Escape the Slime Lab by Redoxeide
A tiny puzzle platformer game in which you control a slime trying to escape the Slime Lab.
Place special "lab shapes" around the slime to solve your way out of the lab.
*Note - * There is only a tutorial + 3 levels. There is also no main menu or end screen, sorry about that.
Post-jam
There is now a post-jam version that implements many changes based on the feedback I have received from comments and play testing! Read more below!
Controls
- A/D - Movement
- Spacebar - Jump
- Left Click - Pick/place shapes
- R - Reset level
Placing shapes
- Use your mouse to pick shapes from the bottom of the screen and place them on the level.
- A shape cannot be moved once placed.
- Shapes can only be placed while encasing the slime inside of them.
- Placing a new shape removes the last one.
- The slime can use the shape walls to jump.
Changes
- Fixed game breaking when player resets game during another reset or level load. (Oct/03/23)
- Added Windows version. (Oct/03/23)
Post-jam version changes
Updated oct/19/23; Some of the most notable changes:
- Changed tutorial levels to hopefully have a smoother learning curve.
- Added a couple of new levels (new final level might be too hard...).
- Added collectable cards to two levels (Still deciding on how to handle collectables).
- A shape can now be "planned" anywhere on the level. It will be automatically placed when the slime enters it.
- Changed movement to be smoother and more controllable.
- Added level and global timer.
- Added experimental grid shape placement (press Tab to toggle it).
- Added a simple main menu.
- Game can be reset back to the first level by pressing [P].
Play it here (itch.io HTML5) after you have played and rated the original jam version!
Ratings
| Overall | 414th | 3.725⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 485th | 3.538⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 69th | 4.167⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 173th | 4.213⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 332th | 4.013⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 571th | 3.068⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 53🗳️ | 43🗨️ |
As for the freezing on level 2, I was not able to reproduce it, but The game did have a bug where if the player reset the level while it was already resetting or loading a new one, it would break. I just fixed it, so perhaps this is what was happening?
I also felt like I had to be pretty fast with my mouse clicks to build some platforms. Perhaps when you click, the platform could "lock in" an intermediate ghost-like stage, and once the player jumps inside, it becomes fully solid?
Overall a nice game. The art looks really nice and is what drew me in to the game!
Yeah, I would have liked to add a tutorial for the buttons and the baseball, but I couldn't make it in time.
I agree on the platform building. The "lock in" is a very interesting suggestion that I hadn't thought of before and would probably solve most problems. Thank you for that!
The idea feels fresh and new to me. I'm good at puzzles and bad at platforming, but the platforming elements didn't feel diabolical :grin: Great jam job!
Nice entry overall!
https://youtu.be/FhlYJa9B8dk?si=N38EaS_gZUnFKNaM&t=10244
The ball puzzles were very unforgiving with drag/friction haha, te amount of times the ball stopped 1mm short..
Yeah, the ball stopping just a little before falling has been a theme with players. I intentionally made it heavy and with a lot of inertia so the player could give it a good impulse for a while before letting it roll on its own, but I should probably lower the drag a little bit more.
I am checking your game right now :smile:.
I like how it ties into the theme it's pretty clever!
the graphics are also good, very nice spitework! some music would be a welcome addition!
I tried the jam version then I tried the fixed version (which makes quite a few quality of life improvements. I will say it took me a bit o trial and error to understand how the gimmick works. I didn't have as much fun as I could have had cause I found the controls to be rather clunky and the placing of the shapes was very precise in the jam version.
One criticism I do have for both versions is that the character lacks any momentum build and that is especially apparent when I jump because there's absolutely no control on the distance the character will jump. I found that rather frustrating at times because I caused me to fail the last puzzle quite a few times. I managed to finish the game but I think that would be something really nice to have fixes
I see potential in this if it will be more polished and expanded upon with new gimmicks and other shapes possibly!
Yeah, I planned to do music, but I could not get it done in time.
As for the momentum, could you clarify what you mean by this? Do you mean horizontal or vertical distance? I tested the jumping control using the post-jam version and I can control where I will land by letting go of the movement key or pressing the key for the opposite direction. You can see three different jumping distances on the next gif.
First jump is letting go mid-air, second is keeping [A] pressed, and third jump is pressing [D] mid-air. I didn't record letting go of [A] just before pressing jump, but you do get a jumping distance somewhere in-between the second and the third jump.
The jam version however, did not have this. The slime would full stop mid-air if the movement key was let go. You could still control where you land with the movement keys, but it didn't keep momentum.
So maybe that was for the jam version?
If you mean controlling vertical distance, I do plan to add variable jump height, just couldn't get it in the current post-jam version.
Again, I really appreciate you taking time to write feedback about my game!
yes that's what i meant, it was mostly in the jam build in the build the post gam one wasn't as severe but I still encountered it a bit. maybe it's the speed of the character that gave me little time to react, not entirely sure tbh
Thank you for your feedback!