The Tacks Collector by Coda Highland

made by Coda Highland for Ludum Dare 58 (JAM)

You work for the IRS -- the Itty-bitty Robot Squad! Your job is to collect tacks.

Watch out for hazards around the office as you pick up the loot. Slow down, speed up, and jump to make your way from desk to desk as long as you have energy left!

The Tacks Collector

How to play

Collect as many tacks as possible before time runs out.
Colliding with hazards loses tacks and energy. Watch for falling light bulbs!
Falling to the floor loses a lot of energy. Be careful!
Pick up batteries to recharge.
Coyote time and double jumps are available.

Controls

Keyboard and touch controls supported.

Jump: Space bar / Jump button (left side)
Double-Jump: Space bar / Jump button while in the air
Run Slower: Left arrow / Slow button (right side)
Pause: Escape / Pause button

License

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Link	http://greenmaw.com/webgames/ld58/
Link	https://bitbucket.org/ahigerd/ld58/src/master/
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/the-tacks-collector

Ratings

Overall	619^th	3.18⭐	27🧑‍⚖️
Fun	411^th	3.3⭐	27🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	755^th	2.34⭐	27🧑‍⚖️
Theme	548^th	3.4⭐	27🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	504^th	3.42⭐	27🧑‍⚖️
Audio	215^th	3.6⭐	27🧑‍⚖️
Humor	306^th	3.22⭐	27🧑‍⚖️
Mood	619^th	3.14⭐	27🧑‍⚖️
Given		17🗳️	29🗨️

Feedback

PaDo

Oct 07th · 15:39 UTC

An interesting and simple platformer with pleasant graphics and music. The only thing I didn't immediately realize was that the character had a double jump.

I would be glad if you play our game.

🎤 Coda Highland

Oct 07th · 16:36 UTC

@pado I'd be happy to take a look at your game tonight!

Good point on the double jump. I tried to make it self-evident with double-arched tack trails, but I'll edit that into the description so people know in advance!

EklBirifine

Oct 08th · 18:24 UTC

nice and sweet platformer! had fun being the little roboguy :^)

Derek Glennon

Oct 10th · 01:57 UTC

Fun game! Was a little hard to keep track of things and the robot would kinda freak out when running into books. Double jump and slowing down were nice and it felt satisfying to time those abilities just right. Graphics and audio were nice too. Well done!

🎤 Coda Highland

Oct 10th · 02:20 UTC

@derek-glennon Bumping into the books was supposed to be intentional, but I can see how the effect might look a little strange. Probably should have smoothed it out a bit so it was more clearly trying (and failing) to push against them. Thanks for the feedback!

GuyInGrey

Oct 10th · 02:28 UTC

This was fun! I love the music and the graphics. It's a little hard to keep tracking of everything moving, I think a suggestion I'd have is to have the camera vertically static, so the bot jumping doesn't move it. But very cute, and I love the tax puns.

BeatQuestGames

Oct 10th · 02:35 UTC

What an awesome small game, feels like an old SNES game! The pixel art is really good!

🎤 Coda Highland

Oct 10th · 02:37 UTC

@guyingrey Thanks! Yeah, I'm pretty happy with this one overall, but I did run out of time to really flesh things out at the end. I had to stop with just the three obstacle types and a really basic repeating background and I still ended up with only half an hour to bash out the music. (That is the fastest I have EVER written music for a jam game. Not my best work by far, but it's good enough. Honestly I'm surprised I managed to get that much written.)

Deruitda

Oct 10th · 02:39 UTC

Really fast paced and difficult, I liked it!

🎤 Coda Highland

Oct 10th · 02:52 UTC

@beatquestgames Thanks, I'm flattered! I'm really not much of an artist (my wife drew the splash image for me) but I guess I can do okay with robots. That janky SNES-style perspective where you're looking at the sprite from both the front and the side at the same time makes it a little easier. I kinda cheat by picking simple shapes for everything!

@deruitda Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it.

TopperVideoGames

Oct 10th · 03:05 UTC

This is a fun runner game! After taking a few seconds to understand what was happening, I quickly got in the groove and did fairly well I believe. Got to the prodigy ranking at least. The systems work well together, as the pins are the goal, it is better to miss a few if it means not losing more by falling or hitting a cup. It is a rare game where slowing down is very necessary and natural to do even when I am constantly moving. I believe the longer I am running, the faster overall I am going as when I do fall after a while, it feels a lot slower.
Solid visuals, nice song, good work!

🎤 Coda Highland

Oct 10th · 03:41 UTC

@toppervideogames Your speed is based on the number of tacks you've collected since last time you fell off the desk. Glad you had a good time!

There's one more ranking to be achieved above that one. :)

UkuleleFury

Oct 10th · 04:08 UTC

Lol, tax collector--everybody loves that guy! :) This was fun! Great pacing. Not too hard, but you still die plenty often. My only gripe is that I don't know how to actually collect all the tacks without hitting all the coffee cups! Nice simple audio, and nice pixels!

BlueDingo

Oct 10th · 04:11 UTC

neat game, I like the robot collecting animation its very fun. Although sometimes your double jump gets eaten which usually happens after bumping into a book. Nice job overall

atsh

Oct 10th · 04:13 UTC

You deserve an award just for the pun!

There where minor things I would fix - mainly starting only after some key is pressed, and fixing the animation when you can't move forward. Otherwise very cute and fun game!

sslees

Oct 10th · 05:02 UTC

I clicked on this game because of the clever title/theme. I enjoyed it and appreciated it more after playing a couple times. I'm always a fan of games that have double jump, and slowdown was a really important mechanic for this game. Nice job.

fan

Oct 10th · 20:18 UTC

A game that can make people concentrate instantly, very interesting!

Automathan

Oct 11th · 15:12 UTC

Fun game, and crisp sound design! I kept thinking I was supposed to run into the coffee cups on instinct, but got into the groove eventually

Yarli

Oct 11th · 16:22 UTC

It's an exciting game, I've done about 15 runs. The game has nice art and sound. But sometimes, after jumping from a great height, the character seemed to get stuck in the platform. Maybe I'm the only one with this problem.

Yarli

Oct 11th · 16:43 UTC

![Снимок экрана 2025-10-11 204230.png](///raw/0fd/36/z/6f44e.png)

chi_ink

Oct 14th · 16:32 UTC

I love these games with simple controls, just two buttons :)
Very cute graphics and sounds.
I liked that it was initially challenging due to the speed of movement, which I think is because the robot is so hard-working. :)
Overall, the office atmosphere idea is very original!

antax02

Oct 16th · 20:30 UTC

Nice art, music and sound effect!

SergS Workshop

Oct 19th · 14:23 UTC

Really cool game! I love the art style, and the soundtrack and sound effects are great.
A couple of possible improvements: adding a dash feature to pass through the falling lamps if it is too late to slow down, or when you need extra speed to reach the platform, and making the menu UI more consistent with the in-game visuals.
Other than that, it’s super catchy and a lot of fun to play!

🎤 Coda Highland

Oct 22nd · 02:39 UTC

@ukulelefury Well, I mean, you can't collect them all. :slight_smile:

@bluedingo The double-jump getting lost is weird. I've seen it happen but it's so rare that I haven't been able to diagnose it.

@atsh I have more puns where that came from! :grin:

@sslees @fan Glad you enjoyed it!

@automathan I hadn't considered the possibility that the cups might look like special items. I really should have, because I've had that same problem when playing in other games -- thinking something dangerous was a valuable pickup.

@yarli Yeah, I know about that one, but I didn't discover it until after the submission deadline. Since it doesn't break the game I'm not TOO worried about it, but clearly I need to run more timesteps in my collision handling.

@chi-ink @antax02 Thanks! :slight_smile: I'm glad it all came together for you. It felt like a stroke of inspiration when I came up with the idea.

@sergs-workshop I had originally implemented a dash instead of slowing down, but it wasn't as fun to play because you would basically always want to be going fast. So I switched the controls around so that the faster speed was the default and you could push a button to slow down. And yeah, the UI is the generic title screen that I use for all of my games because I didn't have time to customize it.

FireSlash

Oct 22nd · 07:46 UTC

I love the robot animation!

Felt like the coffee cups and light bulbs were placed in ways that were difficult to avoid, It took me a while to find a good groove.

Controls feel mostly tight, though it would be good to have a bit more tolerance on hitbox edges, sometimes I think I'm going to clear and I don't. May just be a skill issue though.

Nice work!

🎤 Coda Highland

Oct 22nd · 15:34 UTC

@fireslash The logic to place the obstacles tries to put them in places where they aren't completely unavoidable, but given the jam time constraints I couldn't polish that forever. That said, the light bulbs in particular are designed to punish you if you try to rush through -- I did some math to make sure that the light bulbs start to fall at exactly the right time to hit you if you keep going the same speed.

LaraZofia

Oct 22nd · 16:08 UTC

fun, simple game, it starts out pretty fast but after a couple of retries you quickly get the hang of it. I do agree with some other comments though that the timing of cups and falling lightbulbs is often a bit awkward for dodging.

Ranarh

Oct 22nd · 18:19 UTC

A nice classic-feeling game. I was never great at these but I tried my best. I liked the funyn worldbuilding of the Tiny Robot Squad - i woudl totally want one for my office.

🎤 Coda Highland

Oct 23rd · 19:04 UTC

@larazofia Yeah, I would definitely have put more work into layout generation if I had time. It's kinda awkward as it is but I'm happy that I managed to get done what I did.

@ranarh Oh man, imagining that little guy scooting around on my desk sounds great.

Arkadi Voronchenko

Oct 24th · 08:04 UTC

Pretty good, but it runs extreamly fast on my system. Firstly I thought cups are collectables too )

🎤 Coda Highland

Oct 25th · 03:55 UTC

@arkadi-voronchenko It's supposed to be fast, so I can't tell how fast "extremely fast" is. Can you take a video?