Will of the Wisp by johnfn
Link to LD game (vote on this one!): http://138.197.213.214
Link to our post-LD game: http://138.197.213.214:3000/
100% of our code, art and music was created from scratch by us in the 72 hours. Yes, that includes the title screen music. :-)

You are a dryad hero who has been put to sleep for 500 years as part of a complicated to plot to depose Withers, the evil industrializing mastermind behind the destruction of the the forest that you call home. With the help of your magical dryad energy and your spirit pal, Bud, it's time to go on a metroidvania-platformer adventure to keep the land alive!
Will of the Wisp is unaffiliated with Ori and the Blind Forest.
[CREDITS]:
johnfn - organization, code
fawnblue - art, code
Miyolophone - music (theme song vocals by sai: https://twitter.com/sai_pyon)
garlagan - art, code
LunacyEcho - dialogue, level design, code
[CONTROLS]:
arrow keys to move, z to jump, x to interact
[CHANGELOG]:
4/26: Fixed some performance issues which made the game crash in some browsers
4/21: Fixed a bug which made it unintentionally difficult to reach the end of the game
[KNOWN BUGS]:
-Some Chrome users are unable to see the game window - if this is the case, try running in Edge or Firefox! We're working on a fix.
-Some players experiencing lag, especially near the end of the game
| Youtube | github.com/johnfn/ld46 |
| Youtube | http://138.197.213.214 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/will-of-the-wisp |
Ratings
| Overall | 334th | 3.904⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 785th | 3.537⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1457th | 3.167⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1688th | 3.44⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 315th | 4.268⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 9th | 4.5⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 547th | 3.458⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 265th | 3.981⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 49🗳️ | 18🗨️ |
Thanks for the comments :)

In edge it works slightly better, but it seems many UI elements are broken:


I would really love to play this game, so please let me know if there's a better browser I can use.
Got a run done in 2:53 from pressing enter at the start to the final dialogue (the PS bit). If anyone wants to go for sub 2:50, I think it's definitely possible.
Is that intentional or is that just a bug on the browser side?
Did I mention that despite all this, it looks and sounds great?
I especially enjoyed the way things bloom around your character. Really nice touch.
I thought the story was a little wordy for my taste, and the collisions seemed a bit crude in general.
I enjoyed the level design, and thought climbing the tree at the end was really cool. Glad I made it to the end.
Nicely done!
I got stuck here, have no idea what am I missing, even side quest didn't push me any further :)
EDIT: I am not lost, you achieved to make the areas sort of memorable. I just can't find where to go next.
It feels amazing, the music and the graphics. It is a shame though that you didn't make it work well enough even on normal computer.
I also encountered some minor bugs - when you step on ungrowed mushroom and press interact, the shroom will grow up, but the character starts twitching weirdly. Also sometimes when you jump close to mushroom, u got the additional push, but don't get it once again when you fall back on the shroom. Also annoying part is when shroom (or anything other) is close to fountain, so the fountain text window pops up when you try to grow a shroom. Maybe you can have dedicated grow button when you're not bound to X and Y only button controller nowadays (also pain of a binding on qwertz keyboards) :)
Still I played much longer than I intended to, it was very soothing, the music is really great. After the jam, I probably give it another go so I can finish it. Now I need to play some other games so I can't spend more time looking for where to go or what to do next. Great job! Thanks for this game, really enjoyed it! :)
without spoiling exactly how to get past that part, i wanna point out that the height you get from bouncing on the shroom depends on how high you jump onto it from. basically, if you fall farther, you jump higher! hope that helps :)

Second of all: Wow! Congratulations. This was awesome. I was already blown away when entering the main menu and the great music greeted me. With vocals! You did all of this in the time of the jam? It didn't even end there. There were at least 3 other musical pieces in the game. What an effort. By far the best soundtrack I've heard so far in any game I've played this jam. Now I can wholeheartedly give a 5/5 for music :) The art was also very sophisticated. Great amount of detail and animation frames. The visual quality was top notch all way through. The platforming was good, but had some issues regarding ledges and the mushrooms. When standing on top of them and growing them, the player got stuck a little. Also, Screen transitions were a bit off, when the player was jumping while the transition happened and a wall was on the other side. But that's just minor complaints (we had our share of problems with the platforming engine as well). It was also good to see, that we weren't the only team to tackle some kind of non violent metroidvania style 2d platformer. The writing was funny and I liked the forth-wall-breaking and self referential stuff. It's always good to have a lighthearted mood when playing jam games. Keeps the player invested more easily :) The ui and controls were pretty much self explanatory and everything worked as I expected. The level design was simple but effective. You even managed to include some platforming puzzles, which is awesome. We didn't have time to add those. The end was a nice twist and paired with the music change, it was really fun to rush for the end.
All in all, a very competently made game. Really good game design and absolutely amazing music and art. The love and care put into this really shows.

I let it go for a very long time to see if it would eventually load. But it wouldn't.
As for what I got to play, the only part that bugged me was the fact that I couldn't bounce from mushroom to mushroom when going back up sections after I fell. Would have been very satisfying to bounce from shroom to shroom rather than have to land beside it and jump again.
Outside of that, the game was beautiful, and very satisfying to play. The music is the best I've heard this jam. I loved the way the plants would spring up around you as you walked.
Great work, love it.

I laughed at "toss a coin to your Withers" and enjoyed the villain's monologue overall. Although, in my opinion, it didn't really fit the tone of the rest of the game. However, I do love some good forth wall breaking - so I can forgive a little tone incongruencies.
The only thing that I didn't really like was the mushrooms. Would be nicer if you could bounce up on them every second bounce or so, not only on the first bounce.
Dialogue would often catch me mid-jump (what can I say, I lie jumping around) and I was having conversations while hanging in the air - looked quite funny. The game also completely hanged on me once, near the end. It just stopped being responsive. It was here:

It's one of the best games I've played in this jam. Definitely the best when it comes to audio and music. I'm really impressed that you managed to create so many legendary soundtracks in just 72 hours. I love the instrumentals. Is there any way I can listen to the whole soundtrack of the game?
Art is great, I loved the details like different flower animations as you walk by. The story-telling was great, very immersive plot, very funny dialogues at times and fourth-wall-breaking and reference phrases were on point. Whoever did the writing - huge respect and well done. All in all, amazing audio, great art and beautiful story create a perfect mood.
When it comes to the gameplay and programming, it did the job as the game was playable and felt complete. There is still some polishing to be done though. It was probably mentioned already, but I'll just recap: 1) for a milisec I could see the previous dialogue message when switching to the next one; 2) the last frame of the vines animation was stuck after it was over; 3) when activating the shroom while standing on top of it, the character animation glitches; 4) The first level soundtrack did loop smoothly as far as I remember. Overall, it didn't bug me much and the game was still really enjoyable. But it might be something to address if you decide to move on with the further development.
Overall, you've done an amazing job putting it all together. Top mark.
EDIT: I see you addressed all the issues in the post-ld version. Well done, feel much better now! I found just two issues:
1. a collider is missing from the left part of the very first ground obstacle.
2. I can't perform the mushroom jump in the crossroads screen, right after I teleport there after getting the fifth soul.
thank you everyone for your feedback and kind words! especially those who complimented the music. you have won my personal favor.