Darko by Sodoj
You play as a disgraced warrior trapped forever in a purgatory of madness. You try to escape, again and again, but no matter what you do, you always come back to the bottom of the well. Is there a way out, or are you just delaying the inevitable suffering?

Slice your way through tormented souls who inhabit these forsaken lands. Make your way through hell. The only way is up.
The game has been updated to adress various bugs and unintended behaviours:
Fixed various bugs between level loading
Enemy sprites are now scaled as intended
| Link | https://petarjebivetar.itch.io/darko |
| Link | https://petarjebivetar.itch.io/darko |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/darko |
Ratings
| Given | 54🗳️ | 92🗨️ |
I think you can easily add explosive platform with limited time when you touch it.
And a boss who shoot on you forcing you move faster.
And a random inversed control of the movement when ennemies touch you and you have perfect raging game XD.
Anyway good job !
The mechanics are pretty fun, although the game lacks either more dynamic enemies, or more challenging platforming. At the same time it is already quite hard, but I mostly got stuck because I didn't understand what movement the game was expecting from me (although I eventually reached what seems to be the end after several tries). The right-click dash was actually too tricky to use for me, and it was easier not to use it at all.
But despite that, it was satisfying to complete the level! Good job. :)
Edit: Wait, actually I only experienced the tutorial (despite having selected "Start")! Good thing I reloaded the page.
So yeah that changes actually everything. :p The game DOES have enemies and platforming after all. Makes way more sense. x) It's still hard, but this time because it is really challenging. The two main troubles I had were the projectiles pushing you endlessly (making it nearly impossible to make really precise jumps), and the enemies small hit-box. Couldn't get past the level 2 this time (sometime I died instantaneously because there wasn't a nearby platform to land on). The game sensations are still great though! Having to jump and dash towards enemies constantly to survive feels really cool. I wish it wasn't interrupted by a random bullet, or that I would had a sometime a bit of time to plan my trajectory. But the concept remains great!
Also when you are entering a new level put a platform (even temp) beneath. It's not pleasant to enter the level and die directly because there was no platform to land on.
Voilà, nice entry :D
I had 2 problems when I played it:
- When you jump up after the store, you have a good chance of losing because you didn't see the platform. This can be solved after buying an extra jump, but it is so hard at the beginning.
- The player has not seen the amount of HP, and when you want to buy something, you need to compare your hP progress bar. This is difficult.
- Sometimes I feel some issues with aiming, but after a few runs it got better.
Great job and thanks for this experience!
Overall, I was really impressed!
Edit: Apologies! It works fine now, I had hardware acceleration off for some reason
Edit: I just noticed your edit right after writing my message. Still, thank you for encouraging us to upload a Windows build!
_Really_ cool art style, I love the billboarded look especially with monochrome
Very aesthetically pleasing!
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1447965941?t=01h31m52s
took me a second to double jump but after that kept going up and up and juggling between enemies or platforms depending on what maneuver i needed to take
Overall, very nice work!
I also noticed that the mouse sensitivity I changed to wasn't updated?
I would really like to see a post jam version of this with a bit more polish. Could be sick!
I really like the game idea, but right now its way to hard.
its way beyond my skillset as a 3d platformer but I am eager to watch some youtubers do it

I will get to you little fella :sweat_drops:
its way beyond my skillset as a 3d platformer but I am eager to watch some youtubers do it

I will get to you little fella :sweat_drops:
its way beyond my skillset as a 3d platformer but I am eager to watch some youtubers do it

I will get to you little fella :sweat_drops:
its way beyond my skillset as a 3d platformer but I am eager to watch some youtubers do it

I will get to you little fella :sweat_drops:
The style also creates a lot of issues which are probably too hard to be solved during a jam. It was quite hard for me to follow how the character moved in a 3D space. There are not many visual elements to attach your eyes to so it can easily mean that it looks like you are not moving at all. For this reason, it was quite hard to predict will I land on a platform or not.
But these issues could be solved with more time. For a jam game, I think this was great.
Jumping around, dashing and slicing through the enemies felt really nice, but the platforming I found a bit hard.
Default FOV and mouse sens are a bit too much for me. Tried to change them in the options, but I suspect the settings didn't work, as visually nothing changed and when I came back to the options menu they all were on default values.
I played this for quite a bit, it was really fun! I have no idea if my score is good or not, but it did feel like I got quite far! Something that could be worked a bit more on are the powerups, after a couple of runs I only felt like more double jumps were worth the sacrifice. Graphics are nice and the gameplay feel is great, good job! :D!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/tables-tremors
Still different quite a lot, but I actually thought you guys might be the same team from last time haha.
Good job!
If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1450162412?t=08h26m18s
Good luck on your ratings, see you next LD! :D
💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady
https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin
my two points of feedback though would be to add a little more air-mobility, and to display your health in a more understandable way for the shops (like give me a numerical value in the top left).
Overall great work!
I also think that it would have been great when the sky would be more recognizable than just beeing white. I think I could have oriented myself way better when the sky would have had another color or something else that would have distinguish it from the other surroundings.
The graphics and style of the game are well done and I like the minimalistic style \o/ I also noticed that just jumping up and touching a platform from below gave me a point, even if I didn't land on top!
Overall, well done!
You probably ended up being hit by an exploding enemy that was right on the platform - which resulted in a point being given due to a an enemy dying
I remember with the LD49 tables and tremors I had a similar issue - maybe my skill is lacking, but personally think maybe lowering the gravity would help with the stress and would allow me to get in the "zone" more - so I could focus on getting the sweet combos and avoiding the enemies - and now just gravity alone can be very punishing :D
I like the roguelite vibe and upgrades, it feels like a complete experience not just some random levels put together. The audio-visuals are stylish, coherent and communicate what is happening clearly. Tutorial level was friendly and enabled me to learn the basics without stress.
Overall difficulty level is a little bit too high for me - I have to really be determined to try again and again :D
Nice entry!
All feels coherent and complete.
Good job!
But I do feel about half my deaths feel 'cheap' in some manner or another.
- 3d precision platformer is a difficult task!
- 2d enemy heads were sometimes hard to see
- I felt i lost track of myself VERY easily, and that the mouse swung around a bit too wildly. Maybe too high sensitivity, particularly after a dash. I did MUCH better when I turned down the sensitivity all the way. Also a shadow to see if you're actually above a platform.
- Wasn't always aware of what was shooting me or how I could avoid it. Maybe some indicator of where danger is coming from. Would also like maybe a block to defend myself somewhat. Sometimes there is no way for me to avoid things
- Forcing people to land for the 'power up room' is something I think is necessary, a couple times I had a good roll, and popped right though to the death floor
- Speaking of death floor is it even necessary? Game is very difficult as is, and I found it frustrating and eventually quit over it
Ultimately the game makes me WANT to beat it, but its not quite at that sweet spot of 'hard but fair' quite yet. Something like a slo-mo, some 'stickiness' on the platforms or other player assist to land the jumps, or more control of movement during a fall... that would help alot.
That all said... I'm booting it up again to play after my 5th rage quit, so you guys are REALLY on to something here.
The 2D-in-3D style is really cool, and it works great with the monochrome theme. My only complaint is that when looking up at enemies it can be hard to see them. Maybe they would need to rotate to always face the player to mitigate that, but then again it might also look kind of weird.
My high score is 666, at which point I felt I had figured out the game and surrendered to the abyss. Thanks for making such a neat game, I really enjoyed it!
Dying with the score of 0, 6, 66 and 666 should give you "special ending text"/an Easter egg, I think you're the only non-dev person that had died with the score of 666.
It would have been better if the score 666 made you fight a secret boss, but bosses were scrapped due to lack of time.
That would be even better if you had duck taped doom music on it.
I like the gameplay a lot, it works super well and is really fun, though it does feel like it needs some polish and balancing still. I would often fall right down after going into a new level, transitioning between levels should probably "recharge" your jumps. The minimal visuals worked great, but it felt very disorienting to not have any static reference points in a near empty circular world, so some background visuals or spatial audio would be a welcome addition. The billboard enemies only rotating on a single axis also made it difficult to attack them from directly underneath.
All the criticism aside, I really enjoyed the game and you've done an absolutely amazing job with it! Including the optional tutorial was a nice touch too, and the artstyle is great!