Pass It On by TeaHands

[raw]
made by TeaHands for Ludum Dare 55 (JAM)

PassItOn_ItchBanner.png

Note: Made a quick morning-after bugfix to sort the teacher detection bug as it seemed to be ruining things. Suspicion now builds as expected, the more teachers see you. Haven't fixed anything else, but rate accordingly I guess!


You're a wilful child who just so happens to be in possession of a stash of the new hotness: a candy that turns you blue! They may be strictly banned at school, but you're determined to blue the place up regardless.

Throw candy to your friends while avoiding teacher attention, lest ye be summoned to the headteacher's office!


CONTROLS:

  • WASD or Arrows to move
  • E or SPACE to throw a candy to another student

Screenshot 2024-04-16 014208.png

Throwing candy while too close to a teacher will increase your suspicion level, which is a bad thing! Once you become too suspicious the headteacher will summon you, at which point the teachers become a little more...aggressive in their efforts to bring you in to the office.

Luckily, once a student has come into posession of candy they'll help spread the bluening to their peers, speeding up the process in a chain reaction.


ISSUES:

  • Finding the last un-blue student can be annoying and you will get bored and give up. It's fair enough, honestly.

GENERAL THOUGHTS:

  • Deciding to do a tilemap-based game for the first time in Godot during a short jam was not my best life decision
  • Still, getting anything submitted at all is revenge on Unity for slowing me down so much in LD53 I couldn't finish!
  • Pixel art is way more work than low poly 3d omg

The Itch embed is the canonical LD55 Jam entry. However, I'll be continuing work for another four days and then submitting version 2 to the Week Sauce Jam: Chain Reaction!

Ratings

Overall 918th 3.263⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Fun 793th 3.237⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 584th 3.368⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Theme 1115th 2.789⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 736th 3.5⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Humor 333th 3.472⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Mood 872th 3.265⭐ 19🧑‍⚖️
Given 2🗳️ 5🗨️

Feedback

AshKetchdem
16. Apr 2024 · 09:44 UTC
I hate being summoned by the headteacher, but love sharing candy! The game plays fluidly and the animations are great. The sound is fits the game and the cones clearly show where the trouble is and keeps you on your toes. Great entry, keep up the good work!
crushedsummers
16. Apr 2024 · 09:52 UTC
I didn't get summoned at all XD

In the end it was a bit hard to tell who was left, perhaps some sort of indicator or arrows towards unaffected students would help. But overall this is a cute simple game, and the chain reaction was a cool additional theme!
zablas
16. Apr 2024 · 09:53 UTC
Fun game but was a bit hard to find the last guy to pass the candy on :D
mxbi
16. Apr 2024 · 09:54 UTC
Fun little concept, and cheeky use of the theme. Art is very cohesive and I think . The gameplay felt too easy to me as you can easily see the teachers coming (and it's just about not pressing E rather than hiding from them entirely), although on the flipside I got stuck at 49 and couldn't find the last person! Spreading mechanic is a nice touch. To make it harder, you could start with a time limit forcing you to take risks.
🎤 TeaHands
16. Apr 2024 · 09:54 UTC
@crushedsummers Yeah that is one thing I'm definitely going to add in v2! Thanks for playing and congrats on your stealthy candy distribution skills.
🎤 TeaHands
16. Apr 2024 · 09:57 UTC
@mxbi Time limit was also on my list but had to be cut for...you guessed it...time! So yeah, completely agree. Lots of tweaks needed to make it into a "real game".

@zablas I promise to do something about that in v2 :D
ecenizo
16. Apr 2024 · 10:00 UTC
Haha love distributing candies! The gameplay is fun, id defiently take a look at the key bidninds (E is a bit hard with WASD and space didnt work for me).
🎤 TeaHands
16. Apr 2024 · 10:04 UTC
@ecenizo Thanks for giving it a go! Interesting issue with the space not working, I'll have to test it on more browsers and see if I can get it to break :D
fisu
16. Apr 2024 · 10:05 UTC
Nice game, had a hard time finding my last none blue student. Cool graphics!
Hexy
16. Apr 2024 · 10:05 UTC
It's a decent proof of concept, but it could still do with some work.
- Suspicion is easy to avoid as long as you don't do anything within the circles. Wouldn't they get suspicious just by seeing blue kids?
- I wasn't certain of how the mechanics changed from light blue to dark blue. I was at 48, made two more students blue, and then got stuck at 49 as I looked around the map for one more non-blue player.
- When I started, I didn't think I could be in the circles at all without raising suspicion and avoided them. This made me waste a lot of time to begin with.
- The vast majority of the students appeared to pool on the left hand side of the map

Music was fun, movement felt good. There's potential here but also a lack of clarity to the player I think.
Good work though. Hope you had a fun time making it!
🎤 TeaHands
16. Apr 2024 · 10:14 UTC
@hexy Thanks! I did have a lot of fun, although tbh thought about not submitting at all due to everything you mentioned. But I'm forever telling people to be proud of having made anything at all, so thought I better not be a massive hypocrite :D

Roll on v2.
Rokevicius
16. Apr 2024 · 10:36 UTC
Great game, a bit too easy as long as you avoid the circles. Got caught on purpose at the end. Fitting music!
Shugor
16. Apr 2024 · 11:05 UTC
Neat game. I took the time to find all the students despite your warnings, and I think the issue is that the school is just a bit too big. The most exciting part of the game was trying to get the students in the starting area where the teachers had mostly clustered up, but once I went out further to search for other students I found it pretty easy to not cause suspicion. Interesting take on the theme and solid game!
Wouter52
18. Apr 2024 · 19:29 UTC
What a fun game! some feedback I have:

- The controls were a bit clunky for me tbh, the issue is that I would like to press left and up at once to walk diagonal. I can see why you did not implement that, but it was something I noticed right away
- The graphics and sound/music is very nicely done and sets up a fun expectation
- The use of the theme is very original and something I haven't seen yet


Edit: Congratz on your first LD entry btw!!!
CataclysmicKnight
28. Apr 2024 · 03:23 UTC
Yay I did it!!!! You did a great job with this game :D I really appreciated that it seemed like each candy would spread, and that even when your suspicion fills you then have to be​ found and caught before you lose.

I was so freaking stressed lol but I did it!

I also wonder if there's a glitch or if I got impatient: I lost once, then tried again and it seemed like no one ever fully got blue. So I refreshed the page and it worked :D
Fionnabhair
29. Apr 2024 · 15:36 UTC
This is a cute game, and a different take on the theme. I haven't been able to fully blue all the students- as it turns out, hiding in a room and waiting for your fellow blue minions to spread it to everyone isn't an option- I enjoyed the game! Now, where can I get my hands on some of that candy...
jpbash
30. Apr 2024 · 16:49 UTC
I think you did a great job with this. The concept is so simple and feels kinda like a schoolyard game. I really love the music too, it somehow captures the troublemaking theme really well.
Jonathan Lorenz
01. May 2024 · 13:38 UTC
Would be cool to have a mini tutorial in game. I had no idea what I was doing. At a certain point I was summoned to the principal's office but the door was closed. The stealth mechanics seems to work so I hope you'll find a way to explain to the player what he must do in game. Good job overall!
Rudra Nil Basu
01. May 2024 · 14:08 UTC
Fun idea! Kindof agree that it got a bit easier once I got a hang of it, and got caught intentionally, but the art and sound looks good!