Malleus Pistrium by piscythe

[raw]
made by piscythe for Ludum Dare 48 (JAM)

You are a dwarven construction worker excavating deep beneath the earth. You feel the ground shake as some abominable creature approaches. With only your trusty jackhammer, you must ward off the beast and preserve your life!

Action-platformer with a single boss fight. Jump on the enemy when it's vulnerable to kill it. Don't die.

Code by Piscythe and Mr Robespierre, art by Dinjerad, music licensed from Dark Fantasy Studio.

Hint: HOLD JUMP TO JUMP

Ratings

Overall 1553th 3.096⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Fun 1502th 2.923⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 1404th 2.846⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Theme 1849th 2.42⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 1329th 3.269⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Humor 639th 3.019⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Mood 1360th 3.154⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Given 21🗳️ 33🗨️

Feedback

waylon531
27. Apr 2021 · 05:42 UTC
The music was perfect, it felt just like I was playing a flash game from 2008
Flipsy
28. Apr 2021 · 09:00 UTC
Nice work, I like the music and the menacing shark. A couple of SFX would go a long way. I like the idea of a killer shark flying through space underground.
Doot
14. May 2021 · 06:43 UTC
Nice little boss fight!

I like how simple and intuitive it is. The controls feel right, the red line warning is very clear. Music is great!
I think sounds would help even more with timing.
I also felt like the boss had maybe too much life on normal difficulty?

Thanks for the game!
Ty Victorson
14. May 2021 · 09:18 UTC
Fun little game! Everything felt pretty good to play, the biggest thing that would bring the game to the next level would have been like others have mentioned some SFX! Over all nice work I think the mechanics could lead to a pretty good platformer game if you continue to work on it!
retrome
14. May 2021 · 09:49 UTC
Nice boss fight game! Pretty fun to play.

Some remarks:
1. Boss fight feels monotonous and too long. Expectation: more damage to boss or/and more different boss attacks on the first half of fight.
2. Game lacks of lore introduction so music is turn away of gameplay.
3. Fight continued when boss lost all the health. Looks like health bar has zero length on little amount of health.
4. This might be intendent, but jumping feels irresponsive sometimes.

Hope this will be helpful.

Nice entry!
Aune
15. May 2021 · 08:08 UTC
Bonjour !
Pretty cool game ! Well done with godot !

I think that variation in the boss starts quite late.
It wouldn't be a problem if the game was a bit shorter !

Tips : put your player sprite at the main menu instead of the godot placeholder. It makes us appreciate even more its design !
TopperVideoGames
15. May 2021 · 08:32 UTC
This was a nice experience. It was mostly a waiting game to be able to damage the boss, I would have liked if I could try to time it just right to jump on the shark thing as it was moving to be able to knock it down. Having to hold the button to jump was novel, as it needed some commitment and planning to know when a jump was needed.
Animation was cute, music was good. Though with how long it takes to beat the boss, the music had to loop quite a few times.
Overall, nice display of talent.
natpat
15. May 2021 · 09:13 UTC
Cool little boss battle! I liked the variety and clear telegraphing of attacks. The shark was fun too. The battle in general felt a little long, perhaps some extra attacks or way of damaging the boss during his attacks would make it better, to reward skillful players. The jumping was a bit odd too - non-responsive controls are often tricky to pull off and I think in a boss battle like this you need tight controls to make it feel fun and fair.
Nice entry though!
Elvendan
15. May 2021 · 09:49 UTC
Nice epic music!

Some sfx would have made this game even cooler :D
Smooth boss fight overall!
aes
15. May 2021 · 18:48 UTC
loved the art, maybe coulda used some sfx. a little more depth to the gameplay would be appreciated early on but it was fun!
Swordfish
16. May 2021 · 00:48 UTC
I enjoyed that a lot, I see you opted out of music but I did want to mention that it added a lot to the mood of the fight (the more epic one that is, not so much the carnival sounding track). I was happy to see that there were more phases to the fight after the first one because I found that one a little boring.

There were a few weird things though, I've never seen a program display the way this one did, the full height of my screen got letterboxes but not the width? I also noticed a lot of errors in the debug console - looks like you didn't connect up the particles when the player takes damage right.

![Screenshot 2021-05-15 204145.png](///raw/ec7/8/z/42762.png)

Overall enjoyable!
alprog
16. May 2021 · 11:10 UTC
Don't work for me on windows.
It writes "Godot Engine v3.3.stable.official - https://godotengine.org"
And that's it.
der_finski
16. May 2021 · 11:35 UTC
Thats a fast sharky boiii
Yword
16. May 2021 · 16:37 UTC
Yeah, I just defeated the boss in normal difficulty! Really unique idea and quite challenging too!
tucan
17. May 2021 · 00:27 UTC
hahaha that shark is fast! I really like the the graphics and the style of the game.
I would suggest to add a scene with some pictures showing the story! And for the retry scene it would be nice to just restart the fight rather than going to the title screen.
Nice boss fight! Good job!