Downstairs by Sn4pi

A 911 call reaches the Oklahoma bureau: The basement stairs in a family home have changed - they´ve gotten much, much longer. In fact, too long to reach any end. And there are weird noises coming from down there.
A special unit trained to deal with this sort of stuff is sent on the way.
Featuring: - Stairs - Long stairs - Something shuffling around in the dark
- 8 directional aiming, to help you with that.

Code by @sn4pi Music by @nrankin13 Design, Art and SFX by @peringo!
| mirror | https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ku8mCEIKbS85-Xf0O-LSNHfALaAa81Ft/view?usp=sharing |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/downstairs |
Ratings
| Overall | 240th | 3.797⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 458th | 3.365⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 330th | 3.432⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 58th | 4.311⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 196th | 4.149⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 58th | 4.095⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 94th | 4.149⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 46🗳️ | 54🗨️ |
The mood is excellent, the crisp graphics and the audio, Nice! :smile:
My main issue are with the platforming part, IDK why you have to hold Up to reach the next platform it's very unintuitive and frustrating. I ended up always holding my up key... :cry:
You have to press up because you have to be careful when doing acrobatics on the stairs! Wouldn´t want to teach the youngsters to carelessly jump around on them ;-)
One minor complaint, esc key closing the application killed me, i was pretty deep into a run and hit the key out of habit to pause, and it totally ruined the run. The up key on the jump was also a bit cruel, caught me out a few times, but it did add to the tension.
Art and audio were great, overall very nice game.
It is little too long for me, tbh. But it is good game with good mood! Thank you ^_^
The game was just as amazing as it looks like in the screenshot. I got really good SCP vibes out of it and the overall quality was extremely polished. I got stuck when needed to shoot while the stairs were exploding below my feet. It's not as easy as action movies make it seem. Extremely well done!
Download links give "Not found" error :( The game looked really cool and would have loved to try it 
That said, I really loved the visuals and the sound design. The core idea is super cool!
[video](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1t6GLdCHdo997c3vUgz9ikBaRIZbYW5mX/view?usp=drive_link)
... okay, the link won't show. I'll share the link with Nick
Seems like a bug with the LD page I guess, at the start it worked perfectly
I love the pixel art and animations. The controls feel a bit unintuitive to me, but they work well enough once I figured it out. I love the dialog and atmosphere! This was a lot of fun. It felt a tiny bit slow to me at the start, but I guess that helps let the atmosphere sink in. :) Very cool game!
I'll share the rest of the feedback in the coming days.

`https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBfaZje8liE`
This game is really depth, literally and technically. I really dislike the extra effort just for jumping properly, it only adds frustration instead of adding tense. But I'm okay with reloading feature cause it's natural.
The stairs graphic is repetitive but I believe it's deliberate and adds to difficulty.
That being said, I love the fact that this game offers more stu.. enemies as the game gets deeper, makes the game varying and not boring.
Jumping mechanic is ok, but kind of does not add to the game.
It's a good idea to restart the level like you do, so the waiting time is very short.
Overall, it's one of the most polished games i played this LD and i liked it.
I do have some feedback, though it may seem nitpicky, that is just because there are no mayor flaws/problems I could find, so just small suggestions :)
The audio is great, especially the ost (though one of the tracks with the droning ambient noise could be a tad bit quiter), but it I think it would benefit greatly from positional audio. When you enter the level you are immediately spoilt by audio cues of new monsters, giving away the surprise. It would also allow you to play audio behind the player, scaring them to look up the stairs. The text audio could also be a bit filtered and less loud.
Another thing is that the enemies, whilst well made, do take a bit away from the creepyness. I thought I would be stalked, loose my mates one by one, or see eyes distant in the dark. At some point I just started running past obstacles I deemed annoying.
I also had exactly zero problems running it on Linux under Pop_OS 22.04 using Bottles, didn't even have to try the shaderless version because the normal one worked perfectly fine.
That's not bad at all, just an observation. Graphics and mood were amazing. I didn't really like the controls, felt like it was too much for aiming/shooting to need an aim button, then arrows to aim and then another key to fire, maybe mouse aim/shoot would be better. Creepy vibes were a M O O D (in a very good way)
The stupid bugs. OMG the bugs were the worst thing ever! Not anything wrong with the code, the literal flying insect thingies that kept slapping me lol
It did start to feel a little "same-y", almost like when you buy a Steam game that starts to feel like the dev wants you to play more than 2 hours so you can't refund it? But you did mix it up with the platforming vs having to fight different types of enemies, so it wasn't a terrible time.
Last complaint, though. WHAT kind of gun holds 5 bullets, at least from what appears to be like a SWAT unit or something sent in by emergency services to check out an anomaly in a basement? And how many magazines did you bring, because I reloaded like, a half million times easy. Where do you keep all that ammo? :sweat_smile:
Overall, great vibes, good mood, and a fun experience (I probably legit played it for over an hour before getting to the end) so great job!
Really cool creepy ambiance, I love the animation of the guy reloading :smile:
The soundtrack is awesome! I love how it fades through subtly different tracks and sections (and silence). It helps it feel like something in the air is always changing, even though it's the same staircase. Some of it reminds me of the soundtrack to This War of Mine.