Transfusion by WubbaDuck
Dracula has locked Nikolai and Gustav in the dungeon until they can learn how to better serve him. They must earn back their right to exist in Dracula's presence. Nikolai and Gustav have been working on a new skill that Dracula has yet to find out about. Transfusion allows these two to transfer their life force between them. Survive the five stages of the dungeon to re-enter Dracula's service.

Check out a time lapse of the creation
| HTML5 (web) | https://wubbaduck.itch.io/transfusion |
| HTML5 (web) | https://wubbaduck.github.io/Ludum_Dare_44/ |
| Source code | https://github.com/WubbaDuck/Ludum_Dare_44 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/transfusion-1 |
Ratings
| Given | 55🗳️ | 17🗨️ |
Thank you for the feedback on the pixel art as well! To be perfectly honest, this is the first time that I've ever done pixel art. I'm quite please with how it turned out. Hopefully its a skill that I can build on and get better at in the future.
One potential issue I ran into is with the physical simulation; maybe I was doing something wrong but it didn't happen the same way every time. This resulted in one of the levels (the one with the two rocks that fly towards each other) rolling into and over the door a couple of times. After dying a couple times though, I got into an instance where the stopped fine in the middle, so it wasn't that bad.
Also harpsichords rule!
Over time, music starts to get annoying.
I was seeing some strange physics things happen from time to time. My favorite was when I had a spear come in at mach 3! The one with the two rocks: the left rock is thrown a bit harder than the right rock with the intent that it would get in the way if the player was too slow in traversing that level. But maybe it should be toned down a bit if it was too oppressive.
Harpsichords are a must when dealing with Vampires! But I agree with @zimennik that the music starts to get annoying after a bit.
I have been seeing that same thing with family/friends play testing it locally as well. I found that balancing the transfusion mechanic with the level design was a bit tough. It would help if the default level size was a bit larger. If I decide to expand on the game I would love to add more mechanics like gates that require a blood payment to open, blood pickups, buttons, levers, larger levels stuff like that. So we're on the same page :thumbsup:
It's a bummer that you got stuck. But I can't be giving out spoilers here :wink: Just gotta make sure to beat the bottom first.
The game was still very fun. The punishing gameplay was actually quite cool, and I enjoyed it even without the transfusion mechanic. I was going to complain about the two screens being completely disjointed (for me it was like I was playing two separate levels), but now I see I was playing wrong. Could maybe make a hardcore mode; no transfusions?
Awesome stuff! :smile:
Once the stream is finished you can find the video here: https://www.twitch.tv/ursagames/videos
If you want to know when it was played you can find your game in the queue here: https://tinyurl.com/y5rdokvp
@ursagames Thanks for playing Transfusion on your stream! You didn't get to it until almost 5am my time. So I wasn't able to watch live. But you give some good points. The dropping bricks do have a bug where the collider stays active when they fall on top of each other. So it breaks consistency. I'm hearing multiple people comment on how they expected the boulders to not deal damage after they stop moving. So I will need to consider making that change. I like how you pushed one spear along the ground to try to help block the third spear! Another bug I'm seeing is that because of the slower update rate of the WebGL player the two colliders on the vampires will sometimes both trigger the spears and boulders. So every once in a while I see them come flying out at double the speed. Lesson learned: protect collider rules better! Thanks for giving it a playthrough! :thumbsup:
I like the graphic style.
I was a bit frustrated by traps hurting me after they'd stopped moving, particularly the boulders that tend to end up in front of the exit. That said, it did force me to rethink the order in which I approached the challenges, which ended up feeling rewarding.