shaftception by testudor

We really cut it close this time... It's not a good idea to push actual level design back to the last minute.
Game
The goal is simple: dodge obstacles or use your boost to deal with them and try not to die!
Controls
- A,D for movement
- Shift + S for boost
- Space for respawning after you died (no time left to fix the UI...)
Tools
- Unity
- Visual Studio
- VS Code
- Affinity Photo
- Affinity Designer
- Adobe Photoshop
- Procreate
- Ableton Live 10
Credits
- Art: @hamsteroyale
- Programming: @Klon160 @testudor
- Sound Design and "Music": @testudor
Ratings
| Overall | 1346th | 3.267⭐ | 60🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1301th | 3.086⭐ | 60🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1471th | 2.793⭐ | 60🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 953th | 3.621⭐ | 60🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 817th | 3.759⭐ | 60🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 305th | 3.845⭐ | 60🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 1363th | 2⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1489th | 3.018⭐ | 59🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 102🗳️ | 93🗨️ |
Good that there is a respawn ability, otherwise it would be frustrating.
The obstacle with the button sequence is weirde at the beginning, took me quite a lot of turns to figure it out.
The boost would maybe be better on a single button and not sift+S.
Nice music and level design.
Graphics are also super nice!
A few remarks:
= The boosting feels a little bit buggy. Some times it didn't work at all and others it worked when I was pressing only shift. Also I think it should be remapped to a single key press, only `Shift` for example since it doesn't do anything else by its own (it would be even better to have only `S` but I can see you might have problems with the WASD button promts you are asked to press duing the game)
- Speaking about the button prompts, it took me a while to understand what I had to do and I was ready to give up right at the beggining. Some more guidance on this the first time you see it would be welcome.
Overall great try, but for your next LD I would suggest to cut a few corners and spend less time on implementing the mechanics of the game and more time on creating more levels and finetuning the level design. It took me a few LD entries to understand this for myself and it made a difference in the final quality of the game.
I loved the art and audio! The falling drill thing doesnt make any sense and was fun anyways.
The controls I think could use some love. The shift s thing is a bit involved for a game you have to react that quickly in.
I liked how you slowed time in order to allow time to key in the combo for the lower things.
Nice job!
I really liked how you made that WASD part, I would have been happier if there had been much more of it.
And you should have made the hitboxes more forgiven.
A good game, well done!
Given how narrow the shaft is, the horizontal speed is a bit high. It makes it very hard to be precise.
The art is nice, and the music works very well for the style of game.
That being said, it works pretty well as a memorization/speed running game and I had a good time with it! Nice work!
Very minor complaint - the Restart & Respawn buttons are very similarly worded, and close together, and I clicked restart instead of respawn by accident more than once!
Would've liked to see more levels, but good job!
The game looks like a lot of fun just glancing at it.
That said, I question a few things :
-WADS sequence at the beginning is super weird and annoying
-pushing shift+S to do a boost is really counter intuitive
-This game doesn't require a mouse, so why not just use the arrows of the keyboard as an option ?
-Restart and Respawn are too close in meaning and might confuse users (since it resets the save points, that's kind of a big deal)
-I am not sure the space button is the right choice for respawning... Maybe enter would have been better...
Still, I am amazed out how beautiful the game sounds and look !
And the main concept behind it works really well.
Fun mechanics, lots of room to expand.
My best time was 31.9
The music matches the asthetics of the game perfectly, in my oppinion and the graphics look amazing.
I wished, the level was longer though :see_no_evil:
Cool art and music as well. And I like the idea of a looping level to try and beat your previous time.
Wish the level was a bit longer but you wrote that you had time issues, so I understand.
All in all a fun game.