The Shrinking by Rayo
Shrink down into the deeps of the world! This athmospherical game takes you into a journey of a man escaping from the rain, an event where liquid is falling from the sky making the player smaller.
Story:
You don't exactly remember how you got in this situation. You only remember that it started to rain. Where are you? What exactly is this liquid? It doesn't seem to be normal water. You feel kind of weird, is the environment around you getting bigger or are you just getting smaller?
Theme:
The theme of Ludum Dare 48 "Deeper and Deeper" is reflected in our game in different ways. Have a look at second 19-26 in the video, you will see how the player is getting smaller in size over time and the camera zooms in deeper and deeper. In our game, the player is getting smaller and smaller when he touches liquids and is literally deeper than the moment before. This leads to the environment becoming larger and larger for the player. In a figurative sense, the player thus slips deeper and deeper into a problem from which he cannot get out again because there is no no way back to normal size.
Features:
- Platformer gameplay
- 3 levels to explore
- Misterious ambiance feeling
- High quality graphics
- Music and Sounds
A level score system and save/load system was implemented too.
Controls:
- Use WASD or the arrow keys to move.
- Use the up key to jump, you are also able to double jump.
- Use the down key to crouch.
- Press (Space) grab moveable boulders, Combined with moving you can push/pull boulders.
- Press (Escape) to open the Menu.
There is an ingame-tutorial to learn the controls. Evade liquids, crouch below branches, jump on platforms and push boulders to reach the end of the level!
Possible Future Updates:
We were not able to implement all our ideas into this game because of the limited time we had during the jam. If we continue working on this game we might add NPCs like insects that also search protection underground, the player would need to follow them. Ideas like these might help us creating a good story for the game. We might consider a release in steam if we work further on the project. A lot of code will be needed to tweak and several bugs to be fixed, but as a start we definitely rushed a solid basis for our idea.
Post Jam Changes:
We are going to fix some bugs and listen to the feedback in the comments. When we upload a new version of the game we also update the changelog here. - Fixed Bug: Jump speed is framerate dependent - Fixed Bug: Jumping against corners causes the player to get stuck - Fixed Bug: Credits are not properly shown after the last level - Fixed Bug: Boulders are pushed away without grabbing them sometimes
- Made jumping slower and therefore easier to control
- Player is not constantly shrinking through rain anymore, only if he touches liquids
- Enlightened an area in level 1 where platforms were hard to see
- Adjusted time for best and worst result in level score
- Credits can be opened through the main menu
Credits:
- Dietmar Puschmann [aka "Rayo"] (Main Programmer), Website, Twitter, GitHub, Youtube
- Matthias Young [aka "Ferocious Industries"] (3D Artist, Level Designer), Website, YouTube
Development Tools used:
- Unity
- Visual Studio
- Blender
Third-Party Assets used:
Free Assets from:
We fixed some assets so they fit into our game and added some custom animations for the player.
| Link | https://rayo.itch.io/the-shrinking |
| Link | https://www.mediafire.com/file/y481lhpo4doik9s/TheShrinking_v110.zip/file |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/the-shrinking |
Ratings
| Overall | 837th | 3.558⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1071th | 3.24⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 387th | 3.688⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 997th | 3.58⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 161th | 4.18⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 20🗳️ | 16🗨️ |
I had a great time playing but I have a few notes. First off, it felt like the camera stayed a little too tight to the player. I think the camera movement could be dampened a little bit. My other note is that the player and blocks did some funny things on some edge cases sometimes. The blocks would sometimes sit on the edge of a cliff and not fall immediately. The player sometimes would do some funny behavior on collisions too. Seems like small things that can get tuned once you have more time. I didn't think any of these things really took away too much from the experience for me. Great game! I'm glad I played it
On stream, one of my suggestions was to increase the double jump height, but I think for the tone you are setting I think it would actually be more appropriate to remove the double jumping. The character is really responsive and easy to control, but almost feels like a character in an arcade game. It feels good to control him, just a little out of place!
It's cool that you added the orbs and timer for challenge runs, it's a great way to add more replayability
(I could not find a couple of those hekkin orbs xD)
Great game, looking forward to more!
Was fun to play and the mechanic was super cool! I think you can go a bit more in depth with the shrinking and its effects on the level in further builds!
Thanks for dropping by the stream, and keep working on this game.. its the start of something for sure! :smile_cat:
This one was downright gorgeous. I love the mood y'all were able to set with this one. Absolutely top-notch work here. :ok_hand:
Would you consider making Space Jump? I find it a little easier than pressing W, and perhaps Shift could be used for grabbing / moving things?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsMPyOopzzU
It took me a long time to get used to the control and understand what was making me shrink and what was not making me shrink, I guess I didn't pay enough attention to the intro text.
This game is beautiful and has an amazing atmosphere. It reminds me a lot of inside, but less creepy :smiling_imp:
I feel that the jumping is a bit off, but I don't know how to describe it properly. Sometimes, according to my size, the animation was clearly allowing the character to jump on top of a platform, but the physic denied it and the character got stock on the side of the platform then felt. I don't know what cause it, it made the game harder to understand.
However, once I got used to the quirkiness of the controls, this was really fun.
A last suggestion of improvement, if you ever decide to continue this game: when you get very small, most of the screen become black and it's a bit hard to distinguish between what is the background and what are game objects. It may be interesting to step the gamma up a notch, or to add a setting to change it as ever player screen is different.
Other than that, amazing entry! Congratulations!