Apollo's Lab by Graylure
A puzzle platformer about cloning yourself inside glizzys. Shoot those sizzling mutant hot dogs with your dart gun and then kill yourself to birth a clone inside them. Search for your partner in science. Learn to fly with a mustard jet pack. Maybe go out for pancakes after?
Arrow keys for movement, space for jump, F for shoot and X for jetpack.

Art: Graylure
Programming & Sound: Clonze.

| Link | https://graylure.itch.io/apollos-lab |
| Link | https://streamavatars.com/apolloslab/index.html |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/apollos-lab |
Ratings
| Overall | 499th | 3.7⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 842th | 3.34⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 621th | 3.44⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1197th | 3⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 63th | 4.538⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 512th | 3.48⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 289th | 3.68⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 9🗳️ | 13🗨️ |
Lots of creativity on display!
If I had to criticize anything, the respawn, shoot, and gun animations were very slow. The time for these actions felt frustrating.
The electro hot dogs were also pretty frustrating, but sound ques could help with that. I didn’t realise they turned off at first.
Otherwise, I think the art and spritework were rather well done. Music effects were a nice touch too.
But I’m stuck on the first sausage, too. "Shoot it and then run down the pit!" and I die. Maybe I didn't understand the rules clearly
In hindsight, adding the time limit didn't really add anything when the game is this simple, it just added confusion.
Once I understood how to play the game, I cleared through the whole thing without a problem. Its puzzles were creative, its artstyle and tone are wonderful, and the characters have so much expression to them. I have mixed feelings of terror and amusement over the hot-dog possession and the use of dumpsters as a respawn point for a raccoon is adorable.
Overall, a strong entry. I'm interested to see what you might have in store for this game postjam as its core concept is quite unique and fun to play around with.
That said...
Really nice artwork, the intro animation is a nice touch and the sounds, while somewhat minimal, fit fairly well. Unfortunately I ended up not finishing due to the aforementioned softlock as it got me several times and combined with the unskippable intro I had to call it quits. However, I like where the game was going, so well done on that.
On that topic, I think the big problem with figuring out the dart gun is that it's not intuitive. The music changes pace and gets distorted, but I assumed that was as a result of making the dogger high and harmless. So the music was giving you a cue as to your period of safety for running past him. Y'know, it seems to be a tranquilisier gun, and not a teleportation device.
Once I figured out that if you die you respawn from their bodies instead of the trash (nice work making the character a raccoon for this, lol.) the rest of the game is pretty well designed. The first time you see an electric hotdog comes to mind so that players understand that these are periodic hazards, then following up with sequences where you need to avoid them. Placing the jetpack right next to a place you need to use it.
Thankfully, I didn't manage to trigger any glitches. So aside from figuring out the dart gun, there's a good game here.
1. A list of controls, at least on the Ludum Dare page, would be nice since it took me forever to figure out the controls. WASD, Space, F, and X seems like a weird control scheme, unless that's just my QWERTY keyboard.
2. Why is this not one of the top games on Itch right now?
i liked the game mechanics here, i even liked how they were limited, only allowing you to shoot while on the ground, making you stationary while doing so, and similar with the jetpack, i think it feels quite arcadey and fits the puzzle gameplay style well.
unfortunately i found the incredibly long time that almost all interactions took quite grating and it quickly put me in the mood of 'get on with it'; luckily the game was very short and charming, but if the time-to-action issues were sorted out i think this could become something special