Phasebound by LDJam user 251170
You play as a celestial being who was stripped of their power. A shapeshifter stuck in giraffe form, with their only ability to summon time-space tunnels to find their way around the wretched worlds. Can you find your way out of the woodlands, in an unfinished quest to overthrow the monarchy (or for now just beat the game as is?)
A light puzzle-platformer with a, what the one and only playtester so far has described as, mind-bending mechanic.
Skip level function (F4) added for jam purposes!
(Controls underneath GIFs/Images)





(Really just remember WASD, Space, Shift :'))
CONTROLS:
Keyboard:
MOVE: Arrows keys / WASD
JUMP: Space / Z
SPECIAL: Shift / C (Summon / desummon tunnels)
Reset Current Level: R
Pause: Enter / Escape
Skip Level: F4
Gamepad:
MOVE: Left Stick / D-pad
JUMP: South Button
SPECIAL: West Button / Trigger Buttons (Summon / desummon tunnels)
Reset Current Level: Select
Pause: Start
Holding up/down while pressing special creates a vertical time-space continuum.
TOOLS:
Unity
Aseprite
Audacity
Famitracker
Changelog:
(Jam-release was v0.3.2)
v0.3.3
- Audiopool system wasn't properly enqueueing audiosources back in when used and ended up creating new audiosources in the audiopool endlessly, eventually freezing the game. The method that's supposed to enqueue the audiosources back in the available queue is now called.
DEVLog:
First time compo was a bit harder than I anticipated, but a lot of fun nonetheless! I'll aim to add the unfinished gimmicks (currently not ready for build, sadly) in a post-jam version which includes:
- Enemies
- Summoning echoes of time (to help the player)
- More gimmicks
- More soundtrack
I livestreamed basically the entire jam and am aiming to make a timelapse out of the VODs :D
| Source Packet | https://github.com/Kepsert/LudumDare55-Source-Kepsert |
| WebGL | https://kepsert.itch.io/phasebound |
| Windows | https://kepsert.itch.io/phasebound |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/phasebound |
Ratings
| Overall | 13th | 4.319⭐ | 93🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 17th | 4.231⭐ | 93🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 21th | 4.176⭐ | 93🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 192th | 3.511⭐ | 93🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 18th | 4.368⭐ | 93🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 14th | 4.22⭐ | 93🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 37th | 3.892⭐ | 85🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 39th | 3.994⭐ | 89🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 22🗳️ | 18🗨️ |
- Intelligent programming
- Nice Art
- Nice Sounds & incredible music
- Very good UX/UI design
- My mind is blown
- Great work
- wtf lol
@myse I guess the harder than anticipated in this case would mostly relate to art haha. It took up a lot of my time (to make it look somewhat good!) which I would've otherwise loved to have spend on narrative / my other gimmick ideas :id:
@cheesepencil Thanks for playing! Do you have any feedback on what I could've done differently to make it more obvious?
Level 2:

Level 3:

If you hold either up or down when pressing tunnel, it'll place a vertical tunnel :) I'll look into finding a better way to showcase this for post-jam as I've heard more feedback on this. I was hoping the gap in the ceiling would be enough to trigger dormant gamer instincts haha
Just a bit of feedback for the graphics - the transparent layers of the background + parallax really do the artwork a disservice. A solid background would be easier on the eyes and help with the signal-to-noise ratio. Maybe something to add in the Accessibility menu in the future.
I feel like someone was really wanting the "Tunnels" theme to win :)
took some time to catch the vertical tunnel.
Keep it up. Can be a great game if continued !
Regarding the background, thanks for the input! Art is definitely my weakest side here (takes me a long time to get something looking decent), and I wanted to get some parallax going, but I couldn't make it look right at all and at the point I gave up I had already spent too much time on background art to justify making yet another background :( Post-jam, perhaps?
Funny how you mention the theme btw, I actually downvoted tunnels as I despised it- didn't even think about the irony here until you mentioned it xD
Everything is incredibly well polished that its hard to pick one game aspect that's my favorite.
The art style is very well thought out.
The music is charming.
Loved the tunneling mechanic and the controls felt responsive.
Definitely one of the top games I've played so far, and I've been playing through submissions for hours! o_O
Very nice game, impressive compo (especially loved the music!)
Didn't try the speedrunning mode, but I really really understand how fun it should be to try and find efficient routes through those levels. I kinda already abused it in my scenario play, quickly alternating tunnels directions and making dangerous falls around spikes, thinking it was the strangely-hard designed path, only to find out later that I skipped half the map.
Very enjoyable, loved it!!

Graphics were really good too! Was a joy to play the game
and i lost all my progress. I had just gotten to the battery platform concept. But anyways, yeah this is a really great game for a jam game. really creative use of the time tunnel idea, and incorporating it throughout in interesting ways. I do think was kinda frustrating at times, such as trying to line up the correct jump when you exit the tunnel. I think with some more lenient spacing, this could be a really great puzzle platformer if you wanted to go further with it!
You were inspired by Celeste's visual representation, weren't you?
*(btw, an article on this topic that helped me in my game: https://aran.ink/posts/celeste-tilesets)*
Secondly, the puzzle aspect of the game works really well. A little mind-blowing sometimes, but not too much.
It's great that you handled so much work solo. Awesome!

Art and music were spot on.
Great job!
There are some things I'll be looking to implement after rating period including but not limited to a killbox buffer after removing tunnel. Sorry for the stressful moments, I'll make sure to use it as feedback in the postjam / future jams, however! :D
Walls and ceilings are no problem for this shapeshifter giraffe, but watch out those levels can be harder than you think!
https://youtu.be/NfH6ykcaC_I
Congratulations!
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2123757357
Ending up inside a wall was a common thing haha- should've thought about the design a bit more, there! The post-jam fix has the horizontal tunnel spawn a bit higher, and there's a buffer on the kill-call when inside ground (so you have some time to jump out of a tunnel while in ground)- hopefully that solves the issue for future players! :D
the puzzles are done well and the progression feels natural
the music, sounds, art, and gameplay all come together very cohesively for a really awesome game ^_^
Oh! It's you, the giraffe guy! I really enjoyed your last giraffe-entry, giraffe o'clock!
This was really nice as well, a bit hard at times though due to not understanding the mechanics fully yet and a bit confusing level designs at times. I would recommend building up the mechanics and level ideas gradually in a full release if you intend to continue working on it (which I think you do, as per your blog post with a 2025 tba date?)
That would give the player a way to familiarise themselves with what they're given and can do, kind of like how mario games introduce concepts in a gradually harder way or how celeste teaches you in increments how to play in the level design itself.
I really enjoyed this game though apart from some frustrations, the mechanic is really nice and could feel really good with some tweaks, and the music is really nice and on point.
Great work!
Overall, it's a very solid entry, would be interesting to see what other puzzles can be built on top of the mechanic.
To list some of my gripes... I didn't think it made total sense that horizontal tunnels let you move at your leisure while vertical tunnels are a free fall. Though I realize that you can jump in the horizontal mode, so tunnels don't remove gravity. Eventually you just accept the mechanic as it is, but it does mean you have to press a combination of buttons (namely up + shift) very fast before you end up in the wrong place (or die), which is not my forte. Also on the logic side, I initially thought it was a bug that you can just look up or down to make spikes go off screen and thus avoid running into them when you summon a tunnel, but later puzzles obviously make use of that. Still, I sometimes got killed off screen, perhaps by a spike that wasn't completely out of sight.
I had to skip two levels, including the one in the image below, because I couldn't find the solution and it could get a little frustrating to me due to the things I mentioned above. The cheat code is appreciated!

Finally, I think you can jump higher than usual when you're in a vertical tunnel; that didn't feel intentional but maybe it is! I liked the cheeky answer when you pick a "custom" name :wink:
Congrats on finishing :smiley: