Watching Them Go by IronyInteractive

[raw]
made by IronyInteractive for LD27 (JAM)
Watching Them Go is an atmospheric, retro, pixel-filled platformer. In the game you play as a more-than-average Pleb, fighting back against a much larger race of invaders known as The Executors. Help your fellow Pleb, and they may help you too! Climb walls, push boulders, solve puzzles. Use your Plebs shouts to command others to do your bidding, or use a bow and arrow to strike down The Executors, as well as maniacal Plebs that are lost in blood lust. Ten second powerups, and ten seconds to heal from damage.

Controls:

W,A,S,D: Move, Climb.

S: Fetch Water/Use Slipgate

SPACE: Shout/Throw Water

CTRL: use Bow And Arrow (Acquired in level 1)

E: Talk to Plebs


----

Minor fixes:
v1.10 Player start location fix.
v1.12 Executors chase distance bug fix.

Switched hosts.

Ratings

Coolness 24% 1698
Overall(Jam) 3.53 105
Audio(Jam) 3.06 210
Fun(Jam) 3.35 123
Graphics(Jam) 3.24 297
Innovation(Jam) 2.94 312
Mood(Jam) 3.76 44
Theme(Jam) 2.41 538

Feedback

jay griffin
27. Aug 2013 路 06:41 UTC
You weren't kidding about the atmospheric part. Really like the feel of this one, it's got a really great, weighty animation style to it and a fantastic soundtrack. Very stylish stuff.
KhaoTom
27. Aug 2013 路 06:47 UTC
Really pretty. I'm have a lot of trouble at the first part after the long fall, I can't seem to climb the wall. Any pointers?
BloodJohn
27. Aug 2013 路 06:49 UTC
Great work.
But too depressed for me.
馃帳 IronyInteractive
27. Aug 2013 路 07:09 UTC
Thanks, guys... We put alot of work into it, so we appreciate the recognition. =] @KhaoTom Try rolling the rock up to it so you can latch on above the door, you have to tap the directional key against the wall to latch on, too.

-Davey @IronyInteractive
torvik88
27. Aug 2013 路 14:57 UTC
Nice game mate :D
Brian Stegmann
27. Aug 2013 路 17:22 UTC
Cool man, really nice aesthetic. The weightiness of everything added to it as well. It was certainly challenging, I didn't make it too far haha.

One little thing, you should probably find a better file sharing host. Sites like 2Shared that have trick download buttons are dubious and can lead uninformed people to downloading spyware and whatnot. Have you tried dropbox?
ArcturusDeluxe
28. Aug 2013 路 14:13 UTC
Very awesome mood going on here. Nice music too. The controls feel a little clunky though, I thought. And the link to the theme is a little bit tenuous, but other than that, very cool.
kibertoad
30. Aug 2013 路 15:07 UTC
wow. lovely dark platformer, solid gameplay and lots of content. reminds me of the oddworld saga. shooting the bow was awkward, could use better contols. also took me a while to figure out how to climb.
acro
01. Sep 2013 路 00:08 UTC
I'm rating this higher than anything else I've seen. There's just so much gameplay here, great atmosphere, a nice feel to the gameplay/physics, and real challenge. Those Executors are reminiscent of Scrabs from Abe's Oddyssey, and I get an immediate terror reaction seeing them. Killing one feels amazing. The bow feels amazing. The fact I accidentally killed the guy who gave me the bow... feels amazing. The pixelly death animations are brilliant. And somehow, the hapless bridge-helper guy at the start of the yellow-background area always gets shot in the face by the arrow I loosed to drop the suspended rock. I am currently pleasantly stuck messing around with the placement of rocks at the old guy, but I know how to do it on the next attempt. Did you really make all this within the time limit? It's absolutely fantastic! The only annoyance is the glitchy player state machine for wall grab/climbing and facing direction. I'm choosing to mostly ignore that because the rest of it is so goddamn good.
馃帳 IronyInteractive
03. Sep 2013 路 04:25 UTC
@Acro and Kibertoad: Thank you guys for the feedback, yes we're aware that the controls kinda suck. That's a result of our lack of sleep and lack of enough time to properly debug it, so we sincerely apologize. But we will be launching a Kickstarter Campaign soon to expand this into a full game: More levels, more enemies, and a complete control/physics overhaul. (We'll post a link on here when that's up and ready, but it make take a week or two.)

We'd really like to thank you guys for catching what we were going for. The Oddworld feel is certainly not coincidental. Those games were a very big part of our childhood and much of our inspiration admittedly. (in fact, the Scrabs were mentioned during the animation process of the Executors). Yes, we did make this all within the timeframe aside from a very rudimentary husk of a movement engine which I had started a long time ago but never used; since we entered the Jam, not the Compo, we figured it would be alright. But The atmosphere is what we spent most of our time on, we wanted that to be perfect. So we really appreciate the recognition on that account. Thanks guys.

-Davey @Irony Interactive
Lokarunith
07. Sep 2013 路 10:50 UTC
What an excelent atmoshpere this game has! It's quite an engaging experience and really worthwhile, it's a shame it's a bit buggy and as was mentioned before the connection to the theme is a bit superficial.
lordjosephdeburg
14. Sep 2013 路 22:51 UTC
very deep game and well polished, hard to believe something like this could be made in such a short time!