The Escape by Marin0104
*You are in your car and stranded in the desert. *
You wake up and you notice: You are in the middle of an earth quake...
Drive as fast as you can to your Safe House and avoid the abysses. On your way, collect as many golden coins to spend on later, after the earth quake.


This game is made with the Godot Engine, i am happy to play other Godot titles, just leave me a comment.
This is the first time i am using Sprite Stacking as a technique to render 3D like scene with 2D Sprites. This means there are a lot of sprites in the scene. Therefore, I am using textures to save the height of each ground tile or the position of each prop (e.g. the coins). In addition i split the world into chunks and do not render or load what is not on the screen. With this technique, large worlds can be rendered.
You can change the difficulty in the title screen, next to the Start label in the bottom right corner.
| HTML5 | https://marinwin.itch.io/the-escape |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/the-escape |
Ratings
| Overall | 678th | 3.576⭐ | 74🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 698th | 3.459⭐ | 75🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 783th | 3.274⭐ | 75🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 364th | 3.932⭐ | 76🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 440th | 3.926⭐ | 76🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 856th | 2.742⭐ | 68🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 640th | 3.5⭐ | 76🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 31🗳️ | 41🗨️ |
Quite smooth gameplay in terms of what was trying to be accomplish where it feels the driving should be hard yet smooth at the same time. So kudos for the balance for that!
@judy-kim thank's for your review! I can relate, i've built in the difficulty configuration right before the deadline and therefore time was running out to balance it more. I was able to finish the game on easy till apokalpyse (after a couple of tries :smile:). One idea i have is to speed up the car on easy, so one is able to escape from a dangerous ground plate faster. At the moment the difficulty setting controls how fast the next ground plate is getting destroyed.
cool entry, I almost finished it but always reached the wrong side of the house. Key seems to be to drive diagonally as long as possible
I also used Godot this jam and was very impressed whats possible (new to game development). Bookmarked your game to showcase whats possible if some friends ask
Otherwise pretty cool
I realised that instead of driving as fast as possible, it's better to carefully drive between the lava pits and wait a lil bit before proceeding, because when you see the ground getting dark below you, it's already too late :smile: I feel like the rotating speed could be increased a little, because right now it's really hard to maneuver between the obstacles. Apart from those issues, the game is really good and fun to play! A really solid entry :tada:
My game is also made in Godot, it's the first time I use it for the Ludum coming from Unity, very cool to discover that so many people are using it now! :D
Some suggestions would be to maybe make the ground collapse a bit further away from the player, as it is possible now to drive diagonally and not really need to worry about losing.
Good job!
@devundead @connor-magson and @agameortwo about the cacti, i've tried using obstacles that blocks your path, but then it was just too hard. What would work, in my opinion, is to run the cacti over but they slow you down. I've just could not make that in time... Thank's for your ideas!
Just an idea of mine: I think that this game could perhaps be a good mobile game, if acceleration was constant and steering was done by tapping the edges of the screen. Maybe one could brake by steering left and right at the same time?
Mood of the game is very good and it is fitting. Thememaster, thats you are, fit into the theme. Not too horiblle art but next time try invest time more into art. Your audio is not good, maybe next time skip it. Your game is pretty fun, so please make it more next time. Original game mechanics, I like your inovations. Overall I think this game is good, and I think, next time you will create as good game as this is, or maybe better, so good job.
One last note: I always write down honest review, because everybody need that, not just nice craps with some bullshit, but sometime I will aperceite very good games. So if this review insult you, but use it well :) Anyway every game is counting so :)
I rage quit it in 9th best attempts, I almost made it :(

Maybe moving the camera away from the player would make it easier, but I like how it makes the game more chaoitc.
Great game!
The sprite stacking you did is really effective and has created a really nice visual style.
The effects of the earthquake also looked really really good.
The audio was on point too!
really good entry 😁 good job!
@hadik don't worry, i am thankful for honest reviews with constructive criticism. I've spend a lot of more time than i have thought on how to draw thousands of sprites performantly and within the right perspective :smile: I need to find ways how to produce my own game assets like gfx and sfx faster and at a consistent level of quality. I depend too much on other's assets. This time i tried to model everything with MagicaVoxel and generate the sprites from them. That worked quite well, but i am too slow to produce nice models at the moment :sweat_smile: I need a better workflow for sfx, maybe someone has some tipps for me. But i think the more i try the better i will get. Will have a look onto your game next!
Very appealing visual style!
Really good vibe! A little more logic around things like coin placement and the patterns things crumble in could really polish things out and make it super fun as you get into the "flow" of things while heading towards the garage. Great work! Things look great too btw :thumbsup:
Only small bug that annoyed me was the sound bug while transitionning from your starting scene to the actual game, as I failed a lot and fast on the first tries ^^
Might be nice to hotfix ;)
Thanks a lot for the game, I had fun!
@truedat yeah i have got into that topic in june, during developing my own, bigger game. There are some really great implementations with lighting, just gorgeous. But sprite stacking fit not the gameplay and art style in the end i want to accomplish. Since then i wanted to implement it into a different game...
@tyler-law: The props are generated by a noise texture. I've added the coins to emphasize the player to take detours from the direct way to the safe house.
@ekilibr: I think it's because i am generating a lava noise texture and two other bigger noise textures. It seems like this takes some time. If one of my next games need to load longer, i'll add a loading screen and make sure that all sounds are stopped before :smile:
The concept is really good and the hecticness reminds me of Pako Car Chase Simulator. Unfortunately the balance is a bit too hard. I'm not convinced anyone here actually beat the game without using the diagonal trick.
Aside from that, everything works well together. The constant explosion sounds, the floors giving way, the intimidating lava everywhere. The scariest feeling is when you miss your shot at the Safe House, and while you're trying to go to the other entrance, the floor keeps giving out and eventually you're totally blocked.
Cool game and it sounds like you have some really neat tech in there to get it all to work.

I personally found it a bit too hard even on easy, but it might just be me. Awesome way to exit the game as well, haven't seen that before!
I really liked the challenge tho. Great game :)


A nice game, it has very nice graphics! Only thing I can think of is that the turning speed could be a bit quicker, and that the tiles around the safe zone could be protected from breaking, since otherwise there is a risk of the entrances being exploded making it impossible to win.
Great job!
But gameplay kind of falls into background here, outshined by what a cool and unique graphical experience you made. Graphically and atmospherically this is an achievement, good job.
@peachtreeoath i think i have to check the Pako Car Chase Simulator out, thank's for the tip!
@bakuchi: No it's not the firefox's fault, it's mine (i've explained it in my last comment above, it's about generating assets for the next scene, but i've forgot to stop the sound before the transition to the next scene).
@fae-pdf: I can totally relate to your comment, i think i have to upload a Post JAM version that is tweaking the balance this week...
@kr4ft3r thank your for your kind words about the graphics! I would never have thought that this type of art is that fun to produce and enjoyable for you guys.
Спасибо за игру! ^_^
I liked the game and it gave me some 2012 movie vibes. I would have liked to be able to drive a bit faster, I mean if the ground around me was dropping down and I'd see lava down there, I'd drive over 67km/h! :smile:
I think being able drift around would have also made the gameplay more engaging, but with break essentially being reverse, that was impossible.