Hellscape by ToxicComputer

Welcome to Hellscape! A fast-paced action roguelite that makes you transcend down the 7 layers of hell. Make your way through hell and reach the calm void once again.
- Fight your way through turrets, wall gunners, business men, and regular hell people!
GAMEPLAY Each level varies from top down to side view, in the side view sections you are supposed to regain calmness for the next level, as the challenge rapidly progresses. Top down view is where all the gameplay happens.
Press SPACE in the top down view to regenerate the room and R in the side view to regenerate the room (sometimes the side view's portal will not open :cry: ).
Have fun! Will try to patch all bugs that are found.
| Link | https://nottofufood.itch.io/hellscape |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/hellscape |
Ratings
| Overall | 1182th | 3.364⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 589th | 3.561⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1045th | 3.109⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1088th | 3.516⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1694th | 2.606⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1094th | 3.359⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 31🗳️ | 40🗨️ |
Took me a bit to get to the bottom
The only 2 real issues I found were that the character is way too tall on the top down levels making it sometimes literally impossible to dodge the bullets flying at you, and if you are up against the wall, you can't shoot away from it because of the wonky gun rotation.
Overall, it definitely needs some polishing, but the game mechanics were great and this was one of the most fun games I've played in this jam! Awesome job!
@flippingkun Thank you! I hope you had fun ^^
Core gameplay is quite fun but technical problems can really destroy the fun. Bugs are the most obvious ones. I couldn't fire from time to time. Level look's buggy, walls are sometimes strange.
Sometimes portal can appear at the beggining of the level. I would advise to either make sure that portal is generated at the "end" of level or require player to kill most enemies. Being able to finish the game without using guns clearly shows the need to change something about that. It was also a bit to easy to just frantically wander aroung the map and find portal (maybe add collision with enemies).
Player feedback is lacking. I understand that it is hard to polish games for LDJAM (I never succeed). Despite that it is important to provide visual/audio feedback for such fast game. I never had a feel about how much health I got. It almost seemed like I was randomly getting and losing health. Invisible guns reloading added to guns feeling buggy. I also often didn't notice when guns changed.
Platformer levels felt underutilised. Being able to regenerate room made me fell less in danger (especially because my health changed that way). Space key should be used for important and often used action like jumping in platformer part. By setting game-breaking action on such a key seems like mistake.
All that being said, I think your game is good. No one can polish everything in game jam and it is hard to predict such problems with so little playtesting available. Lack of time is a problem for everyone.
Maze generator is nice and promising. Even in this rudimentary and buggy stage it was fun to play the game, so you got fast paced shooting somewhat right (I would say you headed in the right direction with it) and you don't have to change that part of the game (just tweak some things to get pacing you want and it will be fun).
You definitely achieved something and your game could become nice full-fledged game.
@fonics That is a great suggestion, thank you for the feedback will add this post jam.
@bobafett89 That is also a fantastic suggestion, thanks for the feedback and im happy you had fun!
@knowledge Holy moly this is the best feedback I got ever, and is really gunna help me out post jam. Thank you so much for the feedback its gunna really help out! :D. By the gun not firing from time to time, did you happen to be standing in the "safe zone" when you space in a level? Like the 3x3 grid thing, because if so I disabled the pistol in that area so that the player couldn't shoot the enemies when they could not shoot the player. In any case I will look into this bug as it is really bad if it happens. Thank you for the feedback on the space bar as well, that will be really helpful. (Maybe I could add a grenade button as one of the upgrades haha). But yeah, im glad you found these bugs and issues, yet still had fun, your feedback was amazing and im happy to see that you would think this could be a full-fledged-game. Thank you!
I positively rate music, Gameplay and I think you hit well to theme.
@mira Thank you for the kind words, im really glad you enjoyed the level generation! I really love your idea of having a mini game, so I will try to add it! Im really happy you enjoyed the music, I composed it and am really proud of it, but I opted out of the music category since I spent weeks making it before, so it would be against the rules for me to ask for ratings in that category. But yeah, super happy you liked it!
@aquasheep3000 Definitely want to expand on these ideas, since a lot of people seem to enjoy it. Im super happy you liked the mix of top down and side views! Thank you for the kind words.
For some reason you cant shoot when touching the starting tile which was confusing. I'm guessing it was something to stop the AI from killing you the second you spawn, in which case the effect should either be disabled when you try to shoot, or the tile be highlighted a different colour.
It was fun that the enemies could hit each other, I cleared most of a floor by running circles around them to make them kill each other.
The gun position was a bit odd.
The exit would often spawn somewhere inaccessible on the Gateway levels meaning I could not progress.
@pxldev Im glad you liked it :D
Bullets looked impossible to dodge but it's not a problem because health is restored from kills! Smart.
Really enjoyed this experience and its pacing!
So, here is my list of improvement suggestions.
- As mentioned above, sometimes enemies become very very trigger happy. I am pretty sure they fire every frame once that happens. Of course, standing in that bullet stream for a second is basically a guaranteed death.
- Some of the sidescroller rooms generate in a way where you can softlock by falling into a pit you can't get out of. I know I can press R to regenerate the room so this wasn't anything game breaking, just something you could fix if you wanted to.
- Most of the time, you simply outrun the camera. You have to half blindly run into new rooms, hoping you won't be greeted by 20 enemies mowing you down. You could add an offset to the camera to always show a bit more in the direction the player is moving.
I wish there were more visual difference between top down sidescroll modes and and pace could be not that fast, because sometimes one can completely miss the things happening to the screen
Overall very solid concept, well done!
@tentaclemax Thank you :)

The timer at the end was a good idea, it engourages you to play multiple times to beat your score. A shared leaderboard could be even better! Well done adding some sound, a lot of game lacks of it and the music were nice (unfortunately you removed the audio cathegory). I didn't find the side view section very useful... to regain calmness maybe next time let the player choose when to start each level (it's easier and you'll save time).
Like someone already mentioned, having bullets coming from out of the screen is a bit "disorienting". I also found that if you are close to the wall and your gun is into the wall it can't fire. Here is an example:

A smooth transition between the levels (maybe a fade out/in) could have helped to a better experience. Sometimes you are teleported from a level to another whitout really understand why XD
Overall a nice game with a lot of implemented mechanics (map generation, top/side view, enemies, upgrades, sound...), maybe too many for a single person in a weekend timespan... but you did it :-) Congratulations for your submit.