Abgrund by Ace17
A 2D platformer inside deep and half-sunk facility.
Collect all the trinkets, and find the exit.
Keys:
- Left/Right/Up/Down: move
- X: jump
- Enter: minimap ( + directionnal keys )
There's a native version for MS Windows and GNU/Linux. I recommend downloading it when possible, it's less than 5Mb! You will get smoother graphics, and the ability to play in fullscreen (Alt+Enter), for a more ... immersive experience :)
Tools used:
- Custom “Native Code” Engine
- C++ / SDL2 / Emscripten
- Vim / GNU Make
- Virus TI / Audacity / Bitwig Studio
- Genius MousePen Tablet / The Gimp
Ratings
| Overall | 111th | 3.574⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 107th | 3.481⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 271th | 2.611⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 218th | 3.204⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 206th | 3.167⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 97th | 3.462⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 173th | 3.269⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 36🗳️ | 23🗨️ |
I was really blown away by the level design. The trinkets were hidden well and were almost always satisfying to find. I sort of wish the map was hidden away in a more secret spot, since it ended my exploration gameplay right away and replaced it with a "follow-the-map" style. The minimap was great though, super well designed and useful. I think the pacing was also totally solid (maybe a little too much water levels? idk) and I enjoyed the combination of one-off mechanics and reused ones.
Great submission, had a lot of fun with this one!
> I noticed a lot of Metroid nods, those were a good touch. :)
Ahah, I'm indeed a huge fan of the 2D Metroids :smile:
> I sort of wish the map was hidden away in a more secret spot, since it ended my exploration gameplay right away
I hadn't though of that, you're totally right :thinking:
Fullscreen button makes the game go black and doesn't return until F5 is pressed.
music muffling when I'm underwater. There were only a couple small problems I noticed:
- Interacting with a ladder while underwater can get you stuck in a wall, although you
can unstuck yourself by mounting and unmounting the ladder
- Some of the conveyors in one of the upper areas don't move the player. One of them doesn't do
the conveyor animation, either.
- I think the map shouldn't show trinkets you've already found. I didn't get burned by this, but
I could imagine walking past one accidentally and having it show as reached on the map, preventing me from
realizing I hadn't gotten it.
Great job!
The sound design is really great also, I specially loved the way the sound is affected by when you're inside the water, this made the overall mood be soo imersive!
The controls are really good, even thou i wish a little bit of buffer in a coyote time, specially in the jumping over those timed plataforms, that took me quite a while to overcome.
The presence of other biomes impressed me so much! And the way the levels are connected is quite clever, really loved that!
I wish the the hitboxes were a little bit smaller, sometimes, specially when swimming, was a little dificult to avoid the spines (since a really small touch would kill me).
All that said, its overall an impressive entry, with a crazy amount of polishing and a really great gamefeel. The jumping animation with the megaman x movement made me feel really great, since I deeply love that game.
Great entry! Keep up the good work and thank you for the game!
You need to add coyote time when jumping
@milq I've been using Debian for almost 20 years now, this is by far my platform of choice. But hey, I still have to target MS Windows :grin:
@heviosso I used to customize Emscripten's HTML, but not anymore, too much of a hassle ( I'll have a look into Emscripten's shell_minimal, though).
@Hinamarina Indeed, I'm also a huge fan of the Megaman X series!
@0x-void-x0 To avoid running in circles, don't forget you have a minimap ( by pressing Enter ).
@gdman There's no persistence in my engine at the moment. This definitely is something I'll have to add, considering the size of the map!
@henk The conveyor issue was unexpectedly hard to diagnose (but easy to fix). This is the price for using a homemade physics system :grin:
About SDL3 vs SDL2: I'm currently SDL2 fluent, I don't know anything about SDL3, and I'm definitely not going to try to learn it during a game jam. Only a very small portion of the engine code actually depends on SDL. Porting it to SDL3 is a non-topic : the day it will be needed, it will be a matter of a few days. But hey, there are lots of things a lot more interesting to do in this codebase!
About the coyote time: not having coyote time is a deliberate design choice (I might have to mention it in the game description for future game jams). I'm not going to make the game frustrating on purpose, but I think that providing the player with *some amount* of real challenge (=not everyone will win) is a mark of respect ( In this vein, I deeply respect Blasphemous ), a lot more than silent handholding when doing difficult jumps. The platformers I take inspiration from don't have coyote time ( and are probably better off without ).
Anyway, thanks again for playing and rating, I wish you all a lot of fun with this (and future!) Ludum Dare!
The map could use a bit of improvement — it currently doesn’t show which trinkets you’ve already collected, which makes it harder if you revisit a place after dying or falling. I also wish the jumps were just slightly stronger — I felt like I was missing that extra bit of reach in a few places.
I’ll admit I didn’t manage to collect all the trinkets — I died in another trap (but I was so close, I swear!). Still, it’s a great concept. Thank you so much!