LudumData

HELLEVATORS by Quackqack

[raw]
made by Quackqack for Ludum Dare 48 (JAM)

hellevators.png

Play as Satan’s HR department, operating HELLEVATORS to ensure damned souls can traverse the lobby and reach their allocated layer of hell.

  • Gain time when souls reach the portal that matches the colour of the indicator above their head.
  • Lose time if they don’t make it! A soul can only survive in the lobby for so long!
    • A soul's indicator will spin faster as they get closer to expiry.
  • Souls will only move when they have a full path to their portal.

CONTROLS:

  • Click on two points in an elevator shaft to spawn an elevator.
  • Click the remove button at the top of an active shaft to drop the elevator out of play.

gameplay.gif

screenshot1.png

screenshot3.png

Link https://quackqack.itch.io/hellevators
Link https://github.com/dylanljenkins/ld48
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/hellevators

Ratings

Overall 1198th 3.35⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Fun 1240th 3.125⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 204th 3.925⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Theme 1536th 3.075⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 1209th 3.4⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Audio 792th 3.342⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Humor 549th 3.147⭐ 19🧑‍⚖️
Mood 1609th 2.825⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Given 31🗳️ 9🗨️

Feedback

vegmuffin
26. Apr 2021 · 14:21 UTC
Sadly, I had no idea what to do, souls spawned in random areas, I thought I had to build elevators to move them somewhere, but the elevators were not picking them up, I must've missed something
bw_devel
26. Apr 2021 · 15:28 UTC
Things I like:
- This is a really fun management/puzzler game, I like it a lot
- great graphics for the game
- metal!
- sounds fit the actions well
- the environment impact from snipping an elevator is satisfying

Improvements:
- a scoreboard for seeing your best runs would be nice
- I guess it would change the mechanics of the game a bit (maybe in a worse direction) but would be cool if the passengers try to get as close as they can to the destination and not necessarily require a complete path.

Bugs:
- didn't find any
superpokeunicorn
26. Apr 2021 · 16:12 UTC
An interesting concept! I like having to manage competing interests, with each color requiring mutually exclusive paths. I will say that requiring a full path for the guys to even start moving made it really hard to multitask; it felt like I could usually only move 1 color at a time, maybe 2 if I was luck with the spawns. Maybe there's just a higher level strategy I'm not seeing here. On another note, I really liked the music! Overall, a very unique game. Nice work!
Uzpykes
26. Apr 2021 · 16:26 UTC
Hell yeah! Loved the puzzle mechanic. I think two small issues for me were that soul can still die when in the middle of way to destination and that elevators move constantly - I think better approach would be if elevators waited for souls (if there's no soul waiting on the other end) before moving.
minibobbo
26. Apr 2021 · 20:20 UTC
I do really like this! It is a cool puzzle and it was hard to optimize the paths and keep them open when you had different guys all over the place all waiting for different elevators.

Graphics were simple, but worked really well. It was clear at a glance what everything was and what it did. the only think is that sometimes the red and pink marks were a little hard to tell apart unless they were next to each other.
Earlybard
27. Apr 2021 · 05:43 UTC
Hi @vegmuffin, the souls will only move to their colour-coded portal once a complete path has been made to it using elevators.

As @superpokeunicorn and @bw-devel suggested, it might be more intuitive to have souls start pathing towards their portal even if a full path hasn't been connected.

Thanks for the feedback!
DallOner
29. Apr 2021 · 01:13 UTC
Oh man! that puzzle mechanics are really cool.
ryannielson
29. Apr 2021 · 01:15 UTC
Cool concept, I like the art and the idea is great. Being able to cut an elevator loose feels good as well. I'd agree with some other commentators though, it wasn't obvious that you need the full path for a soul to start moving. Just fixing that little issue and allowing partial paths would be a huge improvement.
smiley
29. Apr 2021 · 01:17 UTC
Took a few attempts to understand the mechanics but after that it went well playing. The elevators somehow made me think about the old game Impossible mission. The music got a bit boring after awhile. A few more instrument would have been nice.
aboogoost
29. Apr 2021 · 01:19 UTC
As has been discussed, it would be great to be able to move people one step at a time. It would feel really clever to have combos and figure out optimizations for various groups of people depending on the needs.

The UI makes it difficult to play the game. It's easy to miss a passenger spawning and it's hard to know when someone is/isn't in an elevator - that's a problem when a significant part of the game play is cutting them loose :)

Overall it's a fun concept and I enjoyed trying it out. Good job and thank you!
Local Minimum
29. Apr 2021 · 17:26 UTC
I also was confused the first round why the characters didn't move until I made the complete path, but on second playthrough, I knew what to do. It might also have been nice if the target location was a bit clearer, perhaps by each of them having a different shape and a bit larger display on the characters. Good game though!
SleepyStudios
03. May 2021 · 16:04 UTC
Really great mechanic. It felt simple, intuitive and mostly fair (apart from needing to complete the full path). Also really loved the guitar just jamming out in the background.
Hilda Hay
05. May 2021 · 02:59 UTC
Having a time penalty when souls "time out" is far too punishing, and makes it near-impossible to survive for very long once many souls start spawning.
Cruise Elroy
05. May 2021 · 03:10 UTC
Really interesting concept and a unique take on the theme! I think the main thing that's missing right now is polish/streamlining. It was a bit confusing as to why the souls wouldn't go anywhere at first, and they often don't catch the hellevators synchronously. Perhaps having a bit more leeway by preventing the doors from shutting while a soul is running towards it would lead to better game feel. Still, a pretty fun jam entry nonetheless!
ZeppelinGames
06. May 2021 · 05:17 UTC
Interesting puzzle game. The NPCs moved a bit slow, would've been easier to understand and manage what was going on if NPCs moved straight away. Enjoyable overall
Sublustris
07. May 2021 · 09:47 UTC
Heh :) nice game. Controls are bit confusing at the beginning, but after a couple of minutes it feels ok :)
gamescodedogs
07. May 2021 · 09:48 UTC
I spent some time playing the game and enjoyed it a lot.
Generic Games
12. May 2021 · 15:40 UTC
That was really fun! I enjoyed multitasking and the difficulty is well balanced, so it was very engaging. Feels more polished because of the sound effects and the screen shake after an elevator drops.

One thing I would like is for the souls to contrast more against the background. I sometimes missed ones that spawned against the brighter earth texture.

Good game :)
someone
13. May 2021 · 14:05 UTC
Cool mechanics, but it seems impossible to survive for very long. Once they start spawning a lot the -15s penalty ends the game very quickly.
I think it would have been better if the characters would get as close as they could rather than waiting for a complete path.
The falling elevators when you remove them was a nice touch.
The best score I achieved was 123.
Rialgar
13. May 2021 · 16:11 UTC
I think it would have been better to have them move every time they can get closer to their target, not only when the entire path exists. This way I had to make a single path, wait for them to go through each elevator, drop it and see if I can now make another complete path. Getting over the entire map was basically impossible.
Franklins Ghost
15. May 2021 · 03:30 UTC
The way you release the hellevators when you don't need them anymore and they just drop out was a nice touch, really liked that and was quite satisfying. Would suggest that the people appear quicker as I felt like the time was counting down for awhile before I had my first person appear to move. The puzzle aspect of managing the hellevators and removing them worked well and thought that was a great mechanic.