xhon by savethejets1

[raw]
made by savethejets1 for LD27 (JAM)
Xhon is a 10 second platformer where you play as an alien plant species that has to pollinate other plants with your spores that you spawn. The catch is they only live for 10 seconds!

Controls:
Arrow Keys - Move
Space - Jump
Y - Suicide
ESC - Pause

Ratings

Coolness 71% 3
Overall(Jam) 3.77 51
Audio(Jam) 3.21 164
Fun(Jam) 3.54 71
Graphics(Jam) 3.84 135
Humor(Jam) 2.46 276
Innovation(Jam) 3.46 103
Mood(Jam) 3.57 77
Theme(Jam) 3.73 46

Feedback

tchem
27. Aug 2013 · 02:39 UTC
awesome man,,, the graphics are fantastics,, the atmosphere is very cool!! great job
EvilObjective
27. Aug 2013 · 04:23 UTC
Excellent game! The graphics and sound are amazing and the atmosphere is fantastic. Very good job.
pfaulty
27. Aug 2013 · 04:27 UTC
Great game. I loved the use of gravity and the different power ups that switched up the game play. Also that time my character got to be blue. I like blue.
supersammy7000
27. Aug 2013 · 05:03 UTC
This is the best game here. 5 out of 5 stars
matthias_zarzecki
27. Aug 2013 · 06:25 UTC
Solid platformer!
ddionisio
27. Aug 2013 · 06:51 UTC
Really cool game, interesting use of checkpoints as part of the game mechanic. Graphics is great as well, solid game overall!
Lightmare Studio
27. Aug 2013 · 08:15 UTC
Whoooaaa really great game, the level design is simply amazing!
Good implementation of the theme too! I think you should try to expand it and refine the handling after the jam and go for a Greenlight entry! Definitely worth a handful of bucks :D

Thanks, I had a great time playing it through :)
7heSAMA
27. Aug 2013 · 09:14 UTC
I wasn't impressed at first, then the gravity flipped and things got interesting...

however it's not enough to save it, there were a few problems
-on the first level with the water, how the pod ejects you much more forcefully to boost you up doesn't make sense, and is frankly quite unintuitive and frustrating
-the sound is pretty grating and repetitive
-personally I didn't like the art, but I guess that's just me
-there was some significant lag (granted, my PC is very old), and I personally felt that your player character moved far too slowly

still, it was fairly engaging, so nice job
The Evil Cult
27. Aug 2013 · 18:48 UTC
Cute little game. Felt compelled to press through to the end and was happy I did. Love the introduction of new mechanics through the levels. Very atmospheric.
matthewvermaak
28. Aug 2013 · 03:08 UTC
Nice to see another cocos2d-html game :0) Great job on the art. A solid game. Well done!
KevinZuhn
28. Aug 2013 · 04:05 UTC
I thought it was clever how the plants were both a checkpoint and a property-shifting mechanic. I feel like the collision and falling speed both needed work, as they unjustly stalled me at times, but the level designs were interesting and had some good tricks. I wish I had seen more of those enemies, they were neat.
Angrycrow
28. Aug 2013 · 06:24 UTC
I'm quite impressed! Good take on the theme! Please rate my game! http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=5288
panurge
28. Aug 2013 · 11:35 UTC
This is a definite favourite. An effective lack of hand-holding, together with great visuals and music, make the world seem nicely alien. The level design is excellent. I really enjoyed playing.
bytegrove
30. Aug 2013 · 00:01 UTC
Interesting little game. You took a simple concept of checkpoints and made it interesting. Nice element swapping as well. The platforming felt a bit off though. The jumping was pretty unresponsive and parts of the levels felt kinda cramped. I digged most tunes but one of them was a little monotonous(the second or third tune I think).
Impressive amount of levels, really nice!
Solid entry all in all!
wallmasterr
30. Aug 2013 · 18:08 UTC
nice little game, glad ur working on an OUYA build too :D cant wait to see it in sandbox, they shoudln hvae a ludum section around this contest time to encourage OUYA development
MinionStudios
30. Aug 2013 · 21:58 UTC
Overall, well-polished and great design.
wintermute
30. Aug 2013 · 22:07 UTC
Very solid levels, and overall, good game. But performances on my PC were not great even with the scaled down version - why is cocos2d-html5 so slow?
But still, good job!
jplur
30. Aug 2013 · 22:35 UTC
This is a solid game, very cool that you're porting it to ouya!
Ithildin
31. Aug 2013 · 20:16 UTC
Great game! It starts a bit slow and typical, but then you spawn heads down...and then...and then...! Clever use of the theme, combined with interesting mechanics and a very good level layout.

Awesome entry!! :D
Suese
01. Sep 2013 · 11:52 UTC
I see a few other top themes such as "Death is good" were in your heart.
psychomonster
01. Sep 2013 · 13:34 UTC
Cool idea. I love this! good graphics... love that style :D Level design is fantastic... checkpoint system is innovative. good polished :D
klianc09
01. Sep 2013 · 15:58 UTC
I wish my character would walk faster... The music was fitting to the graphics, although it sounded almost too... scratchy? Or however you might call it. Besides that, it feels pretty polished.
Joror
01. Sep 2013 · 16:53 UTC
Cool mechanics, nice difficulty curve, music that made me look forward to the next level, and a cute lil guy. Well done! :)
blackotus
01. Sep 2013 · 20:21 UTC
Nice graphics and level design :)
Gabriel
01. Sep 2013 · 22:46 UTC
Good job! I'm a total sucker for cute pixel art! I had some trouble with the gravity flipping thing (I guess it's just me, apparently I'm unable to play games like VVVVVV or the vertigo characters in Rogue Legacy), but pressed through anyway and found it pretty fun. Congrats!
BNeutral
02. Sep 2013 · 03:27 UTC
Quite interesting mechanics. I was quite surprised the first time I died and sprouted back.
superfoonly
02. Sep 2013 · 16:18 UTC
Nice job! very fun, and great graphics
wally2069
02. Sep 2013 · 18:12 UTC
Nice idea but the graphics lagged down the game while playing
Antidote
02. Sep 2013 · 18:36 UTC
Really good entry, love the graphics (Except I think the character should be brighter to separate more from the BG). Felt the movement was kind of slow at first, but got used to it. Like the mechanics :)
TheMaster99
02. Sep 2013 · 18:53 UTC
Great game.. great graphics as well. You're level introducing the key/doors mechanic, though, was EXTREMELY repetitive. It wasn't a bad level in general, but I'd refrain from doing repetitive levels like that. Otherwise, nice game!
jomomomo
02. Sep 2013 · 19:14 UTC
Nicely done! Really enjoyed playing it, especially the gravity switching powerups.
Zer0Kelvin
02. Sep 2013 · 20:20 UTC
I only got a few stages in...time limits are cutting it very close on almost all of them. I'd like it a little more relaxed so more people would see the whole thing. Nice use of ten seconds lives concept! :)
SnoringFrog
03. Sep 2013 · 04:37 UTC
One minor glitch: I touched an endpoint as I was dying. The dying animation played, then the endpoint opened/closed like I had reached it, then the game started to respawn me as if I'd died, then took me to the next level. Not a big issue, since it didn't force me to reply anything, just looked odd.

Aside from that, the game was great. Loved the music/sfx, and though the checkpoint/grav-flipping mechanic was great. Also feels like this idea must have been a "death is useful" + "10 seconds" idea.
Brian Stegmann
05. Sep 2013 · 01:25 UTC
This is an all around well-rounded entry. The aesthetics are nicely done. The mechanics are interesting and they evolve at a good pace throughout the game. It almost seems like you had some ideas for the "death is useful" theme and just couldn't resist getting them out, am I right? Good stuff, high marks all around.
theholychicken
06. Sep 2013 · 04:04 UTC
It's just amazing how unique and complete this game is!
The suicidal immortality concept is simply brilliant and kept me playing to the end.
I would suggest making jumps once per key press instead of auto jumping while space is down in order to prevent unintentional jumping. But that's the only problem I've had.
Awesome job!!
Crowbeak
11. Sep 2013 · 09:03 UTC
I read your postmortem. Ditching the other mechanic was a good idea, because this game is fantastic.
cwkx
11. Sep 2013 · 10:39 UTC
Amazing you created such a long game in such a short space of time, really awesome :)
withoutpillow
11. Sep 2013 · 15:36 UTC
solid gameplay, beautiful presentation!
Esenti
12. Sep 2013 · 18:51 UTC
Really, really nice game!
nthird
13. Sep 2013 · 06:24 UTC
Relentlessly entertaining. Very original. I really liked the different things that the plants did and how obvious it was simply based on color that they were going to do that. Other than the narrative explanation of why only 10 seconds was allowed the game needed almost no explanation.

Levels were well balanced to me at least. Slightly challenging but I never felt lost. I think one of the biggest strengths of this is that the plants acts as a constant autosave. So even if a particular series of jumps or whatever was hard I only had to get them right for a maximum of 10 seconds. You could easily amp up the difficulty close to super meat boy levels without being anywhere near as frustrating. I'd much rather die and lose 10 seconds than die and lose more. That being said if you were to go that route shorter overall levels might help.

Seriously fantastic overall. Really enjoyed it and hope to see more of it.
Sebby
14. Sep 2013 · 09:10 UTC
Awh this is so cool! First off, I love the main characters walk cycle, so cute haha. Second, as I was playing I was sure where it was going to go, and then I got to the gravity switch with checkpoint thing and I thought it was /awesome/ and I was not expecting that at all! All of the level design is great, too! I loved it :D
GeorgeBroussard
16. Sep 2013 · 04:47 UTC
Solid entry. Nice art and sound. Didn't like auto jump when holding the button down, but easy fix :)