Really liked your game, although the wall jumping felt a little difficult to do. Despite that, the rest of the platforming felt really nice and the art and music were really good too.

really cool game!! <3

Awesome game!!

Now that's what I call some textbook quality platforming! Looks great, and I love the weight behind the main character's movement. If I had to suggest any improvement (and that's really nitpicky) the Virtual Boy color palette could be tweaked to be a little easier on the eyes. Well done!

wall jumping was really difficult, often time felt like you needed it to be frame perfect, the music was a great match for the graphics too!

This was a good game! I think the levels could have gotten a bit harder with every iteration cus the buildup was quite slow, apart from that it was fun and I enjoyed playing it :) the art and music both were nice together. I will say I also struggled with the wall jump (i wonder if jumping while touching a wall is making me not jump as high?) but it wasnt a major issue

I loved this game. It was my favorite game out of all the games in the jam so far. But I found that wall jumping was difficult though.

Loved the monochrome design! Color and music choice really sets the mood, although I'm a bit surprised the red palette is not the final one.

The difficulty curve felt comfortable, and I wasn't able to get more than 6 combo on 100%. The only thing I wish was different in that regard is the countdown of skulls - I would prefer it to begin after I moved away from the checkpoint, allowing to inspect the level before rushing in.

All in all, a very fun entry!

Instantly I was captivated by the monochrome aesthetic and the simplistic yet beautifully animated character and enemies. The level design is through the roof, I instinctively knew where to go and how to complete the screen. The platforming is tight and the controls feel amazing. Honestly the best game I've played in the game jam so far. The theme of deeper and deeper really resonates with the level design in particular and revisiting old areas with new challenges keeps the game play fresh (when i saw the times i nearly pooped myself) Also great soundtrack and love how it gets more and more intense over each DEEPNESS.

Limited palette, limited environments, but unlimited fun! Depth isn't just in the descent of the game, but in the depth of the its level design. A great example of how focusing n level design can really pay off. Saw this played on stream and had to try it out myself, was not disappointed... Except when I lost my 9X combo to that laser. Congrats and keep up the great work!

The game is just as challenging, as the description says :smile: We haven't managed to pass it, but I do believe it is posible. Visuals are so simple yet work just awesome!
Link to the stream (time code to Infinite Descent): https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1002881859?t=00h17m37s

P.S. for some reason I can't rate the sound, but it is very energetic and seems to fit the game aestetics pretty well!

The guy from the stream above here. I was able to finish this laser afterwards, and it turns out that it is not the over! Then it turns out it is not the over again... And then again :D
Anyway - here is my best results, 8 screens:

this was really really good! I loved the color palette and the gameplay was really smooth

nice! I found the walljump to be quite low but overall I enjoyed it! I'm not sure exactly how the world was structured after getting 100%; was there a single sequence of visually distinct rooms that repeated, or was every loop split into two halves, each of which looked pretty similar to the other half? ...actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I think I was just confused by that first room (the one you revisit again later in the loop)

loved the game, the difficulty progression is really well done and the controls were smooth but the wall jump was a bit odd, the animations and graphics were very minimalist but looked really nice with the smooth animations, the music was great and perfectly fits into the game's design and color palette

This did reusing content right! basically newgame+ each time you complete it. the game was somewhat unforgiving but had enough checkpoints to not be rage worthy, the art was on point and had more than meets the eye with decent animations that if you watched carefully showed that this game was from 2021 not 1980. the music was a great choice too went well with the different stages.

Also the character controller was pretty flawless, a big deal in platformers

The only issue I had is that the game froze for like 4 seconds every time I died. I don't see other people complaining about it though, so I'll assume it's just an issue with my browser. Either way, really fun and challenging platformer!

I caught this one on a stream and then had a great time playing it!! Clever mechanics, engaging gameplay, and really drove me to get to the deeper level. Was a pleasure to talk to you on your stream. Looking forward to the next one.

Extremely solid and well polish 1-bit platformer.

Clever level design mixed with ramping up the difficulty and new mechanics and obstacles, and Mark Sparling music blaring in the background? Absolutely terrific. And a wonderful reuse of assets too to make the game feel that much more meatier!

Like others have pointed out the literally only one crit I can offer is the wall jumping doesn't feel perfect. You can get used to it but like you yourself have noted, in a full release/fix you'd let people select to have opposite control for walljumping as an option.

Just a great polished entry, well done!

That was super fun! Once I got going, I couldn't put it down. I HAD to win. There was one spot where the wall jump acted a little funny. Sometimes I would hit the wall, and the character would stand up instead of holding the wall. It only happened in one place though. Overall the game was super smooth.

Gabriel interviewed me earlier today and mentioned a spot where people were threading the needle by falling right in between the flames. I think I found the spot and did it too! It was a nice added challenge to never give in and use the walls

Nice challenging platformer.
Thanks for bringing your game by my stream for playtesting! If you'd like to revisit the play and commentary you can view the highlight at https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1006135460

@krzyhau The lag isn't just you, although 4 seconds is quite extreme. I couldn't optimize the respawn on the HTML5 version of the game, but it is instantaneous on the PC EXE version, sorry if you don't have access to that platform. Thank you for the feedback!

Fun little game! I felt like the walljump needed some work, other than that really solid controls and a great game!

Awesome and tightly crafted little game here. I love the different mechanics and how they interact and fit with the platforming. Very solid entry! Here is my VOD: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1004005116

@korfi @nuclearchair @pipotchi @thewhiterice @skvader-418 @2bitcrook
Thank you for your feedback! I've seen a number of people comment on the wall jump, and I'm trying to nail down exactly what needs improvement. Would you be able to let me know if your issue falls into one of these three categories I have identified as a potential problem?
1. Better Tutorialization; You automatically cling to walls (there is no need to hold the directional input to push yourself against a wall). I am wondering if people feel the wall jumping is difficult because this is not explained in game?
2. Again, not understanding that you don't need to touch directional input while wall jumping, people begin to push the character away from the wall before jumping, thus losing contact with the wall and losing their chance to wall jump.
3. You gain too little height from the wall jumps, making it necessary to jump more times than you might expect.
4. Your character would slide against walls when you weren't expecting it, causing unexpected behavior.
5. Something else I haven't identified.

@bluishgreenpro i would say 3. and MAYBE 4.

@skvader-418 Thanks for your reply! This is a little tough to change since so many of the obstacles are built with the specific jump height in mind, but I'll see what I can do!

@bluishgreenpro I've tried analyzing it from my perspective, I'm sorry for the long reply and I'm sorry if I sound harsh at times, I'm only trying to give an in-depth analysis! I might've formulated myself poorly at some point, just ask if there's anything that you didn't understand!

The way i see it there are 2 main parts and one minor part that I think could be changed/improved:

1.The jump angle (and maybe velocity) you get when you're jumping off the wall "feels" a bit off. My suggestion is to have a greater angle and maybe a higher velocity when going off the wall. I also think that a reason of why the angle feels low, is that the height you get from a regular jump is a lot higher than what you get from a wall jump. The current angle is close to the black line, whereas a suggested height could be the red one.


2.When jumping from one wall to another it feels like you instantly starts falling down the wall as soon as you hit the wall.
During your first jump from the ground you get a good height and you kind of "slide" up the wall in a way that feels natural. On the second wall (after jumping off the first wall), you never slide up at all (which I suspect is a bit of my suggestion 1). If you don't want the player to slide up (to the peak of the jump) you could maybe make the player stick a tiny bit before starting to slide down.

3.This is probably the tiniest part, and I didn't notice until I played around a bit with the controls. If someone is used to walljump with 'direction + jump' the jump isn't always registered. I think the time it takes for you to "unstick" from the wall is a tiny bit too short? In a similar vein - when initiating the wall jump the player holds the jump button for as high as the player want the wall jump to be. When jumping to the next wall, you want the player to jump directly the way it is now. From the first jump the player expects to hold the jump to go as high as possible, but right now the player starts falling down instead and thus should hit the space as quickly as possible instead.

Tell me if there is anything else you're thinking about!

@korfi Holy heck! Thank you so much, this is incredibly specific and useful! I'll be happy to try a bunch of your suggested solutions. Also, I've *got* to play your jam game as recompense; I'll add it to my twitch stream schedule for today! Let me know if you'd be interested in seeing it played live :)

@bluishgreenpro As I'm living in Europe I don't think I'll be able to see it live, would love to see a vod if that's possible though!

@korfi Sure thing! I'll post a link to the vod as part of my comment on your game once I rate it

Congratulations on your game got a great job, a nice color ball, charismatic characters and well executed animations are found in your game, I appreciate the opportunity to know your great work, in the future I hope to find you in big commercial projects, a big hug.

The music kept my "adrenaline" going and it was a speedrun fun. I've enjoyed playing a lot. I liked that i played the "same" lvls but everytime it was getting harder and harder. The teleport effect was cool and the sfx too. The yellow skull was a nice touch as far as lvl design.. but this is the only graphic i didn't like.. i felt it doesn't fit very well.. btw i also would like to know that the game is over :P i've played the last green part 3 times and it was the same over and over. Overall a really nice and cool game man.. i had a lot of fun playing and finishing, great job :)

Wow yeah @bluishgreenpro seems like @korfi really gave you the most thorough answer one could ask for haha.

I think Korfi's point 3 might be the trouble I had.

It's a nice boon that there isn't much to tweak/fix until this game is hopefully going to get a price tag/steam page or show up on a console estore! :D

@2bitcrook Thanks so much for saying so! I was actually able to implement some of @korfi 's suggestions during my stream last night.
I'll have to rebuild the platforming system in Unity in order to distribute it, but that is something I was already in the process of doing. My main problem is marketing (always is). If it's "just a platformer" doesn't matter how good it is; no publisher is interested :(

@bluishgreenpro I hear that. Unless you have a certain hook it can be hard to get traction, even with Frog we're still riding a lot of the tropes, pixel art, platformer, retro, NES. Even it running on a NES is a double edged sword because it's a talking point but the fact it's something that needs an emulator is a major turn off for a lot of people (even fellow Ludum Dare Jammers)

Then you factor in if you DO have a unique hook, it might just end up being labelled a "gimmick". So it's almost like a damned if you do, damned if you don't.

In spite of all that, you've made an extremely polished platformer that feels extremely good to control. I think, and hope, it'll find its audience even if niche and I definitely think speedrunners will really enjoy it.

For some of my projects, they don't turn out as successful as I'd hope but you do learn a lot on the way and if this is something you can do with some prep for a jam, I'm sure you'll use this experience and the skills you've honed further in the future for even bigger projects =].

This is a very fun entry! Good job!
The art is great and I like the difficulty curve and the abundance of checkpoints. It's very polished and the controls feel tight. The art is great and the different colors for stuff you can jump on/stuff that kills you were helpful and fancy.

I did struggle with one thing though:

The timing of the obstacles seems to be matched to the checkpoints, but not the entrances. Some rooms (the ones with the exploding heads) can get way more difficult this way (It's impossible for me to beat the room with the breaking blocks from the entrance, but from the checkpoint it's manageable.)

Really solid platformer :D I thought the progression was beautiful- after the second iteration, I already knew what the deal was with the game making things a bit harder each time around. Despite the jig being up, each change was interesting and impactful enough to each playthrough that I *had* to see what the next playthrough would add. The order things were introduced was really intuitive that despite the difficulty explicitly increasing each playthrough, my consistency and deathless streaks wouldn't suddenly tank with a change. Great work :)

Really fun entry. The controls were some of the best I have felt in this jam. Great job

Good Feels when you once you get the hang of it..
Chiptune soundtrack icing on the cake.
Each loop gets tougher and tougher..
Suggestion:
1. More Palettes..
2. Co-op or Dual Multiplayer?

@acronaut Glad you enjoyed it! I do indeed have several more palettes; the core game has a unique palette for each level, but I only wanted to use 5 to distinguish the 5 difficulty levels, and I didn't think I could reasonably make it harder while still keeping it fun.
I've actually added Co-op / Multiplayer to the Unity version of the project! But that's still a ways from being done.

Nice variety of platforming movement, a great use of vfx, and cool music!

Hey, I've been playing this for a while, but I wasn't able to finish it, I got a bit frustrated at 80% difficulty, but probably because I don't play many platformers, besides the annoying bug (I believe it's a bug) of the game hanging for a second or two every death. The way you increase difficulty while keeping the level shape it's pretty cool, and very well done. Controls felt responsive, music was cool (although perhaps I would recommend an escalation in energy to match the difficulty (first song was already too intense)) graphics were simple but did very much the work (plus being only 2 colors). One of the most novel things in terms of platform mechanics was the "portal" that forced you to restart the level, I think it's a pretty cool way to show a fail state while being able to restart without any animation in between, and I think it was a shame that it wasn't used more for escaling the difficulty, which was only just by adding more traditional hazards. I had a good time with it, nice work!

played v1.0.2.

Nothing like a good ol platformer for LD. Pretty solid gameplay, though the quirk of auto-sticking to walls when you're hugging them is a bit unintuitive. Not a huge deal though, as that doesn't really come up too much. Gameplay was pretty solid, with some nice mechanics that were very intuitive yet satisfying and the level designs were enjoyable, especially seeing how they progressed each time.

I found it curious how there is a "crouch" animation when pressing down, which seems pretty much useless. ;P Ah, I guess it is to give some sort of visual feedback, since down + jump is for dropping through platforms. That makes sense.

Reloading the level when dying seems...unnecessarily laggy, even on the downloadable version (though it is admittedly better there). I understand that's the framework and not you at fault, but it seems like you should be able to code a "reset" of sorts manually rather than relying on reloading the entire level. There are only so many elements that need to be reset per screen (the player position, the stompable enemies, the breakable floors), so in theory it shouldn't be that bad??? But I'll not make further assumptions here.

A bit of a letdown that there wasn't an "end" after completing the final iteration and reaching 100%, but thanks for an enjoyable experience anyways!

FYI: when a gamepad is plugged in, it didn't seem possible to activate the menu to switch the gamepad off, so I had to resort to unplugging the gamepad entirely.

Really awesome game! I know there's a lot that goes into making such a polished platformer alone, but there's a lot that's communicated well to the player with other aspects too! Example: I didn't realized you could jump on enemies, but the long floating flat guys were made to look like a platform to encourage jumping on them. There's a lot of subtle things in here that subtly teaches the player even without text in some cases!

There were some really minor platforming things that felt a little weird, but others have covered that in their comments.

Love the style, animation, tutorialization, and gameplay overall! It's really cool that you also added additional level challenges after you beat it!