Penpals by killmonday

made by killmonday for LD27 (JAM)

This is the story of Teddy and Hedgehog who are penpals. They live in a toxic world left devasted by mankind and struggle for survival! One day Hedgehog gets sick and asks Teddy to come and make him an acorn soup to get well... So Teddy puts on his fishbowl and backpack and sets out to face the dangers outside! He only has 10 seconds of fresh air before it runs out, and he needs to find tanks scattered around to refill it.

CONTROLS

RIGHT and LEFT key to move left and right
UP key to jump (Hold UP to jump higher)

This game was made by these people:

Natalia Figueroa - Killmonday Games / Story and art
Alexander Haslam - Armoured Crow / Development and programming
Isak Martinsson - Killmonday Games / Music and sounds

Even though it was the jam we made this from scratch from the start! We are really happy with the results and we will probably be making this in to a full game in the future for as many platforms as possible!

Art was made with Photoshop, developed in GameMaker:Studio and sounds were picked up from BFXR mixed with Cubase, where the music was made on also.

Windows (UPDATED!)	http://indieho.me/shed/public.php?service=files&t=3524043238e34b9d35c064f13f4bcdb3
Web (UPDATED! NO SOUNDS!)	http://indieho.me/penpals/
Original URL	https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-27/?action=preview&uid=19199

Ratings

Coolness	57%	3
Overall(Jam)	3.35	186

Audio(Jam)	3.16	187
Fun(Jam)	2.92	300
Graphics(Jam)	4.31	45
Humor(Jam)	2.97	144
Innovation(Jam)	2.57	446
Mood(Jam)	3.66	60
Theme(Jam)	3.48	115

Feedback

oxysoft

27. Aug 2013 · 00:42 UTC

Haha I like the story. Controls and collisions are a little weird though

SecondDimension

27. Aug 2013 · 00:44 UTC

Great story and really lovely artwork, well done!

deammer

27. Aug 2013 · 01:04 UTC

Sweet art and concept. My only complaint is that the player loses vertical speed when colliding on the side, making jumps trickier than they should be.

Great game otherwise!

Anachron

27. Aug 2013 · 01:22 UTC

Dystopic forest animals is almost too much to bear...

mamoniem

27. Aug 2013 · 04:24 UTC

Hahaha, funny fairy tales :D apart from the collision & gravity, i enjoyed playing the game. and really liked the art style. Next time, make sure that Teddy cannot die in the air :)

alexhaslam

27. Aug 2013 · 09:18 UTC

Just on the note of controls and collisions, we had some big issues with that during development. but I came up with a fix and implemented it. Think of it like real life... you hit a wall mid air... your going to fall... and probably die.

Mythalore

27. Aug 2013 · 10:28 UTC

Amazing art! The music is awesome too but it did go really static-y after awhile.

urania.orwell

27. Aug 2013 · 11:03 UTC

I would recommend to download it instead of playing in on web, that really gets stocked :( Thank you for your critics! :D

alexhaslam

27. Aug 2013 · 11:38 UTC

The HTML5 Web version seems to have a memory leak. The windows version is fine however.

Kimidori

27. Aug 2013 · 13:40 UTC

good game.

a minor bug I would like to report though, after the bear die, press jump will make him repeat the death animation.

alexhaslam

27. Aug 2013 · 15:04 UTC

Thanks, I forgot to add the death check in the jump animation.

Friday

27. Aug 2013 · 15:56 UTC

Nice, i especially liked the music. It got really laggy after a while though.

Cryunreal

27. Aug 2013 · 17:04 UTC

too difficult places to jump over the fire in the first level.) It's unfortunate that noticeable bugs. But very cute movie before the game)

PaperBlurt

27. Aug 2013 · 17:20 UTC

One of the best looking games I've seen so far in Ludum Dare, and it's a cute story too. Gameplay could be more fun, but I don't care cause it's a great atmosphere! The theme doesn't really fit, but it would just mess things up anyways in this game..

Tanser

27. Aug 2013 · 19:06 UTC

Good game, the resolution for web came a bit strange though and I could hardly see the timer and the bear.
I love the art but it seemed a bit blurred at places.
Nice story! Well done.

Diventurer

27. Aug 2013 · 19:11 UTC

Really neat and polished game. I had a lot of problems during one of the levels though. It started lagging and the music got choppy. I think I got through all the mechanics though, and I must say this game is pretty nice.

Pinktreeleaf

27. Aug 2013 · 19:18 UTC

Took a while to get used to the jumping, and starting chuggin in one of the later levels, other than that though I loved your game. i wanted to give it a C for cute.
props to the oxygen mechanic too.

XmmmX

27. Aug 2013 · 19:19 UTC

Very cute story. :3
I really like the graphics and the music.
Despite the minor collision errors which other people already mentioned it's a very good entry.

cwkx

27. Aug 2013 · 19:31 UTC

Great entry, especially liked the humor, audio, and graphics!

kill4game

27. Aug 2013 · 19:33 UTC

It was a fun game, love the colors, sound and character. Although the collision thing was a little annoying its easy to get past if you just move back a bit, also i found that if you ran, jumped, landed and tryed to jump again you may just keep running and a remedy i found for that is to just let go of -> and land then quickly run and jump. Overall it was nice but could use a "The End" even though you know its over.

kill4game

27. Aug 2013 · 19:34 UTC

Oh yea when i kept the game on in the background it got really laggy on my computer, not sure why

Almax27

27. Aug 2013 · 19:57 UTC

Really lovely art, the jumping is tricksy though.

ante0

27. Aug 2013 · 20:10 UTC

THE FIRE! Ugh. I can't jump far enough :(
But a good game. Just needs a few fixes and it would have a bright future :)

bonsairobo

27. Aug 2013 · 20:27 UTC

Cool game. Adorable story. Weird collisions on the sides of platforms.

tripleVisionGames

27. Aug 2013 · 20:30 UTC

Cool story, amazing graphics and great music. Controls for the platforming need work and also was there story at the end of each level? I was holding the right arrow and it seemed to skip something each time?

Sayaer

27. Aug 2013 · 20:32 UTC

Fantastic, artwork and story are spot on. Really enjoyed this one.

AdventureIslands

27. Aug 2013 · 20:37 UTC

Cute game and story, but the jumping controls were absolutely terrible, sometimes jumps are long, sometimes not, and being unable to jump during landing animations screwed many tried over. It's not a bag game, but just very unpolished with noticeable bugs, like animations glitching when dying.

flod

27. Aug 2013 · 20:38 UTC

The art is very nice - but the controls are frustrating.

Solifuge

27. Aug 2013 · 20:41 UTC

Loved the color choice on the background; all smog and haze, with skeletal-looking birch trees. It would all be very broody, were it not for the cheerful children's book framing. Though it was a pretty generic platformer, it was beautiful, in a cute and sad sort of way. Thanks for putting this together!

rezoner

27. Aug 2013 · 20:46 UTC

Beautiful! Looks totally like some grimm fairytale... also I like how the bear dies in mid-air

Ritzblues783

27. Aug 2013 · 21:53 UTC

This is a gem! By far the best platfomer I've seen so far on LD27. The platfoming is fair, but challenging. Occasionally the jump key was not responsive while running. (Thank you, GameMaker:Studio >.< )
I love the story! The art style is a very fairy-tale meets dystopian future.

Thanks for this treat!

Travis Irby

27. Aug 2013 · 22:05 UTC

Looved the intro :) Great Look.

AhNinniah

28. Aug 2013 · 02:19 UTC

It's a little bit difficult for me to perform double jump, but except for that everything looks great! Will u do a walkthrough video, so we can see how the story ends? :)

tigerj

28. Aug 2013 · 03:43 UTC

Pretty cool game. I've never been able to do anything close in gamemaker. Really nice concept, story and use of the theme.

I hope you develop it more I know some people who LOVE bears and will play it a lot.

alexhaslam

28. Aug 2013 · 09:24 UTC

Developers Note: There is no double jumping. If you can double jump its a bug im looking into. The "Thing that seems to get skiped" will be removed soon. And remember the longer you hold jump the higher you jump! All levels are possible very easily. I didnt notice some of these bugs because I played the game so well ;)

Valerien

28. Aug 2013 · 11:15 UTC

The collisions, and mainly the platform's edge pushing the character back breaks the fun a little bit. Apart from that, it's visually appealing and feels pretty polished. Good job !

blackotus

28. Aug 2013 · 17:22 UTC

Nice story and graphics, great work on presentation.

Collisions were a little strange, but not hard to get used to!

Nick Weihs

28. Aug 2013 · 21:42 UTC

Cool story, the intro was great. The death animation was good, if a little bit smoother than the rest of the game. Also a bear with a fishbowl on it's head is a pretty neat idea.

alexhaslam

29. Aug 2013 · 08:57 UTC

Developers Note:
Death Animation bugs fixed.
Death Animation in midair has been made so you fall to the ground.
HTML5 issues have been patched (Sounds were removed as they were causing a memory leak)
Flickering Story screen on death and next level fixed.
Jumping delay removed.
Double Jump Issue correct.
Animation flickers and other animations play on death are fixed.
Reduced friction so jumping on the side retains most of the vertical speed. (This wont help you from falling though MWUHAHAHA!)

GarethIW

29. Aug 2013 · 16:12 UTC

Lovely art and gameplay. I noticed some kind of unresponsiveness on the jump sometimes (played the updated version). Still, good job!

iterative deepening

30. Aug 2013 · 20:34 UTC

I like the animation, but it's strange, I don't know if it's just with my screen but the game floor start on the very bottom of the screen.

Jupiter_Hadley

31. Aug 2013 · 23:42 UTC

Really cute little game, but sometimes I get stuck in the platforms... I featured it in my video compilation series of Ludum Dare 27 games, if you would like to check it out! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksgU2Iicu2g

Zer0Kelvin

01. Sep 2013 · 17:34 UTC

Beautiful graphics! Platforms sometimes knock the bear back if it doesn't clear it widely. Bear can't move slightly left and right while falling...I was trying to drop down to an acorn on a platform directly below and the bear just kept falling past the platform. Cannot light bear on fire - disappoint!
Very cute game :)

withoutpillow

01. Sep 2013 · 18:19 UTC

wonderful story and artstyle! i'm having some problems with the controls and collisions like others have pointed out, and i think in was the third stage that was a lot harder then the ones that came after it, but otherwise good difficulty curve.

and i'm absolutely loving the atmosphere and music!

wally2069

02. Sep 2013 · 18:19 UTC

The collision needs a lot of work, simple jumps were messed up by the player loosing momentum unless over jumping the platforms.

The story was very awesome.