Hermesh by Kultuk

[raw]
made by Kultuk for Ludum Dare 52 (JAM)

Screen Shot 2023-01-09 at 8.45.06 PM.jpg

You play as Hermesh, a reaper apprentice.

Harvest escaped souls from possessed ducks to gain new abilities and access to new areas!

Credits: Kultuk, Ido Adler Ori Bruslovsky Shaked Lotan

Build with Godot game engine.

Ratings

Overall 358th 3.56⭐ 52🧑‍⚖️
Fun 372th 3.42⭐ 52🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 684th 2.79⭐ 52🧑‍⚖️
Theme 516th 3.52⭐ 52🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 448th 3.53⭐ 52🧑‍⚖️
Audio 236th 3.551⭐ 51🧑‍⚖️
Humor 344th 3.054⭐ 48🧑‍⚖️
Mood 454th 3.378⭐ 51🧑‍⚖️
Given 27🗳️ 28🗨️

Feedback

LDJam user 299367
10. Jan 2023 · 09:58 UTC
Awesome game, excelent implementation.
schnodelfactory
10. Jan 2023 · 14:32 UTC
I love the goofy falling sprite of the player character!
Played to the end and had fun doing so, great submission.<3
LeoAtopos
10. Jan 2023 · 14:34 UTC
True, I felt the Metroidvania smell. Fun to play. Enjoyed
Bowen
10. Jan 2023 · 16:10 UTC
A simple game, but make me happy.
LDJam user 242394
10. Jan 2023 · 19:09 UTC
The smallest metroidvania ever!
chompdev
11. Jan 2023 · 00:25 UTC
Easily one of the top three duck-soul-harvesting Metroidvanias that I've played today! :) This game is really well done, and I love the minimalist introduction and abilities that unlock one at a time as you explore. Also your art and sprite animation is so good! I just love the look of all of it: the main character, the ducks, the cats - it's all so fun to look at. I played all the way through and enjoyed every minute!

![score6.PNG](///raw/044/42/z/56073.png)
Alex de la Cour
11. Jan 2023 · 17:03 UTC
Good job! I'm always a sucker for game jam metroidvanias and pixel cats so this was right up my alley - I normally abhor attacking ducks but here it seemed like a worthwhile cause. Cute minimalist pixel art, and a nice bite sized playtime.
LDJam user 296412
11. Jan 2023 · 18:17 UTC
@alex-de-la-cour we are not hurting the ducks! We are un-possessing them.

We are helping.

And thanks for the kind review!
jackypark9852
12. Jan 2023 · 09:44 UTC
Love how the reaper hopes every once in a while. Damn ducks!
Bo Dangles
12. Jan 2023 · 10:09 UTC
Out of all the games I've played this jam, this one easily had my favorite music. I also liked that even after a duck has its soul harvested it still walked around just slower. I found that funny that a soul less duck was just a less excited duck. lol. I ended up beating the game and then went back to beat it again to see if there was a secret passage to check out back at the start since i remembered breakable walls there. I'm glad there was a duck there.
digital bacon
12. Jan 2023 · 10:11 UTC
Nice little game. Loved the retro mostly-1-bit-but-sometimes-more graphics, the uses of spot colours really stood out. I liked the gradual gaining of abilities, made the learning curve nice and gentle. Well done!
Fis
12. Jan 2023 · 10:42 UTC
I like how the skills are built up incremental like not being able to jump until you reached the very bottom and have no where else to go. I missed the fact, that the chickens need to be harvested using space, so I needed to backtrack the level.

Cat content, chicken content - and what I really liked is the small jump being applied upon hitting a ledge. This felt quite nicely while navigating through the world!
ImmanentDeath
13. Jan 2023 · 06:15 UTC
Very nice onebit platformer with infinite hovering capabilities.
The-Vecter
15. Jan 2023 · 08:33 UTC
Nice game, I liked the art and sound effects/music.

The screen not scrolling was off putting at the start because I couldn't see what was below me/ahead of me, but by the end it wasn't too bad.
Sometimes I accidentally triggered the hover ability instead of jumping, which coyote time should fix.

Apart from that it was a really nice game, good job!
sakura_magika
15. Jan 2023 · 08:34 UTC
tada! great success!

i came for the ducks.

![Screenshot 2023-01-15 003235.png](///raw/38a/73/z/5678b.png)
amarokczukay
15. Jan 2023 · 13:34 UTC
this was a short yet nice and fun little game!

i really liked the minimalistic art. music was nice, a bit too low in my opinion. at first i didn't understand i had to press space again on the soul, and had to get them back from the beginning. controls are cool, i like the ability to hover, however sometimes i was a bit lost between jump and hover. the level is well designed, all is well compacted.

well done, here you go with your 20+ ratings :D
frozenfire92
15. Jan 2023 · 15:15 UTC
Good entry! I liked how you grew stronger as time went on. In the beginning it said up to hover but that didn't seem to do anything for me. The camera was a littler jarring at times, but understandable given game jam constraints :sweat_smile: keep on making games!
Hulya
15. Jan 2023 · 15:28 UTC
One neat and brief platformer game executed well: cute characters, very fitting sfx, good way of progressing story and character skills.

Not side-scrolling on the edges felt awkward a bit. 'Freeing' the ducks they slow down but in addition changing their transparency would fit this game providing the player a better feedback. In overall I had fun playing it, great jam game!
Binney
15. Jan 2023 · 18:49 UTC
Love this, and I'm terrible at platformers, but it's forgiving in a good way and very fun! I also love the art
mr_lazy
16. Jan 2023 · 11:24 UTC
perfectly completed game ! without any fraustrating bugs!! cute gameplay with sound effects and game control..good work...art is at another level ,,,simply cool
Chase of Bass
16. Jan 2023 · 12:12 UTC
I liked this! Really liked the music! The graphics were simple but very well done -was very fun to upgrade at the cat and opening up the blue walls was fun! (i liked how it looped around -good level design) played it through to the end -awesome job!
LDJam user 274509
16. Jan 2023 · 14:59 UTC
Its simple but had a very pleasant time with it. Sometimes its easy to forget how fun the classic mechanisms can be. Extra points for having cats haha
neowhoru
16. Jan 2023 · 15:19 UTC
Really nice game. Got all stuff unlocked and to the end screen :).

The only thing that was a bit annoying was the camera "jump" so there where no fix frame or something.
Gameplay and control was really fluid and great.
arowx
16. Jan 2023 · 18:42 UTC
Great work like the minimalist style.

Might work better with shorter smaller levels to start with to let players build up their skills.
Surfa
16. Jan 2023 · 19:55 UTC
Short but sweet. I thought the hover was a glitch at first. The first part of the game was a little awkward with the blind falls but I guess if I read about the hover properly it wouldn't have been as bad. Overall fun little game and I loved the cat sprite.
coatline
16. Jan 2023 · 20:43 UTC
Nice game! I like the chill yet moody music in the background. I dig the way the camera snaps to certain areas of the map, though I wish in certain places it were more flexible or the environment would adapt to the camera angle. The only other thing is that the background is a bit bland. I like your sprite work and really cool that you made a small Metroidvania in such little time!
Avi
17. Jan 2023 · 09:13 UTC
Love the simplistic art and how the game has progressive ability unlocks! Rare for something in a gamejam :)

Really enjoyed playing the game, and I actually finished it!
ArtsyOmni
17. Jan 2023 · 13:19 UTC
Simple and to the point! I liked the limited color palette and the sprite work quite a lot. Having no jump at the start was jarring initially, but once I realized you could hover, I think I anticipated that being used for platforming puzzles of some sort where you'd have to anticipate using hover in order to have one chance to reach certain things. That didn't turn out to be the case, with jump being an upgrade, but I see some potential in requiring the hover for longer and being rewarded somehow by having more souls before reaching the jump upgrade.

Nice entry!
leokrechmer
17. Jan 2023 · 14:44 UTC
Nice platformer. Really like the hover mechanic, as it is cool to be combined with the regular jumps. And cats are always sooo cool :)
Thank you for the submission!
LDJam user 187102
17. Jan 2023 · 19:26 UTC
Pretty nice game! I like how it turned out to be a metroidvania (and I love metroidvanias!)
Graphics and music are also very cool.
To be honest, I'd prefer WASD for the controls, but arrow keys are also ok.
LDJam user 296412
17. Jan 2023 · 19:32 UTC
@yerkwell can't believe we missed WASD! Fixing it right now and uploading a version!

Thanks!
Flying Dog Fish
17. Jan 2023 · 22:31 UTC
Great game, I love the minimalistic visuals.
LDJam user 243193
19. Jan 2023 · 09:17 UTC
Nice short metroidvania. The control might need some work cause I accidentally hover when I want to jump. And the slash might need extra range so I don't need to get too close to enemies.
But other than that, the base is solid enough for a metroidvania.
Matank
22. Jan 2023 · 11:04 UTC
Very fun game!! The animations look really good, and I liked how the story is told through the in-world titles. The music was great as well.

Some minor issues I had:
- Would be nice to get a better tutorial for harvesting souls from ducks (e.g. if the first time you see a duck you are required to harvest it to proceed). I got pretty late in the game without harvesting any souls and that was a bit confusing.
- Took me a while to figure out that the number above the cats are the number of souls I'm missing (and not the number of souls I need). That also confused me for a while.

Anyway, great entry! Thank you for making it! :)
LDJam user 250905
23. Jan 2023 · 03:05 UTC
Pretty nice, I've gotta say (:yum:)! It's a simple but effective entry, and I really don't have anything I would personally change about it, other than implementing additional content (which is a given, this is a jam game anyway), and something about the way the camera pans didn't quite work too well on me -- not because anything *broke* persay, just because of how it felt to float to the edge of the screen just to get snapped back to the middle so I could progress to a different part of a screen. I may have prefered if it was more *"Mega-man"* style in the way it's camera worked, but then you also would've probably had to change the level design. ;P

Noice entry, I enjoyed it! Keep it up, and have a great rest of your jam! :clap: :clap: :clap:
froissant
23. Jan 2023 · 13:40 UTC
Really short but solid entry! I liked how the character moved when jumping, pretty good controller!
I think an end screen would've been nice :smile:

What becomes of all these ducks souls?! :smile:
LDJam user 296412
23. Jan 2023 · 14:59 UTC
@froissant There is a end screen, you just didn't get to it, I guess.

And the duck souls are the currency for the abilities
PatrickRMC
27. Jan 2023 · 16:09 UTC
Audio is good and the graphics is really nice and cute, solid entry and I love the idea of harvesting souls to abilities, my only feedback for improvement would be maybe a camera that allows you to see more of where your going, instead of having "gamble" or guess whats next. Overall solid entry though good job!