Misplaced by manabreak
My Ludum Dare 59 compo entry. Made in 48 hours from scratch.
Tools used:
Godot 4.6.2
GIMP
Psycle
Cakewalk SONAR
Audacity
sfxr.me
How to play
WASD or arrow keys to move
Space / Up arrow / W to jump
E to interact with objects (pick up, put down etc.)
Thanks for playing!
| Link | https://manabreak.itch.io/ld59 |
| Link | https://github.com/manabreak/ld59 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/59/misplaced |
Ratings
| Overall | 71th | 3.75⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 87th | 3.588⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 229th | 2.941⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 184th | 3.471⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 91th | 3.75⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 22th | 4.088⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 24th | 3.813⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 45th | 3.919⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 16🗳️ | 19🗨️ |
First impressions - I really like the sound effects! And intro is cute and funny. In general the dialogue is very funny! xD
"Why would you do that??" - Well little signaly guy, I thought maybe I drop this down into the darkness assuming there are spikes there and then jump on top of the crate and be good xD
The visual effect from the jump (waves of light) is very satisfying ^^ I really like the mechanic in general. It feels unique and cool.
And the music gives me a nostalgic feeling. Like in the games I played when I was little :) Digger is what comes to mind first, I looooved that game!

This looks like a ritualistic thing to sacrifice someone or appeal to demonic entities :o I find it interesting it seems to have something like a keyhole. I wonder what is this for? Lore-wise :D Overall you have some cool lore this time, it has those horror vibes that I like (or is this just my imagination filling in the gaps? :))
Taking second crystal to the ritual tower. It made me so happy to insert it I have immediately jumped down on the closest spikes xD

noooo XD
I fully expected this to loop tbh. now the poor guy is just standing silently in darkness. but this was super funny!!
OK, thoughts after playing :) Sorry my review is a bit messy, I like to share my thoughts as I go!
I really really like this game. I was sad it ended so soon. I was worried seeing comments about it being difficult, but it wasn't. I mean, it gave a nice challenge so it would be satisfying to overcome. But it didn't take me too many tries, just using one braincell I have was enough (also, I like that you have to use it here, it's great) and I made it to the third sacrificial tower on the first try.
I feel like this has huge potential. The mechanic is interesting, the platforming part is fun and reasonably challenging, not too hard or complicated, it seems like the world has some horrific lore behind it and feels mysterious and intriguing ^^
I wonder if after lighting up all three ritual towers a sudden boss battle with a demonic being would happen xD That would certainly be a suprise!
I never leave an item behind if I don't have to, and it was great that Shiny McShinebottom commented on it.
He was the highlight of the game for me. I enjoyed his rather world-weary, genre-savvy attitude. His little comments when you do something dumb are a nice touch; there's something about a game predicting what you might do that makes it feel put-together, like you (the creator) know what you're doing and I'm in safe hands.
Graphics are nice too, I enjoyed the moody lighting. Though I kept thinking the beacons were Jesus crosses, haha.
Anyway, yeah. Nice work!
I did kinda only see the dialogue during the ending cutscene though because I spammed one of the reading prompts, so it kept looping over and over. I do really appreciate the fact that there is a coyote timer for the jump, even though it's a game jam. It saved me from what would be many frustrating falls. Overall, great job with this!
Music is good as the glowing effect
Minor complaints: I had a couple sequencing issues where I immediately dropped the cube through the tall wall so had to run back to get it from the spawn, then mistakenly thought I had to proceed further to get to the second beacon so lost my second gem somewhere. Falling through an infinite space with no point of reference before respawning was also a bit confusing when it happened.
The hardest part (the second set of windmills) would drop you down right onto an old checkpoint, so you couldn't easily retry, you had to climb all the way up again.
I would have liked to see more exploration of the cool vision mechanic, perhaps if it was based on a limited resource rather than simply jumping.
EDIT: Here ya go! I'll be happy to share more stuff if you want. https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/59/misplaced/the-lighting-effect-in-misplaced
The cross mechanism is a bit torturous. I'd rather die immediately when I fall, hahaha.
I read all of the text the game showed me. When I got the wall that was too high to jump and the game showed text saying this wall is too high to jump, I made a note "will leave feedback that's a bit too much text for my taste." Wowzers so naive lol, by the end of the game's outro it was well established that this is a very self-aware design choice.
I know you have a few people saying the platforming was a bit too difficult, and of course in a jam there is a range of players coming from all sorts of tastes, which is great. But for my own personal taste I would have enjoyed even more of you riffing up and down the difficulty curve with some of your core - I liked the taste you did give and wanted more.
Nice entry with a lot of style!
OK, so I like the main character a lot. I walked off the right edge of the screen by the box (could be secrets), and they asked "why did you do that?" Stuff like that is hilarious and I love it. The part where they're reading the prophecy with the crystals "blah blah blah", the entire ending... and the intro, sure it was funny too. There's not a moment of down time in the writing, and it's by far my favorite part of the game.
The moment they said "thank goodness there weren't spikes down here" I thought "there's gonna be spikes like... not 12 steps away huh?" and sure enough, in sync "I knew it." Some of the platforming is real tricky, not just because some of it is done in the dark, but the "reverse cogs" REALLY tripped me up.
To answer the question at the end of the game, it got a chuckle, perhaps even a full laugh or as many as 2. (In all seriousness, I found this game hilarious and brimming with personality from front to back. Really dug it!)
> A snort... a FART
If my brain had not come with the 2nd of these words just before it showed, it would not have been that funny........... :rofl:
Besides the final conversation going for as long as the edge of acceptable XD I have only one thing... man, why, WHY didn't you add an easter egg or something after the self-dialog?? My ONLY complaint. Maybe guy turned into a cow or something, I don't know. Then close the game. It could have also been titled "Guy talks too much", that would hve been hilarious and understandable only after ending. XD
One of the best entries.
Dialogue was a nice touch, I stayed to the end (I think).
Anyways, nice game for the compo! 😎
p.s. I found a bug, in my first run the note-text would loop through the whole game and I couldn't get the end dialogue... I played again and didn't touch the cursed note to get the ending :laughing:

I think it's softlocked. I didn't manage to get a new block.
After restarting the game and activating the first beacon, I reached the last crystal while still holding the first one so I activated the one below all the wheels and then I had to climb up the wheels to activate the other one :laughing:.
Very fun ending, it's really cool.
The graphics and music are also amazing!
Well done!
Well done overall!
The light/signal-effect is quite cool. Recently I've been meaning to get myself familiar with Godot. I'd be intrigued to take a peek at your source later in the future to see how all the magic happens!
---
The music has a "demoscene"-vibe to it. I think it may have been produced by **SID** emulation or samples?
---
I found some of the character's _meta-monologue_ a bit irritating, but it might be because I'm stuck-up and have no sense of humour!
The dude kept reading the text over and over again until I had placed the three crystals. After that it just kept looping.

Did I encounter a bug or was that supposed to happen? I've seen people mentioning a "limbo", but it felt more like a softlock to me. Perhaps the text-routine went haywire or something?
Either way, I had a fun time!
---
Keep on jamming! :signal_strength:
The dialogue from the player character is a nice touch, though it disappeared after the beacon note for some reason. It also progressed excessively slow; even the opening, which is relatively short, dragged on, and while the ending was amusing at first it went on longer than it probably needed to. This also revealed a bug/oversight with the beacon note: pressing E next to it initially didn't appear to do anything, since the previous dialogue line hadn't disappeared yet, so I pressed it multiple times thinking I just wasn't in the right position. This caused the quite long note dialogue to be queued up several times in a row, meaning it was just repeating over and over for the rest of the game, which was a bit awkward.