, this is a very well done and polished entry! My rating: 4.5 stars.