Descending by khofez

An Angel falls from the sky opening a pathway directly to Hell. What do you do? You go deep down below and slain demons and creatures along the way while being careful not to FALL TO DEATH.
Reach the depths of the tower where the Angel fell and fight the devil that awaits you.
Controls:
WASD or Arrows and Space (Stick axis and A button) -> Movement / Jump / Double Jump
X or K (Right Bump) -> Attack
Esc or P (Start Button) -> Pause



Ps: The game is kind of heavy with many light sources so it may be slower on the browser, it's worth trying but there is the standalone build just in case.
| Link | https://elvismd.itch.io/descending |
| Link | https://elvismd.itch.io/descending |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/descending |
Ratings
| Overall | 391th | 3.837⭐ | 106🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 876th | 3.375⭐ | 106🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1590th | 2.68⭐ | 105🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 507th | 3.938⭐ | 106🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 103th | 4.462⭐ | 108🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 243th | 3.92⭐ | 108🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 88th | 4.297⭐ | 108🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 247🗳️ | 11🗨️ |
I couldn't access your game.
Edit: The game is done now!
The gameplay was satisfying, but the enemies took so many hits to kill that it got kind of tiresome to hack at them. And some of your utterly gorgeous foreground set-pieces blocked my ability to see what was going on. Maybe move them to a back layer so that the player and enemies are always visible?
Also liked the ambient music.
Jumps and attacks had smooth animations and polished, but as mentioned above, too many hits to kill enemies gets tiresome. Also most of them having the same pattern (going directly to you) makes it a tad repetitive.
But again, impressive piece of work for a jam! Congrats for the submission!
Other than that the gameplay has a few issues, its a little unclear what to do and the attack spamming sadly also leaves something to be desired (naturally this isn't a dealbreaker, it's a gamejam, and it looks great).
The one thing that did make me quit was that at some point the darkness left me without seeing there was a small drop, which then became a big drop, and I tough, oooh I'm going after the angel maybe? and then I died, which was also the first time falling damage was introduced, I'd likely have halted my speed were I to have known falling damage was a thing.
all things said, excellent entry and well done :) love the fibes
The gameplay the art and the music are very blasphemous and I love it, however I agreed that some enemies take more time to kill so it gets a little bit boring. And maybe I have to play it more so i can get used to the map because i really lost at some point.
But other than that very nice, i love the dark effect in the castle.
Some noticed that the combat system was lacking, but I think it's still pretty good for jam.
Kinda lacking also the level design, but still impressive for a 72h span.
Just to be clear, I really loved the mood. If you were to develop and improve this game, I would certainly buy it.
Excellent game!
Great job . Please check my game too :)
There seemed to be some slight input lag on the web version but everything was fine in the download.
Though, it does come at the cost of the gameplay feeling a little weak. The movement is floaty, which is my main complaint; but the combat also feels a little weak at times - you've got a good foundation on that, but I think maybe some more bass-heavy hit sound effects might help sell it?
Overall though, I'm nit-picking, this is a stellar entry and you should be proud!
Just an ending note: I saw you say that most of the art was sourced rather than created, with an exception being the character. The character turned out awesome, and was by far my favourite art piece! If you develop this further, I'd love to see what you could do with a whole game.
I do think other people have pointed this out, the game mechanics could have needed some attention, being blocked by health potions because you are at full health is a bit of a bugger for instance :D And maybe the lightning effects are a bit to high on contrast, a lighter dark with some details always shining through might have fixed that perhaps?
And maybe a bit more linear level design, right now it feels like I can go pretty much anywhere to reach the bottom, and you end up dodging most of the enemies on the way down, without having any punishment for doing so.
Feels like I'm putting down a lot of criticism here, but it's only because I think this could become great if it gets a couple of days more on it's neck! So great entry all in all! Good job mate! Cheerz!
An atmospheric dark adventure!
I just miss something to illuminate the protagonist and his immediate surroundings
I think some kind of tutorial would be great. On my first run I made it half way through to the boss without even knowing how to attack :D
I got lost on my way down, too.
Maybe the leveldesign could be improved a little bit.
In terms of the level construction, I really had no idea where I was going, other than that I wanted to go _down_. Often I found myself just falling into the unknown abyss, with a view to randomly double jump a bit further down in the hopes I'd hit a platform. It seemed to work, but didn't feel intuitive. Perhaps a mini-map would be helpful?
I found the boss way too easy - though I was glad of it, since I didn't much fancy having to start again at the very top! I don't know if the boss marked a continue point, but that would have been a good touch.
All in all, a great entry and worthy of spending some more time on.
Some suggestions:
- The potions shouldn't block the character, otherwise you risk getting stuck on the more narrow passages.
- The enemy health seemed a bit off: the "fat" enemies were dying in 3 hits while the "skinny" enemies were dying in 4. Usually you want the weaker-seeming enemies to die faster.
- I defeated the boss but nothing happened, it just brought me back to the beginning. I'm assuming there's no ending because of the lack of time, but maybe an end screen would have been enough.
Very cool game, I can appreciate the amount of work that went into this. Keep it up!
Glad I tried the downloadable version, it performs way better and nicer than the html5 version!
some other things i would like to see being improved :
- you can ignore 90% of the mobs and go straight to the bottom of the map
- many rooms had this small ledge that blocked the player and when you tried to jump over it, you hit the frame of the door (small thing, but when it happens often, can be quite annoying :p)
- it would be nice if the attack range was slighly larger than its visual representation - right now i feel like it's other way around
- in few places i feelt like i had to guess if i should jump or not.
Overall the sound and art created fantastic atmosphere. I would play more of it in the future. GJ guys.
Only a couple of possible bugs:
* when on full health, you can't pick up the health bottles and they become almost obstacles. In one part of the level (the first time I encountered one of the horses), I had full health so I couldn't collect the potion. Unfortunately, it was in a low corridor, which meant I couldn't jump over it; the only way to make progress was to slowly push it until I got into the next room, and then I could jump over it.
* game got stuck in a loop after defeating the final boss, running towards the right-hand side of the screen into one of the wall pieces; no response to any keypresses except Escape :cry: I was looking forward to what came next!
Apart from these two annoyances, I thoroughly enjoyed your game. Well done!
I really enjoyed playing through this a couple of times.
The lack of an ending sequence was a bit jarring considering the high quality of the rest.
The small rooms with trellises over the entrances could be a bit awkward to get out of as you have to jump and often end up standing on a block over the entrance.
When I defeated the demon, nothing happened, the game froze. Then the game restarted Was it normal or did I miss something?
Still very impressive. I'd be curious how you managed to get such effective art/controls in such a short time. Well done!
Overall, pretty solid entry. Well done.
- The level design is... somewhat confusing. There are too many routes down, and most of them are very similar.
- The attack effects are nice, but combat generally devolves into me standing still and spamming attacks while the enemy charges and dies. Would have been nice to see more enemy patterns.
- I was able to defeat the boss by walking up to him and mashing the attack key - no dodging required.
- Some enemies can be hard to spot against the background.