Just Call Your Mom by willjardine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiDsJrRC0V8
“Just Call Your Mom” is a beat em up about fighting yourself, and pulling yourself out of deeper and deeper depression. It’s a metaphor, but mostly you fight muppets. “The Kid” fights his way through his own corporate office heck, on a quest to do the one thing that might make him feel better -- calling his mom.
Controls: WASD/arrow keys to move and spacebar to punch. :)
Credits: Will Jardine (code), Eric Goodnight (graphics), and Yousef Danak (sound).




| HTML5 (web) | https://willjardine.itch.io/just-call-your-mom |
| Source Code | https://github.com/willjardine/ludum-dare-48 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/just-call-your-mom |
Ratings
| Overall | 1083th | 3.426⭐ | 63🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1092th | 3.23⭐ | 63🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1689th | 2.574⭐ | 63🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1740th | 2.746⭐ | 63🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 487th | 4.041⭐ | 63🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 767th | 3.364⭐ | 61🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 528th | 3.178⭐ | 61🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1139th | 3.325⭐ | 62🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 67🗳️ | 94🗨️ |
Also the controlls are pretty self explaining, i haven't seen the controls under on the site until i was halfway to the other side of the room, because of that it feels very intuitive.
From the gameplay perspective, I think it would benefit from enemies coming from both sides of the screen. I found that I could just carry a trash can in front of me all the time and the enemies couldn't attack me at all.
Cool game!
I think more variety in the core gameplay loop will definitely help a lot, and maybe added enemy variety. Just...more to keep the player here.
As others have mentioned, as a fighting-type game it would have been nice to have additional actions (my spacebar is crying). Being able to block your enemies using trashcans was an interesting strategy since it seems their attack trigger radius is slightly shorter than the players. I understand being knocked down if you take a big hit, but it feels like it takes too long to get back up.
I get the premise you guys were going for, but I don't think it quite fit the game. Maybe you could have had the player slowly change colour the closer they were to the phone? Like pulling themselves out of depression bit by bit? Just some ideas.
Overall, I very much enjoyed the game and I would definitely love to try it out if you guys fleshed it out a bit more.
The combat is satisfying, but a little simplistic. It's be great to see more functionality there, like a low kick or block. If I hadn't read the description I'm not sure I would have picked up on the how theme really ties in, so some extra in-game exposition might have helped there.
Reading your description afterwards, I think your concept is quite cool, but I didn't really get it from the game itself. Unfortunately, I don't have any great ideas off the top of my head for how you could link it a bit more.
On the whole, I quite enjoyed my time with this lil one-button fighter
The metaphor does not really come through in the game itself and I would never have guessed I am fighting my way out of depression if not told in text. Maybe a changing music as I get closer to my goal (like from sad and moody to more upbeat), or changing lighting in the world (from dark to light), or changing enemies (from more deformed, dark to "nicer") and so on. Maybe you could even start slower (walking slower, dragging your feet so to say) and get more speed and energy as you fight your way out.
I liked the colored pencil art on characters very much.
The game could definitely use some polish but it is a nice jam game anyway :)
Definitely a good entry, good job :D
The combat could have been better, it felt like there wasn't much I could do except button mash and hope I didn't get hit. as many other suggested already, a block, parry, or some kind of variety would def help.
I got to the phone and it just sent me back to the title screen, I was low health (like 1 hit) when I got there and wasn't sure if it killed me, or if I won the game.
Good job yall!