Life'Short by fgielow

[raw]
made by fgielow for LD27 (JAM)
SUMMARY: In a world where each day passes in 10 seconds, our humble Knight has to choose which quests to seek in order to fulfill his life! He can focus on pretty sarcastic stories, go to the woods and cemeteries to kill several minions and some mini bosses! Weapon and Armor upgrades shall assist him on his quests.

INTRO: Everyone has a dream. Our not so noble hero is not different. Born as a warrior, his main objective is to prove himself capable of defeating the dragon which was his bully on school, long ago. Unfortunately, nothing is so easy and for our hero to complete his reason of life, he will have to put his skills into test in an incredible quest! But in a world so fast as ours, will he manage to achieve a good life and yet fulfil his lifetime dream? Life'Short


HINTS: Although the theme is 10 Seconds, that is only the duration of a day in our game. The rhythm of the game itself is not frenetic and, hence, it can be pretty easy to die. However, the idea is to play more than once in order to learn monster's stops and some techniques in order to survive and kill the mini bosses. For instance, to survive more, you can improve your armor in the equipment shop. You can also improve your weapon there -- without doing so, killing the semi bosses would almost not be humanly feasible. hahaha :)

EDIT: Due to many people informing us it was unbeatable, we made the player start with the armor at level 1. You will lose that armor with one hit, and die with the following hit. However, you can still upgrade your armor again in the equipment shop (and even upgrade further than +1 :P). Note: An armor can only be repaired while it's not broken yet.

CONTROLS: You can control the character with two layouts -- they work simultaneously, so, simply choose what suits best. goes left, goes right, ascends stair, descends stair, attacks and interacts with NPCs, and jumps, <1><2><3><4> choose options during dialogs with NPCS.


TEAM: members and collaborators of the small group Anest Studio.
Alphabetically: Fernando Gielow, Gustavo Silva, Leonardo Prado, Leonardo Sandim, Lucas Santos.

Ratings

Coolness 100% 1
Overall(Jam) 3.10 300
Audio(Jam) 1.48 503
Fun(Jam) 2.95 285
Graphics(Jam) 3.63 193
Humor(Jam) 2.88 172
Innovation(Jam) 2.88 332
Mood(Jam) 2.83 323
Theme(Jam) 2.73 457

Feedback

theholychicken
27. Aug 2013 路 07:27 UTC
The visuals are classic and impressive! Very nostalgic!
The one-hit-irreversible-death-as-soon-as-you-touch-a-damn-purple-flying-thing is not so awesome... though..
The dialogues are well written but very long, and the slow text speed and inability to skip or exit conversations can be very frustrating and inconvenient.
Improvements in ease of use with small convenient features can go a long way, I think.
馃帳 fgielow
27. Aug 2013 路 17:07 UTC
Hello, theholychicken, thanks for the comments!

The idea of the dialogs are to frustrate the player, indeed.. you know, as you have only 100 days of life, spending 30 of them in a dialogs quest sometimes makes you wanna just forget that quest! after all, life is short.

regarding the 1hit kills, you can try to improve the armor, but the armor also is lost when it takes enough hits.... P
Diptoman
27. Aug 2013 路 18:30 UTC
I love the graphics in this! Plus the choices are pretty funny! But I think it'd be better to have a button to skip text as the speed of the text is a tad slow. Also, it'd be better to have a life system, because dying suddenly to a bat that comes out of nowhere, is a little frustrating.
Diventurer
27. Aug 2013 路 19:15 UTC
The game is pretty cool, but the controls are very weird in my opinion. You should have worked more on the controls. I like the graphics.
Dir3kt
27. Aug 2013 路 19:18 UTC
Nice game, the one hit perma death is a bit hard though.
johnfn
27. Aug 2013 路 19:20 UTC
Nice game! Good looking visuals (except the sky...) and a nice take on the theme. I also liked the 100 day timelimit. However the clunky choice of control keys (j and k?) and 1 hit death made the game less enjoyable. It seemed pretty unfair when I would die from a zombie I couldn't even see until half a second ago. Still, cool concept and nice work!
KeithE.
27. Aug 2013 路 19:23 UTC
Cool Game. I like the way you used the theme but still made a larger game.
Blizzil
27. Aug 2013 路 19:52 UTC
The dialogs and quests are really funny, but i found the controls a little weird too. And you can die pretty quickly because you have quite little time to react to enemies.

But nevertheless a good entry!
anjack
27. Aug 2013 路 21:09 UTC
Great action/platformer!
Darien
28. Aug 2013 路 01:06 UTC
Nice Ghouls-n-Ghosts homage. I'd suggest the time shouldn't pass while a text box is up on the screen, though, since it's a bit annoying reading long dialogues while the timer is still progressing.
almightyzentaco
28. Aug 2013 路 01:06 UTC
I enjoyed it. The concept of living out someone's life quickly is pretty novel. I'd like to see that turned into a full game.
Good job.
awppy
28. Aug 2013 路 01:18 UTC
Didn't really fit the jam theme at all, lack of audio is a shame as the visuals are cool. Wrong place wrong time for this one, as it's not bad, it just doesn't fit the jam.
馃帳 fgielow
28. Aug 2013 路 01:39 UTC
Hey, thanks you all for the input, guys! :) We really appreaciate them.

Hey, @awppy, we actually knew that most things related to the theme "10 seconds" would be like "time trial; survive the most you can by earning time" and stuff like that.. So we tried to get the most away from that as possible while still portraying the theme. We think 10 seconds days were a nice touch since it does not try to make you survive the longest you can, but instead, make the most out of your time, because it flies. :P Thanks for the input, nevertheless!
馃帳 fgielow
28. Aug 2013 路 01:40 UTC
Oh, another ps.: We will try to upload a version with music as a Post-Mortem version in the next week, maybe.. Again, "try". haha
dancingflame
28. Aug 2013 路 03:21 UTC
Good concept but I feel it's a little bit amibitious in this Jam. Nice pixel arts and good humor...I liked the "go out with girl" event. The bats are hard to hit. Nice work overall :)
馃帳 fgielow
28. Aug 2013 路 12:48 UTC
@dancingflame what its a man without ambitious? u.u
hahahahah
Thanks for the comment!
ddionisio
28. Aug 2013 路 20:41 UTC
Pretty solid game! Quite a lot of content! Seems brutal for only having 2 hits based on the pacing of the game though.

Would be nice for the game to have audio to give that axe-murdering-knight in a mood for slaying.
Marcellus
28. Aug 2013 路 21:32 UTC
very professional, very hard also, remind me ghouls and ghost
naufr4g0
28. Aug 2013 路 23:33 UTC
Hey we have a very nice game here. As others have said the game remember me a lot of Ghosts'n'Goblins, and that's good! :)
Dialogues are funny and graphics excellent. Only controls looks a bit weird. I'd like also a better transition from day to night (and vice versa).
馃帳 fgielow
28. Aug 2013 路 23:38 UTC
Thanks for the complements! We intend to spend another weekend on the game in order to make some post-mortem polishments such as adding background and maybe even sounds. Of course that would be post ludum-dare, but we will let people know once we do it xD

Never played ghosts n goblins, personally, gotta check it out!
ravine
29. Aug 2013 路 00:26 UTC
Love the Ghouls N' Ghosts vibe. Great job!
Jayjay
29. Aug 2013 路 00:43 UTC
Cool ghouls and ghosts style game =D
jay griffin
29. Aug 2013 路 03:18 UTC
This is good stuff, like a cross between Ghouls N Ghosts and the Monster World series. The only real complaint would be that the view's so close in it makes it really hard to spot any trouble coming your way, and with a game this hard it makes things very difficult indeed. Good stuff all the same.
馃帳 fgielow
29. Aug 2013 路 12:44 UTC
@jay griffin Totally agree. We cant test too much, but we pretend extend the camera view in the post-mortem post.
thank you for the comment =)
PaperBlurt
29. Aug 2013 路 16:17 UTC
real nice looking game!
Unept
29. Aug 2013 路 16:19 UTC
Haha, pretty fun. I really enjoyed the knight's jumping animation for some reason. If you continue working on it, I would cut down on the text some and find ways to tell the story in-game.

Well done.
Pinktreeleaf
29. Aug 2013 路 16:49 UTC
AMAZING amount of work for 3 days probably my favorite entry so far. wow
馃帳 fgielow
29. Aug 2013 路 17:01 UTC
we are glad you all enjoyed!

@pinktreeleaf, unfortunatelly we lost our first day, hence we stayed awake for 30~36h non stop on the 2nd and 3rd days hahaha turned out pretty well still! we are anxious already for the next entries! xD
brodavi
29. Aug 2013 路 23:31 UTC
What a great game! I love it! Really brought back memories. And what a great interpretation of the theme. Coool
porglezomp
30. Aug 2013 路 03:21 UTC
Seems nice, but I had a hard time enjoying it because the controls were so strange. It made the interaction feel clunky.
Amber
30. Aug 2013 路 09:23 UTC
I was also really amused by the knight's jump animation. A neat idea, and I personally like seeing the different directions people can go with the "10 seconds" theme.
murilo
01. Sep 2013 路 17:59 UTC
I actually had a lot fun with the action. Got to the boss tree and gave up. But those wall of texts have to go, man! And the no checkpoint death doesn't motivate either. The dialogs were pretty funny hehe. Nice art too!
馃帳 fgielow
02. Sep 2013 路 17:16 UTC
hahaha, we know what you mean, regarding the difficulty and the 1hit kills..

however, we chose to have that difficult style because, well, the game is really short.. we wanted the player to manage to have some good minutes playing it before finishing the game! :) we still needed to finish some things.. we will release a post mortem version some day soon! :)
Foxtacy
03. Sep 2013 路 11:25 UTC
Your entry is one of the best ones i've seen. A little bit of sound effects and music would make it perfect! :D