Hellfall by Tom Robson

Hellfall is a downwards platformer, where you play as a demon trying to reach his home on the Seventh Circle of Hell.
Play through 7 white-knuckled levels, each set in a different circle of hell! Fall and bounce through chasms; crush demons beneath your feet; and escape a colossal wall of hellfire! String movement and attacks together into crazy combos, and blaze a trail through hell in style!




Controls:
A/D - Movement
Space - Jump
Shift - Slide
R. Mouse - Ground pound (when unlocked)

Development Credits:
Programming:
Max Ansell
Additional Programming:
Tom Robson
Design:
Tom Robson, Max Ansell
Art:
Tom Robson

| Windows Build | https://tomrobson.itch.io/hellfall |
| Web Version | https://tomrobson.itch.io/hellfall |
| MacOS Build | https://tomrobson.itch.io/hellfall |
| Linux Build | https://tomrobson.itch.io/hellfall |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/hellfall-1 |
Ratings
| Overall | 175th | 4.033⭐ | 63🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 198th | 3.944⭐ | 64🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 916th | 3.205⭐ | 63🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 215th | 4.156⭐ | 63🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 317th | 4.205⭐ | 63🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 368th | 3.771⭐ | 61🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 357th | 3.942⭐ | 62🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 54🗳️ | 92🗨️ |
The animations are great.
**Super** satisfying gameplay but a couple of things were frustrating. Such as the hitboxes on some of the objects felt weird as if they anything besides the exact top was wrong.
Loved the graphics and loved gameplay. Super good game
Damn I was not prepared for the flood at level 3! Good work guys!
I felt like fall-damage was a bit high/early. Didn't use the ground pound much because of that.
The fire/acid coming from above was great and created some very close situations.
The main menu was really innovative, i liked that :D
Would have loved a few more levels, but i understand that there wasn't time for that...
Great entry!!
Cons: Item that provides you new extra life could be more visible. :)
I think the fall damage mechanic clashes heavily with the fun of just rushing downwards, however. It also seems a bit inconsistent or just too harsh at points, particularly in that last stretch.
The only thing I would suggest to do is probably to add some score system so the player is motivated to smash more enemies/orbs.
Level 3 is insanely hard!
Got stuck at 6th or was it 7th circle? I'm not sure that one is beatable. My last attempt was a near perfect jumping sequence. I swear, that flame wall is cheating! xD But I'll be honest, I'm not that good at this kind of games.
I felt a little like dropping was punished a bit too harshly at times but other than that it was a very great experience! Congrats on the great submit! :)
The gameplay was also put together well! It was easy to figure out how to play and what you were doing/where you were supposed to go as you went through, which made for nice playing. The difficulty was a bit much for me when coming to circles six and seven with the speed of the fire when trying to get up over ledges. I was pretty close to tapping out at circle six around my 20th try, but the art style and gameplay was charming enough that I did decide to keep trying until I was actually able to complete it, so kudos for developing a game that's incentivizing to play even when the playing gets rough!
I think what caused most of the difficulty was the speed of the fire descending in the sixth circle particularly - even turning that down a bit I think would've ended up feeling better for the struggle with those two jumps around the double jump powerup.
The mechanics for jumping on orbs was very satisfying! It certainly did feel cool getting to jump on them and on the enemies, but the bounce back from hitting them was a little rough in cohesion with the fall damage.
Overall, an incredibly strong and fun foundation for a game, and with a couple small feature adjustments, I'd love to see it extended out into a longer game! Great work, team! ☆☆☆☆☆
They are some some level which are well design. The old-school graphism are just perfect.
Just one advice for improvement:
The level design could be better. I know it's hard to create challenging and interesting levels in a few time. But I had succed some levels just by dodge ennemis and sacrify just enough lifes. So I finish the game quickly.
But even that, I take pleasure and my advice is just about a small ajustment.
It's still a good game for me :)
My only complaint about this game is that it felt a bit strange to control the ground pound feature with right mouse button. Instead of mouse input, that could be any other key on the keyboard.
Some remarks:
1. Character's wings felt useless at the beginning: character can jump only once and takes damage falling down. Jump in air after falling and double jump were discovered unexpectedly some time after playing. Expectation: tutorial/story contains information about usage/future upgrades of character's wings.
2. Character safely fall down at the beginning of levels but takes damage falling from pretty low height on the levels. Expectation: something shows prevention of damage at the beginning of levels, e.g. orbs.
Great entry!
Gratz on a very enjoyable entry.