Beyond Death by Trypants

PLAY IT HERE (BROWSER AND WINDOWS): https://marcuslelus.itch.io/beyonddeath
Controls:
WASD to move around
There is no jump
Controller Compatibles
Welcome young adventurer. I am the soul collector and you are stranded on my island. I collect the souls of the ones who dare visit my domain. I need 12 sacrifices to be able to collect your soul. If your soul is mine, you will be forever stuck here and be my eternal servant. So, let's play a game. The only way out is through this door. It will only open if you find the 3 totems that are hidden throughout this island. Be aware, if you die, my magic will rewind time and put you back to where you started, but this sacrifice will count towards my goal. Go on young soul and remember, death is not always the end...

Tools:
Qubicle, Unity, Finale (VST: Garritan orchestra), Audacity, Photoshop, Rider, Maya

Authors:
- Anthony St-Onge: Developer, level design
- Charles Viau: Music
- Gabriel Desgagné : Developer
- Jean-Philippe Brien : Developer
- Jeremy Berger : 3D artist, Sound design
- Marc-Antoine Girard : Developer, VFX
Beyond Death Original Soundtrack (OST)
| Youtube | https://marcuslelus.itch.io/beyonddeath |
| Youtube | https://marcuslelus.itch.io/beyonddeath |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/beyond-death |
Ratings
| Overall | 141th | 4.064⭐ | 352🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 405th | 3.681⭐ | 352🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 594th | 3.519⭐ | 348🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 398th | 3.957⭐ | 351🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 55th | 4.527⭐ | 354🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 78th | 4.149⭐ | 345🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 111th | 4.137⭐ | 344🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 181🗳️ | 203🗨️ |
If I was to give one piece of feedback - perhaps an explanation of controls at the start. That said, it took me all of 10 seconds to realize my game controller would work and I couldn't jump, and was right into the gameplay. This is one game I'll actually play several times just for fun.
Awesome work! Really enjoyed myself on this one!
Loved the voice over too , awesome game guys 10/10
I think that the level design could have been a bit more forgiving in terms of difficulty over time. That first area with the shooting spike was a gateway that needed to be passed every time you wanted to get any further in the game, and navigating some of those spike when you couldn't really see them from the camera angle sometimes felt unfair when they hit you.
Still though this is a great submission, great work!
The world is well crafted and makes you want to explore, even when dying as much as I have XD
Soundtrack is amazing, with it changing with the environment it really makes the player feel a change as the game progresses and that something sinister is approaching.
Well done to the team!
Great job!
i would add something to the cave that teleports you to the third island, i got lost not knowing where should I go.
Rather than rotating camera, use camerawork like some big games will be cooler, I think
The controls are a bit fiddely at times, but quickly enough to get used to =)
The death mechanics works pretty well with the level design and of course, the environment changing throughout death is a great idea ! Really makes the deaths count !
The audio is definitely the best part of the game, congrats !
(On a side note, there's a tiny bug if you go straight to the door after the intro, the character just throw is arm in the air three times and the game restarts)
So I ended up dying over and over again to see if there was another ending. I thought that to cheat the loop you had to die instead of finding the totems. In the end, I saw graphics were changing after death and it was really satisfying to watch. Really good mood, graphics and sound!
I wish there were some way of skipping the intro on the second go.
One thing though: on 4K it seems the UI doesn't scale, you might want to select the scale with screen size option in unity. Was pretty hard for me to read the intro text.
Again: really impressive to create all this in such a short amount of time, good job :)
A Jam entry like this shows me just how valuable a level designer is in making a game world spring to life. This has so much love and oozes style.
Good!
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- :medal: best entry I have played so far - this is a REAL GAME.
- :medal: lovely take on the theme, with simple game mechanics but some thinking involved
- :medal: the world (gradually?) seems to grow darker the more you die, that was amazing
- :medal: the amount of assets that was created in just this jam is amazing! 5 stars in graphics
- :medal: the little world is really nice and detailed
- :medal: waterfalls!
- :medal: beautiful soundtrack, voiceover, all important events have sounds
Better?
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- :heavy_plus_sign: you could make the experience even more pleasant by giving slightly more elasticity to the camera follow
- :heavy_plus_sign: sometimes the camera can't see an important thing, it's part of the mechanics but ... the feels.
- :heavy_plus_sign: sounds near the arrows and flame throwers would add to the immersion.
- :heavy_plus_sign: a single ambient waterfall audio source would take the players on an even deeper journey.
- :heavy_plus_sign: there are two game binaries in that build, keep those folders clean :v_tone3:
Overall the most impressive game jam entry I have played in a while. You folks really know your trade, and I must tip my hat to you!
Voice acting and cutscenes ! The music and sounds effects blend very well and cool to listen to !
The voxel style is cool and well done. It's a polished game.
However there are some downsides... : The level design lack some ideas, I wish I could control the camera and... that game make me think about "Death is not the end" not "Stuck in a loop"... It's a bit out of subject for me
But you have skills to make games, and I hope to see more of your team's work in the future !
Overall, this game is highly polished and beautiful, but I felt like a lot more could have been done for the gameplay.
I'm super impressed!
Outstanding work!
The OST is absolutely superb! I definitely think I could listen to this as a background album while working on projects or just as a nice, chill, music experience.
Gameplay loop is great- you definitely implemented the LOOP mechanics quite well- forcing the player to think about some of their actions. As you saw on the stream, I even let myself fall prey to 'thinking death was the end' even though I had just learned your lesson. Great job here!
I did like this work- and will definitely keep an eye out for your future projects.
Ps: I gathered the three yellow thingies and still didn't get to open the door. And you might've left a glitchy collider that can make the character walk on air on the lava part. And the stone cube puzzle didn't work for me.
Few downsides:
Too sad there is no proper gameover - both for winning and losing the game. Strict camera angle is also not ideal, makes it kinda hard to see traps in some parts of island.
Showing the death number (especially if you have a maximum) is essential, howeve ;).
It's very simple to learn but hard to master. Which is a basis of a great game. I loved the graphics and the sound effects. Also the way the mood shifts gradually is done to perfection. The way the character reacts when it finds one of those little tokens is very cute. he's happy like a kid
Normally I also give feedback on how to improve the game, but i cant think of anything with yours.
Well done sir
The best :
- The idea works reaaally well with the subject
- Gameplay mechanics associated are good (a bit long to come back at the end when you died, but it's fair)
- The changing atmosphere as a feedback is veeeery good, and satisfying
- Environnement, graphics and mood are great
- Music is really fit to the game and voice acting is nice
To improve :
- The camera which is sometimes treacky with what we can see (being able to turn around would have been great)
- controls bound only on wasd and not the directionnal arrows (for an international event, think about it ;) )
My thanks for the experience anyway, was great !
It is a really impressive entry.
The camara movement is a bit off (shake on stairs for example).
And more challnging puzzles to get to the tropy would be nice.
Overall very nice, good luck!
And now, this game is basically a ship-ready product for Switch, especially as CO-OP game... I adore the graphics and audio (especially the 4th iteration you wanted me to follow, will listen to it on youtube). Please include me for alpha testing when you guys will be more into production! Can't stress enough how priviledged I am to see this brilliant game.
Job well done guys. Hi 5!
The lore adds a lot to the game, too. The game suffered a bit as a webm game. Low framerate, and some stutters, but deffinately still playable! Very fun game! I like the level design.
It's 5 stars everyone of the categories, this is so good!
Had a blast!
The main mechanic is interesting and has room to be explored in different ways as well. Also, the world becoming "darker" as you die was a really nice touch, but to be fair I just saw it in my third playthrough as I was trying to get some kind of different ending haha
Really well done, congratulations!
Even tho it kinda fits the theme, the other aspects are so good that theme is actually my worst grade here Oo
...that being said, I thought the gameplay itself was just okay. Kind of slow, not very challenging. I feel like there could have been some more puzzley elements to it, especially with those weighted cube and switches.
For a 72hr game this is simply brilliant but if you do take it further then I'd say it either needs to make more of the dead bodies mechanic and the moveable cubes (that was a little hard to push around) to give more depth to the puzzles or some additional mechanics need adding (inventory, or jumping, etc).
Finally, giving the user the ability to rotate the camera would add a lot to the playability. Often I couldn't see traps or my characters position clearly.

Overall no matters what is the rate the result is nice. Well done, guys.
- The camera is low to the ground, and sometimes obscures obstacles you could have never seen coming.
- The part where you enter the cave and change scenes felt out of place... couldn't that have been fit into the main island scene? I didn't notice that was supposed to be a cave entrance the first time and got confused when I had one totem left but nowhere else to go.
- The area after you drown yourself on the river is too vast and empty. Looks like there was supposed to be something else there but you didn't have time, in that case I understand.
- The game repeating itself in the end was pretty infuriating... I get it's made like that to fit the theme of "stuck in a loop", but doesn't make it any less anti-climactic.
Anyways, that was all. All-in-all amazing game with some clunk but nothing that detracts from the fun!
I wish the sky bridges had a visual effect to indicate you can't fall off the sides. I didn't have to pick my way carefully up every time.
I agree with Fupi just above that the transition in the cave felt a little odd. In fact, I almost missed that it was possible to enter the cave when I was playing, because it looked like just a closed space to mark where one idol was.
The way the environment evolves over the course of the game was a lovely bit of polish that really let you show off your artwork.
Really good overall.
+graphics are amazing and impressive amount of work you got done
+gameplay idea is coool, although walking back the same path gets tiring
Very nice job!
I like the idea of death as kinda resource management. The game is perfectly long enough and with enough content, and the difficulty is very good (though maybe it should be a bit harder).
The game world is beautiful, it was a joy to explore, and you can feel the amount of effort and time and attention to detail that went into designing it and creating the art.
Music was good and well-fitting. But the thing that amazed me most was the fact that the visuals and music change depending on the amount of sacrifices performed. So much so that after winning, I played through again just to see all the different levels of gloom. I wish I could give marks above 10 just for that.
The intro cut scene was spot on, it explained the mechanics and showed off the world very well. The only thing I missed was a Victory scene and Defeat scene, but that was just lightly anticlimactic, no big issue.
Good job! :)
My only complaint is the lack of using Right Stick (or some keyboard keys) to rotate the camera. You got the camera at the perfect angle so this wasn't much of an issue though.

The landscape changing the look the more you died was cool and on my first run I think I was on the last possible loop while getting through the door. The red water, blood on the altar and so on really sold the ominous feel of impending doom. Was quite confused about the lack of any ending and kinda missed the whole thing about 12 deaths my first time seeing the intro so actually played the game twice. The second run was obviously much smoother and squeezed through with what I think is minimum number of deaths possible (i.e. three). I even walked back from the final totem! :sunglasses:
The intro should be able to be skipped though...
The corpse usage as a helper for next round was cool. I was even admiring the previous corpse being there even before it really clicked to me that that it the main mechanic of the game and the way to solve the puzzles. But on the other hand even if it was cool and worked early on, later on in the stage it became just annoying really. It was just forced death and a time waste which is never fun. Thankfully you didn't do these too late in the stage really.
Might have actually made more sense to have the final idol also be on its own branch. Now it just kinda made the middle one almost pointless. And that would have made the trek to it shorter too so you could have used the death mechanic more.
But this was unacceptable! The dude falls down in the death animation and his hat falls off too...

</sarcasm>
The block pushing was hella broken. Dumb me didn't realize that it was on a button which controlled the flame trap so I tried to push it to block the flame trap with. I managed to kinda do it but the block fell out of the world on top of the stairs. Should have introduced the flame trap in a more clear setting. Sure you had it once earlier before but it was too much covered by the wall and I only got to really see the button (which didn't even look deadly at all) and then the character just getting lit ablaze. And when encountering the pushable block (*time to crate* of around 3/4ths of the game :wink:) it kinda just looked like a pedestal for it. The pushing didn't always work, had to stop and try again several times often for it to move and getting it close to walls made it even more glitchy. Of course it wasn't even supposed to be pushed that much really so not a huge problem.
The game controlled fine but the locked isometric 45 degree view made it a bit awkward since you usually had to be holding down two keys. I guess it would work fine with an analog stick though. But allowing the player to rotate the camera would obviously be the best way to go. This would also fix those annoying places where a trap was hiding behind a wall up until you got too close to it to really react.
Anyways, good job! :thumbsup:
Once again, thank you for taking the time to write this awesome feedback! Much love from Beyond Death team :heart:
If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/767497194?t=5h02m33s
Good luck on your ratings, see you next LD! :D
💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady
https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin
This is a super impressive entry with some stellar art direction and audio work. The mechanic itself is a bit simple, but the polish in every other aspect more than makes up for that! I'm mad jealous of your guys' skills, well done!
But other than that man... just beautiful experience. Did the living and the death playthrough. Thank you for this gem u_u
/edit: Oh before I forget: The score is FANTASTIC! Love the positive adventure vibe growing darker over time o:
My two nitpicks are I didn't understand that the cave went to another area, and that the camera got a bit jittery when the character was going up steps (perhaps some smoothing/damping of the camera motion would help here).
Overall, fantastic work!
I loved how the world transformed as you died over and over!
I would have loved to be able to rotate the camera, and I think the UI could do with some more love, the font in particular clashed a bit with the rest of the game's presentation.
I found the first traps on the stairs a little bit too difficult would have loved a way to disable that so that I would not have to go through it again if I messed up somewhere further along!
I first thought it would be nice if you could turn the camera, but then I came to see it as an interesting part of the challenge. The only place where it felt a little unfair was the flamethrower shortly before the totem at the teleporter. I don't see how you could have seen that one coming.
I went the path over the spikes first, and got the two totems there, so I was surprised when I saw that the path over the river led straight to the third totem and it was very easy to get. I would have maybe added a little more of a challenge there, perhaps a maze made out of spikes. That path is probably meant to be the more beginner-friendly one, but as long as the spikes are spaced out enough, I don't think it would hurt.
As a side note, is there any point to that box you can push around before the third totem? I pushed it out but didn't need to use it. Also, I saw you guys used Qubicle. Have you used MagicaVoxel at all? Curious what you prefer about Qubicle as I haven't tried it.
Also we haven't tried MagicaVoxel yet since our 3D artist already had Qubicle, but we will sure give it a shot soon. The only thing I can tell you is that MagicaVoxel is free and Qubicle is not, so that a plus for Magica. :smile:
https://youtu.be/q6owUl7mZVU
I liked the idea of leaving your own skeletons behind to open up new paths - shame it wasn't utilized more (I found it necessary only in two places). I enjoyed the level design overall and the world felt fun to explore. The only thing I didn't like were those few traps you could not see (because of forced perspective) until you actually stepped into them :laughing: felt like no fun dying to such a trap.
I also feel like I'm being lied to by the soul collector! I collected the totems, I went through the door, and he just returned me to the beginning! I have a feeling he is wiping my memories and playing some kind of devious game with me. Foooorever! Cheater :wink:
Congratulations on the work!
It was a fun little game, I like the "dying makes the game easier, and is even required sometimes" mechanic and wish you used it even more.
Maybe you could unlock a faster path to the last totem, if you die right at the end, you have to go all the way back.
All in all, very impressive entry!
[Here's the VOD](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/775331476) for my impressions. Great job!
The camera was also a little.. uhm.. jumpy, especially when going up the stairs, some LERPing there would've made a difference :)
Really nice atmosphere and really, and impressive entry. Happy to have played it :)
Maybe it can be optimized better, I was getting some performance issues. Very good work!
I liked that the environment and the music changed by how many times you were dead.
It took me a couple of minutes to get used to that you can't rotate your camera. After a while, I understood that this thing was one of the main challenges of the game. Besides that, the controls are very comfortable.
Overall, that was a very interesting and fun experience.
Good luck!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15n2Eq8yeVA
(video will unlock in 18 hrs from now, sorry about that)
Thanks for submitting! 😊