MadCap (Alan the Archeologist) by Alanushke
for "Limited space" theme, you're on a mission to complete all statues in an abandoned ancient Greek ruin. collect the statue pieces for the highest score, or take the trash and make some funny creations, but you can only carry 6 at a time and no more.
avoid spikes and enemies and try to get all statues completed :)
instructions: WASD to move and space to jump, at the far left of each level is a door to go back to the central hall after collecting 6 statue pieces. when in the hall, get close to a slab and press e to start building the statue. drag and drop the pieces into any slot you want and be ashamed of your abominations :)
game on itch - https://alanlovesgames.itch.io/madcap-alan-the-archeologist
if the game doesnt work, theres also a RAR file :)
Music By Grayson Varn - https://open.spotify.com/artist/6Uv5mWNrZwPZni66WxARjo, https://www.instagram.com/grayson_varn/, https://keyresonance.itch.io/
Art By Demi Zwerver - https://sovereignblue.artstation.com/
Programming By LucCogito - https://lukeduke.itch.io/
Game and Level Design and additional Programming By Alanushke - https://alanlovesgames.itch.io/
Ratings
| Overall | 1027th | 2.958⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1014th | 2.778⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 797th | 3.069⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 940th | 3.043⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 236th | 4.153⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 414th | 3.458⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 459th | 3.125⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 664th | 3.426⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 39🗳️ | 51🗨️ |
Building statues was slightly confusing though. I just kept throwing pieces at it until it formed. I also encountered a few bugs where my character was in the "platforming mode" in the map screen and I was not able to proceed. This often happened to me when I came back from a level without any parts.
As a side note, the game does not load for me on ldjam.com. It is weird - I have never had this kind of issue with Unity players. Itch.io player loads just fine.
But overall, I really cohesive visual style. And I think it fits the theme well!
The controls were a bit to fast for me. in most levels I tried to jump to another platform fell down and was locked out of the level.
On a brighter note, I had an absolute blast making my own abominations! That part of the game was fantastic!
In a nutshell, fantastic art, a bit of control fine-tuning, and a big thumbs up for the abomination-making fun.
When I entered each room it often took me a second or two to figure out where I was on the screen and by that time, an enemy had hit me. You should allow a safe zone to start out and get used to the mechanics earlier out. This could be as simple as just a small area with no enemies and a few jumps. Unless I'm mistaken, once you die in any of the areas, you can't return? I died instantly in two of them and barely got to experience the cool environment :(
I like the concept of the building mechanic, but for me nothing would snap into place properly and I ended up getting soft-locked trying to place pieces.
Interesting concept, great environments, but the gameplay loop was a bit buggy and brutal. Nice game, thanks for sharing!
The gameplay has a few problems though:
First of all it isn't clearly visible where the player can stand on, which makes navigating the platforming parts harder than they needed to be.
Second, it is unclear to the player what he is able to do, can the player swim? I felt like I could once I jumped down, but then the game went back to the main statue scene.
Third, the statues aligining minigame seems like a cool idea to me, but its even harder, if the parts are so small that I have to squint at it to see what it actually is, is it an arm? a leg? a torso? I dunno!
I dunno about how you implemented the theme, I somehow feel that it doesnt really fit the game here.
I like the transitions between scenes! They feel really nice and the music is also good.
Oh and your web/html5 build does not seem to work!
- the controls could really benefit from a second pass on them. The platforming is really hard!
- when you enter a level, the enemies spawn way too quickly, or too close to you, IMO
- controls in the main scene with the statues are quite confusing, a few help texts could really, really help, especially with the drag and drop mechanic. Also, sometimes stuff just went in the wrong direction on the statue, even though they were clearly a leg onto a leg part, or an arm onto an arm part?
- the theme feels slightly underused IMO
- the art is superb but it's sometimes hard to distinguish platforms from the background
Overall, quite an appreciable experience that could benefit from a last pass of polish to help with the initial confusion :)
isn't she beautiful?
gameplay wise the platforming is hard and you get only one chance per room.
I got one time stuck putting pieces to the statue, as I didn't have enough pieces or some run off while I was placing others.
you don't get to see the last abomination statue you made, when the menu pops up over.
For the levels I would have liked to start from the left side just like with super mario bros first level etc. That's where my vision started scanning the maps. By the time I was done scanning a level I was dead on one of the levels. This terrible event then made me fear entering the other levels. The platforming gravity felt a bit too strong. One misstep and your character zooms out of existence.
I totally agree that the movement could use a little tweaking and be slowed down so you can actually move and understand whats going on, and the game would totally benefit from a bit of an explanation on how things work, but unfortunately we ran out of time and had to cut some stuff from development, but thats the game jam for ya, it was a pretty ambitious project to make in 3 days but overall it turned out pretty great! (Considering)
The platforming feels a bit too fast and unforgiving though, you might want to try out some different speed / gravity values there for a smoother experience.
I also would've liked to be able to enter levels multiple times for a more chill experience. And exiting the levels through the portal without any pieces collected should probably not be possible?
Overall though, really enjoyable entry, good job!
The skulls on the pillar stage were difficult to avoid when it was rolled as the very first door (seems random levels are used after multiple playthroughs), only way I could see to prevent this is to have the character appears on the same side of the screen as the door you entered, or pause and point the character out on entering - was just a tiny bit jarring to go from left side of the screen (door) directly to the right side (the first and second time) :).
Awesome work either way, I made some hideous poop-tuna creatures XD.
GOOD JOB GUYS !
