LudumData

Echo by caeonosphere

[raw]
made by caeonosphere for Ludum Dare 51 (COMPO)

echoLDHeader.png

 

Navigate abstract environments with echolocation. Narrowly avoid falling to your death using only the flashes of sight that come once every 10 seconds.

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  • WASD to move, Space to jump.
  • A tip if you're struggling: it's easier to see if you turn off your lights! Embrace the darkness...
  • A challenge to any speedrunners out there: I beat it in 2 minutes, 34 seconds (link below). Can you do better?
  • Sorry for the lack of WebGL, for the third time running! It was not liking all the fancy stuff I was doing with audio mixers.
  • Done with Unity/C#, Photoshop, Illustrator, Blender, FL Studio, and Audacity. The font I used is Tiresias by the Royal National Institute for the Blind. Check out my other projects here!

And finally, here's a video showing how to run and jump on walls, for those having trouble with my not-very-helpful tutorial:

https://youtu.be/ljWNXiU_RC8

Link https://github.com/thquinn/Echo
Link https://github.com/thquinn/Echo/releases
Link https://github.com/thquinn/Echo/releases
Speedrun (spoilers!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ml_sE9iy6Jc
Dev Timelapse https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74D3GdepkEg
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/echo

Ratings

Overall 57th 3.953⭐ 34🧑‍⚖️
Fun 151th 3.547⭐ 34🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 25th 4.078⭐ 34🧑‍⚖️
Theme 83th 4⭐ 34🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 77th 3.984⭐ 34🧑‍⚖️
Audio 30th 4⭐ 34🧑‍⚖️
Mood 9th 4.313⭐ 34🧑‍⚖️
Given 33🗳️ 43🗨️

Feedback

blinry
04. Oct 2022 · 19:13 UTC
Intriguing! The intro is really mysterious and nice! But we didn't figure out the wall run/jump, even after trying it dozens of times in different angles... Our approach: Jumping in a 45-degree angle towards the wall, then pressing space again. Is that a very wrong approach? Do the objects in the air to the right mean something?

The game only worked on macOS for us. When we launched this using Wine, on Linux, clicking away the first message worked. After that, there didn't seem a way to interact with the game. A Linux build would be wonderful! :)
LDJam user 261036
04. Oct 2022 · 21:36 UTC
I really like the atmosphere of the game, and there being no real tutorial or info besides the one for the walljump (to answer @blinry's question, you have to keep holding the movement button whilst touching the wall to run on it).
Sadly I couldn't get past the first walljump of level 5 because I suck, but I really quite like this.
🎤 caeonosphere
04. Oct 2022 · 22:11 UTC
@velaachlorine You don't suck! I really made this game too hard. I'm going to update this page with some tips today, but if you haven't tried already, I would suggest playing in the dark! Makes it much easier to see.

@blinry Good to see you! Yeah, I didn't do a good job explaining it. To run along the wall, you really just need to keep moving diagonally towards it in midair, no pressing Space required. Only when you're ready to launch off of the wall do you need to press Space. I'll record a video of myself playing — hopefully that will help.
blobo
05. Oct 2022 · 16:13 UTC
Wow this game looks fantastic! The echo effect was really well made, and the dark aesthetics are perfectly eerie. I noticed it's barely possible to see the platforms for quite a while after the ping fades, which lead to more deaths than I'd like to admit, ha! I was a bit too hasty.

I recorded myself playing so you can get way more feedback than text could provide:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHsDz6s6i1c
🎤 caeonosphere
05. Oct 2022 · 18:55 UTC
@100th-coin Wow, thanks for the video! I don't think anyone has recorded a full playthrough of one of my submissions before. Definitely agree about the waiting problem — if the theme had been "every 6 or 7 seconds" I think the game would have turned out better. I just couldn't find the right balance of the ping's speed and fade rate before the deadline. It works fine (I think) for levels where you're constantly moving and keeping pace with the ping, but in levels that require you to slow down, it starts to drag.

And yeah, the level where the ping comes from the center, oof. Could have left that on the cutting room floor.
ZevsEHG
06. Oct 2022 · 03:52 UTC
OMG it's so simple and cool at the same time!
Great sound design, and visuals!

lvl 5 was most challenging
Nobongo
06. Oct 2022 · 04:13 UTC
Awesome game! I had a blast playing this, even though I was terrible at it. I loved the main mechanic, and the simple visuals and audio all brought it together into a very enjoyable experience overall.
Cogent.Invalid
06. Oct 2022 · 04:19 UTC
Great mood and audio, and the wallrunning was a lot of fun. I especially liked the visual effect for the echolocation pulse. Sadly it was part of the theme, but on some levels I kept finding myself doing nothing but jump once and wait around for the next 10-second pulse. I did appreciate how if you went fast enough you could travel along with the pulse, though, so it seemed like the levels where you had to move quickly were more fun than the ones where you had to look around and make precise jumps. (I wrote this before looking at the comments and saw that you came to the same conclusion, lol.)
🎤 caeonosphere
06. Oct 2022 · 04:20 UTC
@cogent-invalid I wish I had come to that conclusion before I made all those levels! :D
LDJam user 301245
06. Oct 2022 · 11:39 UTC
I really loved playing this. Thank you!
It felt the most original in terms of idea to me so far, implementing a really cool shader effect tying in with the "every 10 seconds" theme really well. Player mechanics seem standard - no insights there although I enjoyed the wall running mechanic and would love to see more of that - maybe a little more forgiving for newcomers :))
The ping shader mechanic has been my favourite visual experience in trying the COMPO entries so far, it ties the aesthetic together beautifully and the duotone/ black n white low poly style is right up my street. The guy with the video review [TIP: worth a quick watch before playing versus after like me lol] coined it nicely "mysterious and spooky". Well done on such a great sub, and thank you for providing a cool experience! :))
LDJam user 261242
06. Oct 2022 · 12:12 UTC
Coooool! I like the mood! Nice work!
unpronounceable
06. Oct 2022 · 12:34 UTC
Had lots of fun playing this. Can't really say anything that hasn't already been said in the comments already. Good job.
José Bonilla
06. Oct 2022 · 20:47 UTC
Beautiful game, with eerie mood (best mood I've seen in the jam so far). I struggled with the "move diagonally towards the wall" instructions, I had to watch @100th-coin 's playthrough to understand how it should be done. Nice audio.
🎤 caeonosphere
06. Oct 2022 · 20:55 UTC
@jose-bonilla Yeah, I just couldn’t figure out how to phrase that better. Glad you were able to figure it out!
LDJam user 257946
07. Oct 2022 · 06:18 UTC
Very, very interesting concept! I would love to see a full version of this idea! Wonderful work!
niccolo-temperanza
07. Oct 2022 · 12:30 UTC
So this is a far more interesting idea of the concept I worked on, the darkness feels very much organic to the gameplay, I had some issues with the wall jumping at times, I will play it again at home with my gamepad and surely I'll have a better experience.

This one's definitely a winner.
niccolo-temperanza
07. Oct 2022 · 12:31 UTC
Also I love the use of particle as a way to give the player a little bit of a sense of spatial awarness no matter what. This was my favorite detail.
ActuallyTheMoon
07. Oct 2022 · 12:34 UTC
Really intriguing mood! My tv started blacking out every now and then and i thought it was part of the mechanics, but then realized my hdmi cable was just dying. Game was good even with that complication tho xD
🎤 caeonosphere
07. Oct 2022 · 16:59 UTC
@niccolo-temperanza Theres no gamepad support, unfortunately! I could add it to the non-compo version if you’re having trouble with KBM?
Roboolet
07. Oct 2022 · 18:36 UTC
Really awesome entry. It's not the first time i've seen this concept of only seeing through sound before, but this might be my favourite out of all of them so far. Wallrunning took a little bit to understand but was fun to do once i did. My only complaint is that it's a little annoying to wallrun too high and fall off the side
🎤 caeonosphere
07. Oct 2022 · 21:00 UTC
@roboolet Ah, that’s a good idea: I could try to detect if you’re going to run off the top and stop that from happening. Thanks for playing :)
Paulsams
07. Oct 2022 · 22:55 UTC
It was an awesome experience. It's just really cool to do this alone in two days. And for "coyote time" in general respect. But I didn't understand why the character was turned in the opposite direction at the 8th level... Forgot to turn, I guess? And it was also a very strange decision not to restart the level, but to return to the menu - it was not the return to the menu itself that interfered, namely loading the level, it brought down the dynamics of the process. But otherwise it was just really cool.
🎤 caeonosphere
08. Oct 2022 · 01:01 UTC
@paulsams Thats fair! I ran out of time to implement an “exit level” function and so just had to quit back to the hub. The 8th level thing I suppose was my idea of a “joke”… maybe it’s not that funny huh :)
Zirrrus
09. Oct 2022 · 05:06 UTC
Great concept and neat atmosphere!
Yword
09. Oct 2022 · 08:45 UTC
Wow, it's really stylish and challenging. Well done! Maybe it will be easier if the platform color is brighter and silhouette glow can move slower.
Taximan981
10. Oct 2022 · 11:36 UTC
Very cool game! The concept was great and the execution even more so. The audio really helped, and the levels were mostly straight forward enough to not force you to wait 10 seconds for the echo. So really well designed as well. The movement felt nice. You have ticked all the big boxes, art, programming, design, sound design. Deserves a really high rating!
Kregap
10. Oct 2022 · 12:15 UTC
Very impressive! (☆▽☆)
real_flamingicecubegames
11. Oct 2022 · 18:49 UTC
An amazing idea for a platformer. However, I think having the echolocation happen only every ten seconds is a frustrating limitation and led to many deaths from impatience.

The graphics are extremely well done and polished for a compo game, and the sound (especially with headphones) was awesome. This game has some potential, and I think reducing the time between echoes would make this game so much better.
🎤 caeonosphere
11. Oct 2022 · 19:02 UTC
@real-flamingicecubegames Agreed. Like I commented above, the game would definitely be more fun if the theme had been “every 7 seconds.” I couldn’t find a good balance of parameters for 10.
ManchmalScott
20. Oct 2022 · 00:06 UTC
The atmosphere was really great! However, I'd often reach a corner not having seen what direction to head in, and then have to stop and wait ten seconds to see where to go next, which killed the momentum. Overall though I had fun!
Hekateras
21. Oct 2022 · 11:26 UTC
An incredibly unique game, though sadly I didn't get very far. I would love to see this core mechanic explored further, though.

For a Compo game with even harsher time constraints, the sense of mood/atmosphere here is also impeccable!