School is Canceled by Nick Rasmussen
When a viral outbreak shuts down the school, 5 abandoned whiteboard drawings care for their creator as best as they can.
Play it here: https://nick-rasmussen.itch.io/school-is-canceled
Update: fixed a bug that let the player jump infinitely off of the falling letters. Thanks for the feedback everyone!



| Youtube | https://nick-rasmussen.itch.io/school-is-canceled |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/school-is-canceled |
Ratings
| Overall | 295th | 3.929⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 264th | 3.862⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1138th | 3.327⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 2134th | 3.093⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 92th | 4.536⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 120th | 4.056⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 99th | 4.224⭐ | 31🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 30🗳️ | 27🗨️ |
I think a few tweaks to the platforming would help the feeling a lot:
* Preserve the player's horizontal motion in the air for just a little bit. Coming to a complete stop when releasing the button is hard to get used to.
* Allow some control over the player's jump height. I've implemented this in the past by reducing the player's gravity until they release the spacebar.
* Add the slightest pause or some kind of little animation between death and respawn, so you don't immediately run to your death because you're still holding down a move key.
What I liked:
- the visual style
- the single big world, with different levels embedded into the same space (no loading, no splits, seamless world)
- the musing was fine, but got repetitive after some time.
What I'd improve:
- the controls are not very precise, sometimes the character seemed to be sliding, and I had trouble hitting some of the platforms.
- collision detection has something to be desired. It took me 10+ minutes to complete level 3, because I had a really hard time jumping on the letters and staying on them. Very often, it looked like the character will fall on a wall, but instead died in the water.
Checking and tuning collision boxes could help the game a lot. Same for polishing the controls. But that's usually the most difficult thing about platformers. Otherwise, good job!
- Love the style and especially in the credits it has that really cool notebook/paper cartoon feel to it.
- Good music selection for the game
BUT:
- I feel the control's couldve been a tad bit improved on, for example it was difficult jumping on the letters sometimes. It would fall.
But very nice!
It's true that the mechanic is hard sometimes and a little bit difficult to get to the end !
The platforming needs some tuning to tighten up the game feel.