Heaven Can Wait by paulhocker
Heaven Can Wait
This was the first game where I have tried to tie your ability to win against every other player. In order to win the game and make it to Heaven you must collect more faith than the last person who got the most faith. I hope you enjoy playing and Good Luck!
And just to answer the obvious question. Yes! I have been watching too much Sword Art Online!
:)
Instructions
- left/right arrow to move and up arrow to jump
- collect fluctlight to delay darkness
- find faith symbols to reach heaven
- look out for the seven deadly sins as they will remove your faith and get in your way
- you must collect more faith than the last winner in order to reach heaven and leave your name
- the amount of faith needed to win will continue to rise as more people play and beat the highest faith score

| Link | https://gitlab.com/ludumdare/ludumdare50 |
| Link | https://paulhocker.itch.io/ld50 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/heaven-can-wait |
Ratings
| Overall | 870th | 3.404⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 944th | 3.154⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 777th | 3.22⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 970th | 3.4⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 758th | 3.56⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 645th | 3.24⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 1080th | 2.136⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 999th | 3.18⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 29🗳️ | 31🗨️ |
The music and sound effects also created a great ambiance.
The source of the tutorial was a little unreadable, I had to make an effort to read it.
I don't know if you've been playing the other games, but your game has the potential to earn a lot of points, but you need to play the other games for it to appear (I went to the game session with zero points)
Congratulations!
Actual footage of me trying to ascend to heaven. Yeah I got stuck like this and just had to wait for the darkness thing to tick down. After a few attempts I managed to set the bar at 78. It seems possible to go indefinitely so I expect to see that beaten several times over. This is super cool and I wonder if some bored person is gonna show up and set the bar at like 1000.
I wish there was a bit more intent to the level design, right now it feels like a lot of random and unrewarding jumping. Maybe if enemies were a bit more varied it could make it more interesting?
The game has a nice ambiance. Between the lighting effects and music, it really sells the concept.
Nice work!
Did not understand what all the pickups did. At first run collected crosses and that black thins, but then noticed that they cancel each other in the UI. So why to collect black thingy? =)
The first level felt a bit repetitive. The second level though felt quite challenging. I liked that. I just wished that I didn't have to restart from the very beginning. :D
Also encountered the bug where I was stuck inside the deadly sin.
And when you are quite high up and walk over the edge you are stuck on a black screen.
Good game. Had fun. Thanks :)
All the aspects of the game are VERY simple, but they are pretty good when combined together. Best part of this game is the sound effect for collecting faith, very gratifying.
Despite all that, however, I absolutely LOATHE how enemies knock you back upon touching them. And upon getting hit, you just lose control as your character runs back like a sissy! I lost 2-3 times because of a tiny little mistake I made, causing my character to run off a platform, plunging down into MORE ENEMIES, and the cycle goes on and on and I cannot do a single thing about it!
The player needs to have invincibility during this time! I think the camera should pivot above or below you to get a sense of what could be in your way; along with that, make the player fall slower, so they can react better with what's below them.
Maybe you can spend faith to place a checkpoint to pick up where you left off. The catch is, when you respawn, the checkpoint vanishes, no longer existing. Adding to this, you should only be able to place 1 checkpoint at a time, perhaps encouraging some sort of risk/reward sort of system.
I was absolutely *terrified* of falling down when I reached the clouds, and I actually kind of enjoyed the tension it produced. But the reason WHY I was terrified was because I probably could've failed again and lost SO MUCH TIME! I really don't know how you'd reproduce this tension with the updates I suggested, though.
To end this comment, I was actually able to extend the amount of faith required from 270 to 298! Really cool idea you had, and the execution is alright, even though it leaves much to be desired. Have a great night!
Maybe it's just me.
I loved the graphics though, very cool designs for player and monsters and the sound effects reminded me of dark souls.
don't make jump with up arrow / w! Please make it space.