Sinking by Bungalow
Congratulations, little one. You have been chosen by Enu to be our official messenger. Don't let us down or Earth will pay for it.
How is this running out of space? It's because you are literally running out of Space.
TIP: Click Tutorial if it is your first time playing.
UPDATE: I updated the game to make the controls smoother and bug free! (I think)
| HTML5 (web) | https://bungalonely.itch.io/sinking-update-12 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/sinking |
Ratings
| Overall | 618th | 3.368⭐ | 74🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 734th | 3.092⭐ | 73🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1078th | 2.606⭐ | 73🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 632th | 3.45⭐ | 72🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 424th | 3.685⭐ | 75🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 323th | 3.428⭐ | 71🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 132🗳️ | 77🗨️ |
Controls felt a bit weird.
But all in all awesome game :D
In the overall, this is a pretty solid entry and very theme fitting.
Thanks for your work and have a nice day!
The controls are too complicated, there is too much variations of metrics in the jumps, for instance the second jump is so much different than the first one, which makes the game harder than it needs to be. Also is wall jump a bug or intended ?
The game has a clear visual indentity, so well done !
Art is great, loving the style.
Gameplay is alright.
Overall, if it had more time, it could've been better, I had no idea what I was doing at first glance and couldn't make it out of the start area even after a good ammount of attempts :<
Good job! :)
As other have mentioned, controls seem erratic. Major problem apparent when trying to jump off the very edge of a platform: game appears to interpret this as a wall jump rather than a regular jump (unsure if intended?). Easy enough to factor in once known but unintuitive at first.
Would also recommend rebinding the dash from C to something like W.
Good challenge once I'd got used to it. Managed to make it to the fourth(?) checkpoint but just couldn't make that ascent before the darkness caught up to me!
new menu!). Wall Jump actually works, Double Jump does the same jump as a normal jump, the controls should be more responsive and more keys perform Dash!
The hardest game for me so far, but the gameplay and graphics feels good.
There are some problems with controls - for the 1/4 of cases the leap just doesn't work, even if I landed on ground or just performed a jump.
Controls are a bit stiff so it makes it even harder. As small UX improvement, you could map both WASD keys and arrows on keyboard (cause WASD is not suitable for non qwerty keyboard). A small music with accelerating rhythm could help to make the game more stressful and immersive. You could use a less generic font to make it more integrated in the game. Cool entry & great job, congratz!
"Thank you, Dark Souls."
But i like it!, even tough it not the type of game i would normaly play, the screenshots lured me in hehe. Nice work on the game!
Comme check our entry ;)
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/shblow
Really, you think my game looks better than yours?! I loved the art style you went with!
Try our game too, maybe you'll like it)
The mechanics could have been a bit better fetting, like the double jump is bit ill-fitting in my opinion.
Also don't really know whether I was bad or not, but sometimes I felt like the controls were a bit off.
But overall I really like this game, and as soon as I thought: "this game should have a checkpoint system", I reached the first one :smile:
Keep it up !
It's dam hard and I coult not get away fast enough!
The character's controls are very neat, the graphics and mood are just amazing, it was lacking a bit of music to make it close to perfection :)
Your tutorial is fantastic, however the level are maybe to difficult too soon. I thinks it lack of safe places, we have to handle killing walls / floors AND the black fog at the same time.
I'm also not very good :)
Looking for more of this kind of game, congratulation !
The character movement feels a bit slow for me though. But maybe that's just me, wonderful game anyways mate! :)
For WebGL, please support QWERTY and AZERTY keyboard layout, especially in the case of a "platformer" game ; it's really simple with four direction motions...
Keys relative motion :
* Q to move left
* A to move left
* D to move right
* W to move up
* Z to move up
* S to move down
* SPACE to jump
Eventually, support also arrow keys.
Other avalaible nearest keys :
* E to special action 1
* C to special action 2
* X to special action 3
Most other keys around "this block of nine keys" can be used with both of keyboard layouts.
Thanks for the whole player community.
I just think it is a little bit hard to really know where the trigger of the dangerous black zone starts, with all the floating black stuff around :/
But still, great game !
nice entry !
Pros :
- Various interactions aside from jumping, well-explained by an in-game tutorial
- Nice graphics and visual effects
- Great take on the theme
Cons :
- Difficulty curve a little to steep
All in all, good job !
Regarding your upgrade plans, I will try to play your game as soon as I can, to give you a detailed insight on possible improvements ;)
**My platforming background**
I am a novice adept of die-and-retry platformers ; barely good enough to finish all the normal levels (B-Sides / Dark workd excluded) in Celeste and Super Meat Boy.
**Controls**
They are much tighter than when I first tried the game. To me, the controls scheme was intuitive enough (especially dash on Left Shift). My main concern is that both the wall jump and the dash should be taught at a different time, inside the game itself, and in parts of the game specifically designed to master them. Trying to master them both in the first minutes of your merciless levels is too discouraging.
**Level Design**
You are good at making the player suffer, and that's not a bad thing. But the difficulty curve needs to be a little less steep, at least in the beginning. Having the player dodge obstacles in free fall then dash is nice and a lot of fun to try again and again, but not as a first difficulty spike.
The checkpoints were adequately placed. If I am right, they also reset the "black curtain", which then starts from that defined point when you respawn. That's a nice way to avoid several issues, such as a player getting too much of a lead on the curtain (it's not gonna happen), or a player getting the checkpoint when almost crushed by the curtain (more likely) and unable to continue because the curtain respawns at the same time as him.
Another hard difficulty spike was the part in the beginning where you have to go up and climb several platforms while the curtain goes down. That's a little disheatening, since one mistake ruins your chances of dodging the curtain once above, even if the view is cleared when you make the mistake. Late punishment tends to hit harder.
On the other hand, and as I previously said, you master the big design rules of a great die-and-retry, so keep it up !
**Visuals**
The first thing I would do is find a way to dissociate the black/grey particles that kill you and those that do not. Having a particle-based visual design is great, but it should not alter the readability of your game. Aside from that, I would keep the black and white visual design, while colouring important elements to make them strike the eye more (the player/a boss/a switch/a goal/???), but that's what you already do. In short, keep the dark aesthetic, but throw in small but memorable touches of color (one non-dark color by area ?).
I'm finishing this feedback in a hurry, so I might be forgetting things. Do not hesistate to contact me if you have more questions !
I am also happy with the controls, but there were some occasions that a jump registered as a double jump, which I have fixed. I agree about trying to master different abilities separately would help because I had a couple of playtesters try it out and want to give up at the start of the level. As I said, I have made multiple levels, which gives me access to a better difficulty curve. With the particles, I was thinking that the ability particles would blend in with the environment, while the death one particle would be a bright white (Like the player, but different shape so that the player doesn't think they are still alive).
Also, I have made multiple possible combat systems. One melee combat system that, when in range, you teleport to the nearest enemy and kill them. I think that the melee system could also be a sort of a help in platforming, like like a grappling hook for when you are in range of something that can be grappled. I have also made a ranged combat system, which controls like a top-down shooter, and while that would be more fun to play, it requires use of mouse and people on a trackpad would suffer greatly. I wanted to know if you think that a combat system would be good, and if so, which system(or maybe both!).