Safe Cave by Papaver
Oh no, the aliens are coming!
Avoid being beamed up by their fancy powerful green beam, and go as deep as possible into the Safe Cave!
Can you beat all 7 levels and find a safe space deep down in the ground? Post your highscore in the comments, it will appear after you touch the 7th flag.
Best played in Chrome. Firefox can be quite laggy...
Controls:
- Movement: Arrows keys or WASD or ZQSD
- Jump: Arrow up or down, or space, or Z/W/S. All the options!
- Mute sound: M.
- Pause: P.
- Reset level: R.
Credits:
Tools:
JavaScript, CraftyJS, Aseprite, Audacity, LDtk, FL studio
We'd love to hear your feedback and to see your highscores!
| Link | https://anneroos.home.fmf.nl/ld48 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/safe-cave |
Ratings
| Overall | 274th | 3.933⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 137th | 4.017⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 145th | 4.017⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 290th | 4.083⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 717th | 3.833⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 563th | 3.583⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 250th | 3.65⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 889th | 3.517⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 42🗳️ | 42🗨️ |


Good luck and have fun!
The beam mechanic is a smart idea ! I would maybe explore the idea of not having any jump (neither from the ground nor the roof) and having to use the beam for any kind of jump. That would make the level design harder, tho.

Cool game overall!
The biggest difference is that you don't control when gravity changes directly, your positioning and timing does. This created really unique scenarios when it came to stuff like speedrunning, where you would purposely do some weird routing to make sure the beam was in the right spot at the right time to do some optimal jumps. I liked that there were multiple paths as well, so you could be -relatively- creative in your approach to things, depending on your skillset.
The constant up and down switches were very cool since the level design was spot on. I found myself quickly and constantly scanning both the floor and ceiling for opportunities to progress. Also, the distance from you to the UFO also affects the beam, and thus the platforming and level design. Very interesting stuff!
The music using the beam AS part of it was so good. Everything about this design is so tight.
My last comment is on the game concept itself. Your concept was straight to the point and I got the twist immediately. The idea of using ceilings to avoid getting sucked up was very smart and a great way to pull in the player. Fantastic job~
Overall a very solid entry, nice job!
My time was 314 seconds with 5 deaths, hope that that is nice for a first clear :D
Also nice graphics and music. Very funny wordplay with 'level down'.
Oh yeah, this mechanic is gnarly! I would love to play way more levels of this game :)
Edit: I got a new personal high score this moring, woohoo!

Well done and a lot of fun!

@hugison Thank you! :smile: You have a point about the cows! At the moment you can't really use them to your advantage, but they can block you sometimes. :wink:
@haivron Thanks! Yes, we could have integrated the cows more into the platforming. Maybe in an post-LD version. :slight_smile:
@hidjy Thanks! That's also an interesting idea. I guess that would mean a lot of running from left to right. :sweat_smile: Or maybe the movement of the ufo would then have to be different. Maybe it could just keep going left and right, instead of following the player. Or maybe you could even control the beam. :thinking: So many possibilities! :smile:
This was fun small game! Cows are super cute :heart_eyes: I really liked this UFO ray mechanic. It would be nice addition to be able to throw some objects to the UFO to temporarily block the ray.
My stats: time 468.02s, 17 restarts.
Here is a timed link for the stream:
https://youtu.be/vC17EaL3CcI?t=8526
Great idea and gameplay :))