ENTROPY by egawag

Grapple with the impossible.
Fly between incomprehensible galaxies.
Find beauty through the chaos.

Our Team:
Gage Johnson (egawag) - Production Manager and Programming Supervisor
Noah Matheu (Nobongo) - Aesthetic/Visual Designer and Gameplay Engineer
Zach Northrop (ThePirateNun) - Composer/Sound Designer and Level Engineer
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| Link | https://gamejolt.com/games/ENTROPY/652683 |
| Link | https://gamejolt.com/games/ENTROPY/652683 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/entropy-1 |
Ratings
| Overall | 122th | 4.067⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 423th | 3.7⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 443th | 3.597⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 485th | 3.823⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 74th | 4.516⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 29th | 4.3⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 60th | 4.25⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 30🗳️ | 36🗨️ |


Great minigame, the music is soft and does not get irritating at all even after a few loops and greatly complements the visuals, which are fantastic (except the white blind-flashes at night, I hate those, but it fits here completely).
Probably the only think I can think of on improving is the fps controls - possibly reset the angle or something on attaching, because I found myself in that over the head spiral, where you cant really move the mouse/view as you would normally to all sides, if that makes sense. Like if you look up in some FPS, you cant go more to that direction and have to rotate another way to reach the point you want. And in a game where you can lose your orientation in 1 sec, it might be 'something'.
Anyways, one of the best entries I encountered so far, good job!
Спасибо за игру ^_^
The game gave me an intense feeling of being left behind. That everyone is leaving for rapture and you're trying desperately to cling on and be one of them. It was a lonely feeling. You even feel a bit angry at these darn cubes for moving so fast without you. I believe this feeling happens because you start out in control, with the cubes helping you as allies, but they get increasingly faster and distant and you lose control.
Gameplaywise, you are required to use a bunch of tricks you don't normally do. I actually really liked the FPS lock. What it forces you to do is manage you angle as a resource. So you might pull in one direction for a while, and then quickly do a 180 to help return back to the group. The limited hold was an obvious design decision so that you can't just hold onto a cube forever, but it also creates some interesting risk reward scenarios. As you run out of time you have to very quickly assess which cube to hold onto next. Is that cube stale? Is it going to fly away by the time I do a 180 and aim at it? Those sorts of decisions.
This was a fantastic game and I'm extremely impressed. Not many games evoke emotion for me, and certainly not one without a story. Throughout my 15-some LDs I don't think I've ever given out 5 stars across the board, so this might be the first one.
I loved the aesthetic, and I liked the main grapple mechanic. I appreciated how the music and aesthetics ramped up every level. I liked how easy the first level was, compared to the last one which felt quite challenging which I thought was a good move.
I do have some criticisms / suggestions, in case you want to continue developing which I think you should.
The gameplay and music becomes too repetitive for the length of the game. In the first two levels, the music is so simple and barebones (albeit pleasant) that it became samey within the first minute. I think the style of music did fit the game well, but I feel you need to spend more time on it so that even the base track sounds good when repeated, and then expand upon it level per level.
If you are going to have 3 (or more) levels, the gameplay needs to change more than just speeding up. There need to be some new elements at play.
The levels themselves are probably too long. Shortening them could help with the repetitiveness. Alternatively, the gameplay and music could speed up *mid-level*, and you could have just 1 level or two levels. This way, the gameplay is dynamic within the same level and you maintain the entropy.
Lastly, I think the WASD and Jump are completely unnecessary and actually detrimental to the game. Ultimately, I will never need to Jump or move without the grapple (from what I undertstand). So including those two options alongside the grapple just confuses the player, and it just means that it takes the player longer to understand that the game revolves around the grapple.
Lastly, if you plan to keep developing this game, how do you add replay value? Do you compete against others either in terms of score or in terms of some kind of PVP? Do you have obstacles you must dodge or other level interactions you must engage with?
Lastly, I always imagined it would be cool if the game kind of flipped up side down, or rotated, or the goal moved, to make it feel like there is no true up and down, as there is in space. Just a random idea.
Anyway, thank you for reading my feedback, great job!
The only thing I would have to say about the controls is that sometimes it's a bit "hard" to estimate what's the max distance you can hook.
Otherwise, this game feels really polished, good job !
The grapple is fun, and I like how it slowly fades away, albeit sometimes that wasn't always easy to read for me. Very very good entry!
Either way, this was a pretty fun, condensed experience. Good job!
A simple but fun mechanic with nice correspondence to the them as well.