Escape From GR0K Tower by paulhocker
SUMMARY
This is a simple Tower Escape game where you must avoid traps and find the trigger to open the gate on each floor.
There are 100 floors to escape from and each floor gets harder than the last. There is only ever ONE trigger to open the gate on the floor, there will ALWAYS be multiple traps to slow you down or hurt you.
Good Luck!
Thanks for playing my game!
TRAILER
My youngest son created a trailer for the game.
https://youtu.be/x4eToNxAvJc?si=a0KK8aYnA8FFLuPX
INSTRUCTIONS
- MOVE LEFT = A or LEFT ARROW
- MOVE RIGHT = D or RIGHT ARROW
- INTERACT = E or DOWN ARROW
- JUMP = SPACE or UP ARROW
- RUN = HOLD SHIFT
X/Grok Factor
For this game I did a bit of an experiment. To come up with the idea for the game, I used GROK on X to work through the game elements and even had it generate some pseudo code, which I used for initial prototyping. I then continued to work on the game without the help of GROK to completion.
It was an interesting experiment, and I found that it was actually able to come up with several good ideas, but I needed to guide it in order to zero in on what I wanted to make.
PICTURES

Original Picture of the Game after I put the GROK pseudo-code and programmer art in.

| Link | https://paulhocker.itch.io/ld57 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/escape-from-gr0k-tower |
Ratings
| Overall | 637th | 3.267⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 514th | 3.267⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 717th | 2.767⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 491th | 3.611⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 522th | 3.478⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 375th | 3.367⭐ | 47🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 548th | 2.537⭐ | 43🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 635th | 3.233⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 47🗳️ | 77🗨️ |
The graphics, music and overall feel are quite coherent and pleasant.
However, I think that I would've enjoyed the game more without the randomness. If it wasn't random, you could learn the moves of each floor, and get a sense of progression. In the current state, I would just die randomly on a peak between floors 75 and 85, without getting any feeling that the next run would be better, and that was a bit frustrating (I did not finish the game sorryyyy). This would also leave room for cool level design. The opening mechanism could still be random and randomly positioned, I think this was a really cool aspect of the game.
Anyways that's just my feeling, because for me it would've increased the replayability. But the game is quite fun as it is!
Good job!
The particle effects and music give the game a sense of momentum and urgency; the art is nice as well.
Overall, a fun little game!
Nice job experimenting with AI-collaborative design. In my experience AI definitely doesn't have enough vision to easily take one to a finished and fun game, but collaborating with AI to work through ideas is a VERY powerful workflow.
The art style is very neat... I especially like the pixel particle effects!
I did struggle with the interactions/interactables a bit. There were some floors with a single object, where I couldn't get the gate raised and died. It wasn't clear what wasn't working. Was my interaction button press being registered? Was it working on the object in front of me? Even just a hint of audio or visual feedback would have helped with this process substantially.
Also, I couldn't figure out what these boxes were. At first I thought they were treasure that I couldn't figure out how to open, and later I wondered if they were meant to be a trap. Either way, they never did anything to interact with me.
Nice entry!
@milq thank you for the feedback -- different style of rooms with more of a pitfall feel was thought of but i ended up ditching the idea in the interest of time
@silas-reinagel the grok experience was actually pretty rewarding and i would definitely use it again because i felt it really helped me refine the gameplay and gave me some instant feedback to see if an element would work -- all in all it helped me -- not sure it gave me an edge tho -- even with the sample code it produced because i ended up rewriting most of it -- that said i was simply amazed as it would basically create the node structure and code to copy/paste -- actually kind of blew my mind
I was confused by the chain at first, but eventually figured it out, also there is a frustrating amount of downtime when restarting.
I did gave a chest spawn behind one of the red boxes which took a while to figure out.
The spear traps seem to have a too large hitbox but it was mainly me being careless due to rushing as the gameplay is not very interesting.
100 levels is way to many though with so little variation. I gave up after getting to floor 23.
Isso

foi

difícil.

No geral o jogo me deixou bastante contente e entretido, só achei cem estágios muita coisa para tentar novamente (quem sabe não precise de tantos assim, hahahahahahah).
Foi divertido, especialmente quando notei que havia geração por procedimento de código e os desafios foram se acumulando. Senti falta de poder coçar meu braço enquanto jogava. @.@
Não que seja uma imensa inovação, mas achei bem diferente e interessante jogar com diferentes mecanismos de abertura de passagem. Quem sabe algumas mecânicas poderiam ser inseridas de tempos em tempos, tanto para acelerar a descida, quanto para dificultar (creio que o número de poças e o tamanho das plataformas ser menor entre poças ácidas pareceu diminuir um pouco após certa profundidade, mas não tenho certeza).
O uso do tema foi bacana.
Os gráficos estão bem bonitos, especialmente considerando o tempo que teve. Creio que as lanças que saem do chão tenham algum tipo de falha visual (não sei se é só no meu navegador de Internet).
O som não me cansou, mas gostaria que fosse um pouco menos temático da ansiedade para que eu pudesse usar ele para me acalmar um pouco. Hahahahahahahah. Muito tenso e morrer para uma lança é bem assustador. ^^'
Não creio que a ênfase seja no humor, mas eu ri da minha própria tragédia.
A ambientação foi bacana. Com um pouco mais de narrativa dentro do jogo, justificando a descida, talvez eu teria me ambientado ainda mais.
Creio que o jogo com desafio finito mais um modo arcade teria um bom potencial para mobile e/ou outras formas (se o ranking for online, quem sabe semanal com novas skins para os vencedores e coisas do tipo).
It

was

hard!

Overall, the game made me really happy and entertained — I just thought a hundred stages was a bit too much to try again (maybe it doesn’t need that many, hahahahahahah).
It was fun, especially when I noticed there was procedural generation in the code and the challenges started piling up. I did miss being able to scratch my arm while playing. @.@
It’s not exactly a huge innovation, but I found it quite different and interesting to play with various mechanisms for opening paths. Maybe some mechanics could be introduced from time to time — either to speed up the descent or to make it harder (I think the number of acid pools and the size of the platforms between them seemed to decrease a bit after a certain depth, but I’m not sure).
The use of the theme was nice.
The graphics are really pretty, especially considering the time you had. I think the spears that come out of the ground might have some kind of visual glitch (not sure if it’s just my web browser).
The sound didn’t wear me out, but I wish it was a bit less anxiety-inducing so I could use it to calm down a little. Hahahahahahahah. Very tense — and dying to a spear is quite a scare. ^^'
I don’t think humor is the focus, but I did laugh at my own tragedy.
The atmosphere was nice. With a bit more in-game narrative explaining the descent, maybe I would’ve felt even more immersed.
I think the game — with a finite challenge plus an arcade mode — could have great potential for mobile and/or other platforms (if the ranking is online, maybe have weekly challenges with new skins for the winners and things like that).