Midnight Cheese Quest by Archaeognathus
You are a wizard in dire need of a midnight snack. What could be better than a nice piece of cheese? You decent into the depth of your cellar in search of the object of your desire. The terrain is treacherous for an old wizard like you, but you have the power to summon spectral blocks as steppingstones. Will you make it to the end?
As weird as that might sound, this is my first platformer. The game is written in Python (3.12), using Pygame-ce (2.4.1) for input, output, and some of the logic, as well as pytmx (3.13) to load level data created with Tiled. Graphical assets were created using Asesprite. It took some time to learn to use Tiled and Asesprite during the first day, but it was a lot of fun to use, once I figured out how to use them. For the idea I have been inspired by Trine, which I never finished, but had some fun as the wizard.
Music used: "Stream Loops 2023-11-29.ogg" by Abstraction https://tallbeard.itch.io/music-loop-bundle or https://abstractionmusic.com/
All graphical assets have been created by me (Archaeognathus, https://ldjam.com/users/archaeognathus/) for Ludum Dare 55. Drawing was done using Asesprite, level layout with Tiled.
How to play: - Move and jump using WASD/arrow keys/space. - Walk into the open door to pass into the next level, until you find what you came looking for. - Draw shapes by holding left mouse button. They materialize as constructs made of blocks. You can have a maximum of three constructs made of a total of nine blocks at once. This is indicated by the runes and the mana flask at the lower left corner of the screen. - Remove constructs by right clicking them. This will return mana and free up capacity to summon a new shape construct. - Pressing R will reset the current level, pressing ESC will make the game return to the title screen.
Hints: - You can summon boxes below you while jumping. - Create small stairs, climb, jump, repeat 😉
Ratings
| Overall | 128th | 4.063⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 88th | 4.104⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 125th | 3.932⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 331th | 3.979⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 403th | 3.958⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 347th | 3.447⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 134th | 4.091⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 16🗳️ | 25🗨️ |
this is pretty fun lil platformer, great twist.
I think it would be nice if the level design was more forgiving. There were a few places were I fell, and the way back up was complicated and made me want to give up
Congrats for your nice job ! :smiley:
@speedphoenix: I was struggeling a lot with setting the difficulty, maybe I should have made more level and ramp it up a bit slower.
@tuh: Thanks, making games is as much about the programming challenge than about the game itself :D
@Marju I unfortunalty didn't have the time for many of the effects regarding the summoning and unbinding. I only managed a quick and dirty random color tint that sometimes helps to differentiate between constructs... but mostly beeing to subtle
I liked the primary block placing mechanic a lot, and the levels were designed in a way that took good advantage of the mechanic. I could see the same concept stretched even farther if there were environmental hazards that affected how you played (like regions you couldn't place blocks in, forcing you to be creative about positioning and making blocks fall). Of course, it's hard to scope extra stuff into a jam, especially as a solo developer.
Pixel art graphics were charming and the UI was very clear. The music you chose fit the mood well, although it would have been nice to have simple sound effects as well for at least the core actions of jumping, placing blocks, and removing blocks.
Always good to see more pygame developers in LD! Don't forget you can port to other platforms after the jam is over, if you wanted to experiment with getting a build in web with [pygbag.](https://github.com/pygame-web/pygbag)
I made a little doodle of your wizard:
Good luck during the rest of play and rate!
My only feedback would to add some satisfying sound effects for castling spells :)
It's an impressive solo project. Well done! Sure, it would be nice to have more sfx, but we all understand the jam time constraints :grin:
I like the mood you set in this little puzzle game. The mechanics and UI felt very intuitive for me. The controls also felt very good. I like that you used different colours for the blocks, when you summoned a new block chain. Maybe it would help if the colours were even more different, so you can distinguish them more, when you want to remove them.
The "punishing system" for falling down on the other hand didn`t feel that good. Restarting was often a better option. Maybe you could use "real" pits, so that you die and get to the last plattform you were standing on. Kind of like in the game Celeste. The blocks could vanish if you fall into a pit. But it´s just a suggestion.
I really liked playing this game. The little practicle effects on summoning the blocks are a nice touch. The graphics are simple, but very clear. I think you should do a post-jam version. You can expand the gameplay with new obstacles, jumping plattforms, enemies and so on. Thanks for the fun I had with this game. :)
@jeremy-ryan Wow, thanks so much for the feedback and especially the doodle, I love it! I had so many ideas for more stuff to put into the game. Simple enemies like zombies that are trappable and can walk your platforms, or spiders that drop from above. With all this nice feedback I might continue with the development afterwards. I also havn"t heared of pygbag yet and will give it a try. Thanks a lot :smile:
@lllarso Thanks for your in-depth feedback :) With so many nice comments there is a high chance that I will acutally expand upon the game post-jam. It was espacially challenging for me to get the difficulty right and I thought I was nice when allowing people to climb back, but your idea of having checkpoints seems very good. If I continue I will make sure to give it a try, together with adding some enemies and new obstacles :)