Vertigo by GaryS
Vertigo
A single or two-player battle to reach the depths of hell... Don't fall too far off the screen, or get caught at the top. Knock your opponent and enemies off ledges to clear your path....
SURVIVE!!!
Best played with friends... give the 2 player a try. ;)
Controls
- 2-button gamepad support
Keyboard:
- WAD / cursors - Move
- , or SPACE - Attack
Player 2:
- NUMPAD 486 - Move
- NUMPAD 0 - Attack
Alternative keyboard layouts supported (azerty / dvorak)
Hints
- You can coyote jump to reach platforms. Run instead of jumping off platforms, save the jump for when you really need it.
- Strike angels 3 times, it rewards on last hit. Blue orb gives a life, yellow orb slows the scrolling.
- You can fall slightly further than you can see. Listen for a fall stun sound and keep still, you may still be alive.
Please leave a comment if you can - your feedback helps us improve and we love to hear what you think of our work!
Ratings
| Overall | 860th | 3.547⭐ | 97🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 812th | 3.418⭐ | 99🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1271th | 2.953⭐ | 98🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 589th | 3.885⭐ | 98🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 555th | 3.974⭐ | 98🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 516th | 3.628⭐ | 96🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 769th | 2.858⭐ | 83🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 953th | 3.473⭐ | 95🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 105🗳️ | 124🗨️ |



Solid job!
Pah... NGMI!
Great work!
Question: what does the yellow orb does? Did not managed to figure that out.
It's not that well tested, so possible that it doesn't work too well if your framerate is lower? I might mess with the timings a bit.
The movement and hitting are satisfying but sometimes not fast enough for the tough spots that I ended up in while playing :grin:
Some platforms were a bit glitchy (couldn't drop off of one side but could off of the other) and some patterns that spawned felt impossible to navigate without falling. Some AI on the mobs to make them more interested in the player would be cool. I wish I could try the 2-player version :cry:
Overall this is a really impressive entry IMO. GJ!
You can give the two player a go without a friend... in testing I've just been controlling them one with each hand! You're missing the competative fun to be sure, but should be able to get a good idea of how it works. ;)
I'll admit, I got very lucky with the angels on this run...
I wish the attack was a little more reachy/arcadey. I want to be able to dash at these foes and quick attack em like a ninja.
The air jump was a little confusing at first, until I realized it was reset by hitting the ground, and a jump from ground disabled it, would have liked a double jump, so I could always count on the air jump.
Overall it was fun to play. Well done
- I like the gameplay, I was cool and fun
- Your pixel art fits fine into your game
- The controls are a bit chaotic. Putting the jump on the Z in a platformer is never a good idea. Actually, setting the Jump button on a other key than the Spacebar is an heresy. And, on a gamepad, the B and the A are inverted (B to Jump and A to Attack isn't a good binding)
- The enemies aren't a real problem in the game. I think you can set them aggressive after 4-5 minutes of game.
Good job in this jam!
Edit: here is the link to the video [https://youtu.be/mYqBFQerlCI?t=274](https://youtu.be/mYqBFQerlCI?t=274)
Just to let you know that jump is only bound to Z to handle alternative keyboard layouts. It's also bound to W, the UP cursor and the comma (with attack on the full stop).
I do agree on the gamepad binding though... The binding is common in arcades, but in this game the Jump is the primary button so we should have swapped that around.
As for the solo play, the game is a bit intimidating at first as you're jumping down into the unknown, but you start to get the hang of it, especially utilizing the double jump to save yourself, even after falling on an enemy. I think the parts that really shined were the Quickman sections where you had to outrun the maze.
The art is great and cohesive. I loved the animations and it reminded me of stuff like Blackthorne where you have pixel art with just tons of frames that make it stand out.
How much time did you guys spend on the multiplayer vs the singleplayer? It's not often you see a game with both. Actually........I can't think of another LD game that's ever done that so I'm not sure how tough that would be on your dev resources.
Anywho, you got the most important part of the gameplay right, which was smacking an enemy. Even though the game could get repetitive, that part NEVER got old. So I had a bit of "Just one more smack" syndrome going on until I eventually slipped one too many times. Good job on this game, I'd love to hear what the lore is for this person just heading down nonstop and beating up demons. Maybe it's just a Sisyphus thing...
In terms of the multiplayer, I think we wanted to have something that set our game apart from the myriad similar concepts we were sure would flood the jam. @super-hadoken has had this idea kicking around for a while and multiplayer was an important part of it... but we weren’t sure we could pull it off in the time, so it was initially just a case of giving it a go and seeing if it worked. The dev time wasn’t too bad in the end. Obviously there were extra graphics and audio for the second character, but code wise I have an input control plug-in I wrote a while back that makes local multiplayer pretty easy to handle, and the player classes are self contained enough that we could just spawn another one and change the sprites.
Glad you enjoyed bashing enemies... I think in a post jam version, we’d want to make that more meaningful - in that currently it doesn’t matter if you kill them or not!
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1006003249

Also, maybe it can bring more challenge if enemies decrease your hp on collision , not only bounce you off.
The platform speeds increase by increments every 10 seconds I think, and the increment gets smaller as the platforms get faster.
The yellow angels slow the platforms down, and there’s a check when spawning an angel that replaces it with an enemy if the platforms are already moving quite slowly.
We didn’t have time to implement anything more clever about which platform chunks can follow which, or weighting probability of angels spawning.
Not sure if we’ll be open sourcing the code, but if you’re using Phaser, jump on the discord and I’ll be happy to share bits.
The fighting system is simple but works well.
At the beginning, the scroll speed is too slow. Maybe allow the camera to follows the player when is go down.
Overall is good game !
I don't have a lot to add over what others have said, other than that I think the background should scroll at the same speed as the platform. That would give the impression that the platforms were attached to the tunnel, and that the camera is what's scrolling -- as it is now, my mind kept telling me that the platforms were also falling, but at a different speed to the camera.
And thanks for sharing the info about Phaser - had never heard of it until today.
Simple and enjoyable
Cool game, nice graphics first of all
The screams could have been more crisp
Great submission!
The gameplay is a little floaty, though. The movement especially, but the attack feels a bit weak too. But I can't complain too much, because this is still super fun!
Really nice entry, good job!
In few minutes, I was absorb by your game.
The graphism and music are very nice and controls help to play as you want.
Sometimes I scared me by jumping to far but some platefrom outside the screen save my life :)
It's a nice entry.
The gameplay is pretty cool, and the graphics work really well.
I think the attack could be improved, as its range is really small and it totally stops you when you use it. I think solving at least one of those problems would make the game far more enjoyable, and allow to make more advanced enemy ais without making the game too hard.
Really cool entry overall !
I've played your game here (as you asked). :)
I will make the full analysis soon.
https://youtu.be/lciF4F6MkJw
1 - Mechanics, Learning and Flow:
The player's character (PC) must descend, jumping (or simply dropping) between platforms. The screen space is limited at the top (as if there was a solid limit) and the lower limit (slightly below the visible) limits the character's descent (going down more than this limit leads the character to lose a life).
Learning the basics is easy, there are few command buttons (attack, jump, move and a few other interactions). There are some rules that are learned with the passing of the game sessions (as is the case with the limits of the screen, the number of lives, the reach of the jump and others.
The flow of the game makes us feel both anxiety and restlessness. Anxiety because the game has some difficulty (for example, it takes a long time between one blow and another and it is not possible to attack in the air, which greatly reduces the combinations of action). Restlessness because the screen descends a little bit slowly, in my view (I don't know if the solution would be a larger section of the screen (which could make the elements less visible) or an acceleration of the descent (combined with other forms of interaction that allow to advance more fluidly).
2 - Graphics, Audio and Narrative:
The graphic art and the sound art are very good (not only because the event time is short, but it really seemed pleasant).
The narrative within the game is not very expressive and the logic behind why the fall could be reworked after the event (in post-jam version).
3 - Culture:
The game makes use of cultural elements based on the characters available and on some elements such as creatures and objects, allowing you to connect to a scenario that makes reference to the sacred versus the profane (which runs through several moments in terrestrial history as a reference).
The game also draws from the source of other games with a challenge of survival, appearing to be a type of arcade. I suppose that having a better timesheet available could generate even more engagement (even more thinking about updates, keeping history and the possibility of playing in previous versions).
The game being also for two players is also very interesting for times of social distancing (or a certain resumption of social proximity, depending on how the local government has resolved itself in relation to vaccination).
4 - Monetization:
I suppose the game could be sold cheaply on Steam, or in smaller stores. I also suppose that it would be possible to implement waiting screens for game sessions, with advertising, perhaps (especially if it were made available for free to smartphones). In any case, a ranking system between players of the same version could be implemented (as mentioned in the previous item).
The scrolling background did make me feel a bit sick after a while and the SFZ were out of place with the music levels. Both were great though, loved that moody sound track.
Game play was fun and evolved with the speed. I thought that sometimes my character if hit by a skeleton for example i couldn't turn back to face them to hit them back fast enough. A bit frustrrating.
The graphics and audio were quite good, but I had issues with the controls and pacing.
The controls felt gummy. It was like there was a delay of a frame or three between pressing the key and the player acting on the keypress.
The enemy bounce-box was very large relative both the the player swing and to the enemy image.
These two issues compounded each other. Because the controls are gummy, swinging takes much longer than expected. Because the enemy box is big, I'd get thrown around far before I expected. This was frustrating.
I also got stunlocked on a small platform with a wall. Because the enemy box was so big and the platform so small, I got perpetually pushed back into the wall.
The pacing felt odd. I expected a combat game, and instead spent thirty seconds doing some slow platforming. Ensuring enemies are spawned shortly after the game begins would be an easy fix.
The thing where the player crouches and is stunned when jumping to a platform below was interesting and realistic--jump recovery isn't easy. However, being unable to control the player for a few seconds felt bad. I would strongly recommend doing something to add "coolness" to that moment, to make being stunned "worth it"--particle effects when the player lands, pushing back nearby enemies, that sort of thing.
I think you've got a good base to work off of, but I'd really like to see some optimization around the controls.
The game look great and seems nice and all but the fact that the camera doesn't follow the player when you go down just bug me. I have to wait the see where I can jump and waiting is boring so I take risk to try to go faster but in the end I just die sooo, I can't play...
Controls: The keyboard controls were almost impossible, but it was OK with a gamepad. I would have preferred arrows+X+C I think. I did not know I could air-jump at first.
Balance: It was difficult to sight-read the levels, fighting was often not worth it. I sometimes had to stay high up to wait for more of the level to spawn in, which was annoying. A more vertical screen layout might have helped.
Great job on the submission. :)
I thought fighting through the enemies in the single-player mode was quite enjoyable. I think the non-lethal combat combined with the knock-back systems makes for a pretty nice form of gameplay. I can definitely see the potential as a multiplayer fighting game.
The statues are a particularly nice feature, I think... the requirement to hit them multiple times makes them a nice source of competition.
And I have a question, can 2 players play without a numpad in the keyboard?
The only other way for 2 players to play is using controllers.