Elevander of the Emu Express by Honest Dan



Instructional GIF

- Left Click BELOW chicken to DASH.
- Left Click ABOVE chicken to FLAP.
- Combine FLAP and DASH whilst in the air.
- HOLD Left Click to GLIDE.
- Right Click to DROP MAIL.
Change Log
- Fixed the HUD to display happiness of residents
- Added option for "hard mode", which has a shorter play time - to let people experience the game faster
- Fixed a bug where residents complained before getting angry, ending the game too early
- Added the Unreal Engine 4 Pre-requisites to the installation, in case people don't have them installed.
| Link | https://honestdan.itch.io/elevander-of-the-emu-express |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/elevander-of-the-emu-express |
Ratings
| Overall | 37th | 4.276⭐ | 69🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 170th | 3.918⭐ | 69🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 85th | 4.067⭐ | 69🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 27th | 4.53⭐ | 69🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 5th | 4.846⭐ | 70🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 59th | 4.22⭐ | 68🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 169th | 3.836⭐ | 66🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 68th | 4.276⭐ | 69🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 37🗳️ | 68🗨️ |
I like the movement, it is different, allows for a lot of movement options and at the same time a bit challenging. If I have to complain, I would like a slightly faster recharge of "stamina," maybe 10% to 20% faster, but not much more.
Thank you for the game. Your entry is so good that I played it twice.
Overall, great game and could be excellent with a little tightening up on the controls and some adjustments to some map sections.
Nice work all of you!
As always, you guys knocked it out of the park. @spacey3d's character designs are consistently adorable and full of personality (particularly loved Elevander, the lizard, the mouse, and the giraffe). The environment is very well illustrated and has a great balance of detail and stylization. Music and sound effects were also very well-done.
Gameplay-wise, the movement is very novel and it feels very much like a "Getting Over It" sort of experience --- your task is relatively simple, but the unusual character movement makes it a challenge. The tutorial was very well designed to get the player accustomed to the controls. Once you start the full game, you're immediately thrown into the action and it comes with all the stress of your first day on the job.
I think there are a couple sections of the map that may be a little bit too punishing, particularly where there are low ceilings with a lot of cactuses. I had a hard time avoiding the cactus and kept bonking my head on the ceiling and falling into it, spewing my mail everywhere. However, a lot of areas you could avoid since the map often had multiple ways of getting between sections.
I drew Elevander and added him to the pixel fan art compilation on my profile.

Thanks for making this, and good luck during the rest of play and rate!
The unusual control scheme made it an interesting play but the stamina and collisions made it a little frustrating for me to play. After a while i remembered that we regain stamina while floating though :D
Also loved the custom cursor that made understanding the movement a lot easier ;)
Thanks a lot for making it, enjoyed it a lot ! <3
If there's one thing to work on it would be to improve the controls and add little leeway on the level design or colliders.
question: how did you design the solid ground? it doesn't look like a tilemap, I'm curious how you achieved that
@0x-void-x0 so we ended up avoiding a tile map. as we were just doing the one level, we ended up designing it as one big asset, and iterating on it a bit before giving the "shape" to our artist to make a "proper version" of.
@theartifacts there was a bug where you couldn't flap if out of stamina, which stopped you from gliding after running out of stamina. This hopefully has helped with what you described, but its still very much a non-intuitive controls game!
@jeremy-ryan we are honoured, again! You've done Elevander proud! You are very right to say getting over it style. initially we didn't plan for it, but I think the restrictive controls combined with a challenging intricate map lead to that experience. We wanted "easier slow ways" and "faster master ways", but I think we did it a bit too tight.
@lex yeah the controls we like but people find them hard. It may work well on controller, but we wanted to try a one handed mouse approach. On a less restricted map it may not feel so harsh.
@nani thanks for the feedback - its okay if mail gets delivered late, but I can see how it can still feel like a negative experience.
@kirkami yeah we wanted it to be something you really need to learn and master, but indeed its a challenge if the game becomes less fun / frustrating during that learning process. Thanks for feedback

This was on the "hard mode download too".
Some bugs people are finding, if people do the score chasers with this we'll need to fix up a few things!!


The game itself is fun and challenging, but agree with others that gliding doesn't really seem to have an impact.
I think extending the game controls to use either mouse, keyboard or game controller would be nice for us lazy types.
@strangeryann I loved a short hike! We are curious how a big level would feel with this game. The cramped level ended up being a bit more "getting over it" than "a short hike". but we were really torn on how to design the level, thanks for the feedback.
Gliding in the game does feel harder in cramped space, but it ends up being a tool to make difficult jump sections but also allows you to replenish stamina while travelling - so at times its a big time saver!
Finally, regarding the character - thanks for the feedback! I appreciate it may not be appealing, but our aim was to have a bird that "can't fly very well", as we wanted stamina mechanic meaning only N max flaps in a row. So we found a bird that doesn't fly too well. We initially thought of a really fat bird! So the idea of looking always out of breath is I guess what we were going for. But not the hero you wanted :( haha.
One of the best entries I've seen so far.
However, I wasn't able to glide mid-air a lot of the times because it was being recognized as 'flying upwards' which resulted in me hitting my head on some platforms and falling down. I am not sure if it is intentional.

it may have felt better having glide on a separate button to jump, as quite a few people struggled with it.
@kgurniak91 - @spacey3d could give more info, but I think it was photoshop hand drawn, not vector stuff. Good feedback about the stamina replenishment - we wanted to try and encourage people to glide more (since you replenish while gliding), but it can feel bad indeed when you have to stand still for 2 seconds to replenish! As for the cursor too far left or right, this might be a bug - we can look into it!
The controls are simple and easy to get used to!
The pigeons gliding face is so adorable and I love the cute sounds too!
A restart button might be useful as when I started level 1 I immediately got hurt and dropped my letters into the sea! :( I'm glad the froggy comes back with more letters after a while thought!)
Overall this game is pretty epic, I hope it ranked really high or even win, honestly!
Amazing art and really fun game! Great work and congrats to you all for an awesome entry!
Here’s the stream if you wanted to re-watch initial thoughts (timestamps in the description to jump to your game!) [youtube link](youtu.be/urgNg4JO17M)
However I would like to say that the art style is making this one a really great game despite of everything else. Really appreciate how you designed characters, tutorial, locations and even project pages here & on itch. A huge respect for that!
controler is actually op wtf
EDIT: The vod for this run is on twitch, and I think I got the duplication bug once, not sure how detrimental it is or how easy to replicate it is, but knowing these people... they will find a way to exploit it LUL
https://youtu.be/iOvkquUaMjs?t=15740
As for parallax, I agree but I think I am happier with how it looked this way. I actually did a small 5 min devlog on this that shows the difference: you https://youtu.be/lFj0dVD1beQ
@pomo thanks for checking out the post jam controller build. Any feedback on how the controller feels / button layout? We are thinking about how to shorten the game, but yeah - sadly its not easy as each "delivery" from start to finish takes some time, so wholesale changes may be needed. We'll have a think anyway.
@tricky-fat-cat @erlioniel @ludumdaredevil thanks for feedback - it is appreciated. its a shame that it was frustrating / hard for you. When we decided to go with controls that have a high skill ceiling and weren't super intuitive, we knew we would risk alienating some players unfortunately. We just felt if we made the controls have A and D to walk and space to jump, it would have felt just like any other platformer. Our gameplay is relatively simple, its mastering the controls to survive that make it hard.
It first I thought that I don't like it, but give it a try. Very good graphics, sounds, and controls! Easy to learn and hard to master! Great job!
It needs a lot of practise to be good at this mails delivery :)

Ok, one small thing: I feel like the Emu Express logo should be a bit more prominent, we barely see it on the transition between tutorial and game
All around awesome work though! I'm always amazed by the amount of stuff you get within your guys' games!