Shards of Me by Craftgineer

About
Every day we deal with problems that occur during the day. Sometimes those problems pile up and we wait to deal with them. In some realities those problems can manifest into something physical, and entrap us within ourselves.
Find the crystalized negativity and destroy them so that you can escape!
Along the way you will find shards of yourself, maybe they can help?
Controls
A or Left Arrow - move left
D or Right Arrow - move right
Space or Up Arrow - Jump
E - Interact / Pickup / Drop
Z - Word Attack (if unlocked)
X - Hug Attack (if unlocked)
Left Shift - Dash (if unlocked)
Authors
Code & Graphics - Craftgineer
Audio - da_nae on Twitter
| Link | https://github.com/craftgineer/LD49 |
| Link | https://craftgineer.itch.io/shards-of-me |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/shards-of-me |
Ratings
| Overall | 1303th | 3.042⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1385th | 2.708⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1355th | 2.625⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1323th | 2.792⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1220th | 2.9⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 355th | 3.68⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 1105th | 2.31⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 604th | 3.54⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 15🗳️ | 4🗨️ |
I couldn't get rid of the first crystal with my positive word powers, but it worked on the second one. And I thought the little ghosties were my friends because they were the same color as me, so I took a lot of damage for that mistake haha.
Thanks for making this!
@yotamco When you complete the good word for the first NPC (the one near the first plastforms with spikes), you'll get the ability to shout pretty words (using Z key) to break the crystals and defeat the spike enemies. Those don't work however on the ghosts, you need another skill for that.
@catalow I'm aware of those audio bugs, especially the clipping of some of the sfx. I'll solve those asap as it's very annying for me as well. Thank you for pointing that out again!
After picking up the first messagecloud I could not resist to laugh after flipping it "etah!" :two_hearts:
Sadly directly after figuring out how to good-talk the obstacles away I died and lost the skill as nothing happened after pressing Z then. The level did not reset, so I had to reset the game.
The music is amazing.
I think the platforming could do with some minor ergonomic tweaks. For instance, in many jumps, the platform you're trying to land on ends up off the bottom of the screen at the peak of your jump, which makes it difficult at times to correctly judge where you're going to land. Maybe I'm just bad at platformers, but I ended up missing jumps and falling down a bit too frequently.
Overall though, I really liked this game. Excellent effort!
* The nice thoughts you can pick up and carry only worked for the blue slime, the other ones didn't get happy when I brought anything to them. The end screen made a mistake and inverted this, it showed me that I'd made all the slimes happy except for the blue:

* Camera could be a bit zoomed out, maybe the window could be made 16:9 as well. Since the player runs so fast, it'd be better to see more of what's ahead.
* Physics felt too slippery. This is something people also reported in my game, it makes any mistake really punishing.
* I don't like how you have to wait a little bit next to the spiky enemies for the attack to register, especially since they mostly appear in the middle of small platforms. Either you slip out of the platform and fall, or you get closer and get hit, which might make you have to restart.
Ultimately I enjoyed playing, and, if these were fixed, it would be a straight 5 star all around!