Piggybank goes forth by Flying Dog Fish
Once upon a time there was a little piggybank very originally named Piggybank that needed to be filled with valuables. You can help it achieve its goals by controlling its adventure, collecting precious items from around the world. Use your standard controls (arrow, WASD,..). Use SPACE to advance on the splashscreens.
The music was created especially for this game during the event by my friend Aziraphal, everything else was created from scratch by myself during the event.
Tools used: Unity, Blender, Visual Studio Community Edition, Aseprite, Samsung Audio Recorder, Audacity.
Gameplay video in glorious 4K: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIWMMQbRTt4
| Link | https://flyingdogfish.com/ludum-dare/piggybank-goes-forth |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/piggybank-goes-forth |
Ratings
| Overall | 623th | 3.17⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 455th | 3.256⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 709th | 2.558⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 535th | 3.43⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 591th | 3.116⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 148th | 3.775⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 175th | 3.548⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 650th | 3.048⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 42🗳️ | 73🗨️ |
-Movement feels solid horizontally – the character rotation animation when changing direction is nice, and it feels responsive. However, I felt the vertical movement was a bit too slow. Increasing gravity could make jumping feel snappier and more dynamic, though I'm not entirely sure how that would affect the overall feel.
-The spike colliders felt quite tight to me – they seemed to trigger damage a bit too easily. Allowing the pig to graze the spikes slightly without taking damage might make it feel less punishing.
-The life system felt pretty harsh in my experience – having to restart from level 1 after losing all hearts made me stop playing. I made it to level 4 or 5, past the big jumps section (which felt good – the windows above platforms helped with landing). Then came the spike-heavy area where you give us multiple hearts, which seemed like a good idea, but jumping over spikes placed on blocks didn't feel great, probably due to the slower vertical movement combined with the tight colliders. I lost all my hearts there, saw I had to restart everything, and decided to stop.
Some suggestions for the life system:
Maybe spikes could remove one heart instead of instant-killing?
Adding invincibility frames after taking damage might help with repositioning
Perhaps losing all hearts could restart just the current level instead of the entire game?
You could potentially start early levels with one heart (since there's less danger), then award extra hearts for collecting coins, or increase hearts as levels progress
Voice acting hillarious! :rofl:
The pig is cool, the game play is cool. You did a very nice job.
"Money!"
"Life!"
"Ha. Ha!"
:rofl:
The music slaps btw, I loved it! How much time did your friend spend on creating that? For me it would have taken a whole weekend
The level transition was a bit weird though, first I thought the game was freezing. But after mashing some buttons it went to the next level :-)
Would you believe there are no actual colliders used in the game? It's all grid-based, the character is either in the box with the spikes or it isn't. What I could do is increase the size of the spikes visually so they appear out of their box.
I think the lives system is fine, I just went a little (or a lot) overboard with the difficulty on the last (4th) level. I could either make the game less difficult or make it even harder while doing away with the life system altogether, allowing you to try each section countless times, but who would then see my beautifully modeled hearts and hear me say "Life!" :smile:
Faster vertical movement would actually make the game harder, as you would have less time to react and do the horizontal movement necessary to clear the spikes. Let's see, I set the force of gravity at 3.3, so I guess the game is happening on Mars, which allows you to make those really long jumps.
- It took me a three levels to figure out that the gray collectible was a save (I can't make out what the sound effect word is). Some explanation before the game would be nice
- Would be cool to be able to use coins somehow. That way the game would encourage me to actually go through the trouble of taking alternate routes to collect them. For example, you could buy extra health, etc.
- Sometimes I wanted to go the extra mile to collect the coins, but it was hard to know which way is the "main way" and which way is the "extra coins" way. And after picking the "main way", I didn't care enough to go through the trouble of going back to collect the extra coins.
- The coin sound effect is panned to the right. A bit annoying when playing with headphones
- Someone already mentioned this, but going to the first level is a pretty harsh punishment. I feel like the levels don't have much play value after the first run, so there was no motivation to go through all the levels again. Going to the start of the current level would have probably kept me trying
- Really not sure how to collect the coin that was fully enclosed
I have to agree with some of the other commenters, the camera movement gave me motion sickness too. I understand your idea about giving the world depth and looking around like that, it's pretty clever, but maybe an accessibility feature letting you switch off the camera movement and letting the player press something to look ahead instead could work?
- The gray collectible is a silver pig spiked on a flagpole and says "I'll be back" Terminator style. Sure, it's not immediately clear what it is, but once you collect it and kill yourself it becomes obvious.
- Totally agreed, the coins only contribute to your final score, if you care enough about that. Coins could be used to buy extra lives, powerups, hats, anything, but that would be a bit much for a jam game. It's on the list for possible future expansions.
- I hate the recent trend in games that make everything linear, exploring different routes is so much more fun to me. The idea was to make a main easier way and a couple of optional harder sidequest for extra coins, which you can freely ignore and thus select your own difficulty. Marking the main way is a good idea though.
- I think you mean the jump sound effect "hop". I accidentally recorded that in stereo (with one channel missing) and was sure I fixed it, but apparently it wasn't so.
- As I already wrote in another comment, I went a little overboard with the difficulty. I agree returning to the beginning of the level after losing all your lives is one way to fix that.
- You simply don't pick a coin that is fully enclosed, it's just for decoration.
@gamedevtraum and @martynas-dargis gave really solid feedback I can wholeheartedly agree with. All points I wanted to talk about have been covered already :)
My only complaint was the left-right camera panning. I never feel sick from playing games, but this made me feel bad somehow. But not enough to stop playing. :grinning:
Overall, I really enjoyed the game, especially the audio, and the progressively increasing difficulty. There was a coin inside 8 wall bricks that I didn't figure out how to get.. so maybe there are also secret passages?
If you enjoy platformers, consider trying out my submission too. :)
I wanted to play to the end, but unfortunately I was getting some really bad motion sickness due to the camera movement - I see what you were going for with the camera, and I think the idea is really neat (you can see a lot more of what's ahead of you when the camera pans like that), but the implementation unfortunately made me feel extremely nauseous :( I think that there's potential here though, and the camera movement could be a neat feature if you had more time to iterate on the idea! If this were a fast-paced game like Sonic, giving the player that extra view of what comes ahead is a really cool idea, and I want to see where you might go with it!
That coin is there just for decoration and just accidentally messes with the completionist's mind, but hidden passages certainly are on the list of future engine improvements.
Not a fan of the camera. It turning was ok but the way it snaps back and forth when bouncing off walls was horrible.
I lost all my health at a single location: top right corner of the level that starts with the long jumps, and I don't fancy starting over from right from the first level again. The damage system is just too punishing.

The camera movement is really hard on the eyes, but otherwise a pleasant experience. Managed to collect (all?) 20 coins for level 1 and 2 without taking damage.
Nice work!
If the levels could be given more atmosphere and graphics, and the music could be even more addictive, then it would be absolutely fantastic, and we could even release it on mobile platforms. Good luck!
By the way, if you like games with a slightly quirky atmosphere, you might want to check out our game too 🥴