Paladino by exofrenon

[raw]
made by exofrenon for Ludum Dare 57 (JAM)

In Paladino you play as a holy knight descending deep inside the dungeon of a cursed castle to defeat a necromancer cult and their primordial king brought back from the dead.

It is a dungeon crawling roguelite with procedurally generated levels (around 20+ unique rooms), including traps, enemies and chests.

Controls: - Move: Keyboard arrows - Attack: Z - Defend: Space (Hold). Blocks projectiles and allows you to walk over spikes without triggering them - Heal: Q (If you have a potion) - Pause Menu: Esc - Interact: E (open chests and fountain)

There are currently 4 levels + a boss fight. Each time you die you restart from the last level, not from the beginning (I mention this because when you respawn you can't tell, all levels start the same). NOTE: Sometimes the procedural level generation might fail and you might see a room with only an entrance and all exits closed. If this happens, restart the level (from ESC -> Restart Level)

I highly advice you to just play the WebGL build since it will always be up to date!

This is a solo project and all assets (graphics, sounds, code) were created by me.

Start<em>screen-Sheet-export.png Screenshot</em>3.png Screenshot<em>2.png Screenshot</em>1.png Screenshot<em>4.png Screenshot</em>5.png Screenshot_6.png

Besides the repetitiveness of the game due to low room variety (no time to design more) and the lack of music, I am pretty happy with the final results and what I managed to accomplish in just 72 hours on my own.

Update 1 (08/04/2025): After some feedback, mainly about the game difficulty, I made the following changes for the V2 release: - I added a fountain that heals you at the end of every level and more chests per level - I changed the helmet of the in-game player's sprite to more closely resemble the main menu artwork (Great Helm) - I added diagonal directions sprites for the player

Screenshot_7.png

Update 2 (08/04/2025): Ok, it seems like I introduced a bug at some point and the levels wouldn't progress, you would play the first level again and again. Fixed with the latest release (V4).

Ratings

Overall 187th 3.868⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Fun 300th 3.579⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 619th 2.974⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Theme 623th 3.342⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 153th 4.237⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Audio 483th 2.974⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Humor 551th 2.529⭐ 19🧑‍⚖️
Mood 516th 3.444⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Given 8🗳️ 19🗨️

Feedback

Shamedoor
08. Apr 2025 · 12:10 UTC
Wow! really interesting, it feels more like to a full game than a game jam one!
Dmytro Zhukovetskyi
09. Apr 2025 · 22:41 UTC
Nice game, I wish the room change animations were faster.
Timo5034
09. Apr 2025 · 22:43 UTC
Nice game, especially the art! The controls are a bit weird though
Wolfier
09. Apr 2025 · 22:46 UTC
I think you should of tried to take more advantage of procedural generation. Your rooms are a bit too predictable to be interesting as you will just do the same set of actions to get through them.
Monogatari
09. Apr 2025 · 22:47 UTC
To me it only misses a little music and it's perfect, nice level design, beautiful graphics that reminds me a lot of 2D zelda games, sound design is good too. The last boss is fun to beat. Great job !
🎤 exofrenon
09. Apr 2025 · 22:55 UTC
@dmytro-zhukovetskyi Yeah, I played around with the transition duration and if the camera moves too fast it causes you headaches :head_bandage:

@timo5034 Thanks a lot! But how come the controls feel weird if you don't mind explaining? I will take this into account and fix it if it is an issue

@wolfier Agreed, I definitely need more rooms but I was really pushed by the time constrains and did all of them in the very last moment.

@monogatari Thanks a lot for your kind words, I really appreciate it that you took the time to play it until the end. I realize now that I probably made the stages too long :smile:
Wolfier
09. Apr 2025 · 23:02 UTC
You don't necessarily need more rooms, you just need your rooms to be more dynamic.

Like for example, right now, in the arrow trap room the center traps always fire arrows from the wall farther away. It would be better if that room wasn't so predictable like that, like having arrows fired from different directions for each iteration of that room.

To put it another way, you want to avoid having your players solve a room before they've entered it for as long as possible.
Jared Saizdelamora
09. Apr 2025 · 23:03 UTC
Heavy Link to the Past vibes, I'm loving it! Great work!
Timo5034
09. Apr 2025 · 23:23 UTC
@exofrenon I just realized I could've used a controller, the control scheme for the controller is good! For keyboard: The keys Q, E, Z are pretty far away from each other + I have a german keyboard, where Y and Z are swapped. Also I'm used to WASD instead of arrow keys.
I probably would've done this: Walk: WASD, Attack: Left Mouse, Defend: Right Mouse
🎤 exofrenon
10. Apr 2025 · 00:10 UTC
@wolfier I see. I will keep this in mind if I turn this into a full game or in general if I develop a game with procedural levels at some point.
whateverdat
10. Apr 2025 · 20:07 UTC
Nice game, it's like the binding of isaac! Is there a way to avoid damage from spikes, I couldn't find it and it makes some levels unpassable even with potions.
🎤 exofrenon
10. Apr 2025 · 20:41 UTC
@whateverdat yeah, if you put your shield up you can walk over spikes. It is in the Controls section of the description above
Dylan Shumway
11. Apr 2025 · 01:01 UTC
Really cute roguelike! Super simple, fun to explore, nice to look at, I had a good time! No real complaints other than it can feel kind of barren with the same color palette/no music on repeat, but really solid project overall. Well done! :confetti_ball:
Ricesteam
11. Apr 2025 · 03:30 UTC
Incredible pixel art! Very good start of a fun game.
Empyreans
14. Apr 2025 · 16:41 UTC
https://youtu.be/vT_DMM12dSw

From the stream :)

Incredible roguelite experience! Really well done. As if Dark Souls and Zelda had a child.

~Xp