Ancestor's Sword by JaJ

[raw]
made by JaJ for LD23 (COMPO)
On a tiny planet, the grandson of a hero is bored. Then he finds out the sword his grandfather used is still around somewhere.

Use the arrow keys to move.
You can use space to jump regardless of direction as well.
F5 saves the game, F6 loads the game.
The game has two endings.

Ratings

Coolness 100% 1
Overall 3.88 38
Audio 3.67 43
Fun 3.53 87
Graphics 4.25 27
Humor 3.04 130
Innovation 3.50 168
Mood 3.82 24
Theme 3.56 155

Feedback

orangepascal
23. Apr 2012 · 09:49 UTC
sadly don't have windows, but it looks awesome from the screens and video and first game that I feel bad not being able to install ;)
bms
23. Apr 2012 · 16:07 UTC
I like it! Kind of hard to control the character in some places though
Julian Spillane
23. Apr 2012 · 18:56 UTC
Beautiful art and a very moody (and funny) setting and premise. :)
laubori
23. Apr 2012 · 18:58 UTC
Graphics & music = perfect mood. I like it!
Sanguine
23. Apr 2012 · 18:58 UTC
The game felt a bit like Fez, which is a great thing. All the text did get annoying sometimes though.
laubori
23. Apr 2012 · 18:58 UTC
Graphics & music = perfect mood. I like it!
matt
23. Apr 2012 · 19:02 UTC
This is wonderful.
lasseastrup
23. Apr 2012 · 19:02 UTC
Great game. Not much to put a finger on here - the graphics, music and gameplay are all solid. The movement was a bit hard at first. Great job!
jeroenimooo
23. Apr 2012 · 19:09 UTC
Hey you changed the control thingie :D it is less natural now, but once you get it, you can walk faster and more accurate. Real cool game btw, nice music :)
Canard Sauvage
23. Apr 2012 · 19:23 UTC
Ahh I'm stuck ^^ Is there any walkthrough?
🎤 JaJ
23. Apr 2012 · 20:15 UTC
I think I'll make a walkthrough video for the first ending. I'm going to play some more Ludum Dare games first and then I'll get to it ;)
mikolalysenko
23. Apr 2012 · 21:45 UTC
It looks really good from the video. I wish I could say more, but unfortunately there is no linux version.
Jacic
23. Apr 2012 · 21:47 UTC
Nice graphics. The music is good too. :)
Hazematman
23. Apr 2012 · 21:52 UTC
Very interesting! I have to say the art style and the audio are very perfect, and I enjoyed this game very much!
ben
23. Apr 2012 · 21:54 UTC
Your game definitely stood out to me during the competition and i'm glad developement went well for you. The art is great and the theme/narrative are cool. The scrolling text for speech was a bit annoying, maybe if you could only speak to them once, or once in a while it would've been better. I liked the growing mechanic, was very interesting way to further your main mechanic. The main gravity mechanic however i didn't enjoy. It just made the whole platforming element shitty for me, i hated trying to do jumps and stuff while upside down. Overall had a good time! : ]
GreyShock
23. Apr 2012 · 21:56 UTC
I've killed all the villagers! An then I saved the world! With no walktrough. It was challenging and fun. My favourite LD game until now. Congrats!
vigrid
23. Apr 2012 · 23:02 UTC
Whoa, my brain refused to cooperate after a couple of minutes of playing this game. Not that it's a bad thing. It refused to cooperate in a good way. Perfect graphics and sound.

I haven't found the sword, though.
csanyk
23. Apr 2012 · 23:19 UTC
Very polished and well put together. I'm impressed that this was possible in 48 hrs.
devince
23. Apr 2012 · 23:23 UTC
Very good but strange controls and behavior. Platform are (too) hard to find (I suppose it's on purpose). Very good music and graphics.
johnfn
23. Apr 2012 · 23:23 UTC
Very nice! Nice graphics and an interesting gameplay concept. Having all those stabbers everywhere might not have been the best idea, since sometimes I would die like 50 times before finally getting to where I wanted to go, but that's a pretty minor criticism. Nice game!
mattchu
23. Apr 2012 · 23:24 UTC
I couldn't figure out where to go, but other than the framerate being a bit low, and the oddity of the controls switching with the gravity, it felt really well-done.
davidllanos22
23. Apr 2012 · 23:37 UTC
Nice game! Art and music fits so well :) it took me a bit to know how to move correctly haha I will play later again until the end! good job :)
Tifu
24. Apr 2012 · 11:01 UTC
Good game, great ending XD
Corners are weird, but not tooo bad, I can usually get where I'm trying to go :P
Two endings huh... hm *will have to try and get that later*
tcstyle
24. Apr 2012 · 20:17 UTC
This has great potential. Unfortunately the genre classic mechanism of gravitational switching jumps is countered by the controls.
I like the graphics.
jerombd
24. Apr 2012 · 21:22 UTC
Fun platformer, but the jumping/flying ability is 50% fun, 50% annoying :/ ... and I can't find the secret (happy?) ending which is really frustrating :D
AdventureIslands
25. Apr 2012 · 17:07 UTC
Funny game with really nice visuals, well designed and plays well even if the character is bit hard to control.
01101101
27. Apr 2012 · 12:40 UTC
Am dead many times because some jumps are very tricky, stayed in 0 gravity makes me laugh, nevertheless, it's a moody game, nice art and beautiful music (reminds me Nobuo Uematsu's FF7 soundtrack), 2 ends, made in 48 i can say GG :) I can't wait your next game :)
Kendja
28. Apr 2012 · 07:11 UTC
Good game. The music, art, mood - all is awesome. I have got the "bad" ending.
RHY3756547
29. Apr 2012 · 17:01 UTC
The control scheme is really hard to get used to. Nice graphics and story though, I was impressed.
Tom 7
29. Apr 2012 · 17:13 UTC
Loved it! One of my favorites so far. The little world is charming and the (very talkative) NPCs give it some character. I love the exploration style of gameplay and deaths were not at all punishing, which is important because this game is all about learning the weird physics and dying a lot. I managed to beat it, though at the end I think I exploited a bug to win (how are you supposed to get up that long beanstalk?): If you are on a corner, you can slowly drift diagonally away from that corner by holding both directions, as long as no other gravities get in your way. You can do this to the grandpa platform.

One of my favorite moments was sitting at "The End" and seeing a rat make its way around that island and to run into my inert body and get slain. ;)
schnerble
29. Apr 2012 · 17:19 UTC
Really great work. I found the controls a little tricky - particular some of the corners that you had to turn around on - but the style was brilliant. Nice bit of black humour at the ending :)
iximeow
29. Apr 2012 · 19:25 UTC
This was really great! Everything fit together really well. Very well done!
23
30. Apr 2012 · 03:20 UTC
Very well put together, clever physics, impressive graphics, appropriate music.

Besides the jumps across gravity zones being a little finicky, I'm still not sure how to get from the key to the sword, even though I saw it happen in the walkthrough.

Thanks for the game!
spooks
30. Apr 2012 · 14:42 UTC
Really enjoyed your entry, really great mood and everything fit together very well!
johanp
01. May 2012 · 15:31 UTC
Loos pretty and plays well! Jumping feels a bit awkward, especially around the corners, but that's no big gripe. Kudos for having the death particles still on screen when the player respawns. :)
quixotic-project
01. May 2012 · 18:13 UTC
This is just brilliant.

I am very impressed!
Hazard
01. May 2012 · 18:47 UTC
A great entry! Very nice art and i like the switching gravitation. The transition between gravitational directions should just be smoother. Currently it feels quite awkward at times due to the instant switching. Got to the same end you've shown in your video and i really like it. It's unusual. :) Didn't find the other end, though.
Mach60KAS
01. May 2012 · 19:12 UTC
Wow, that was bloody hilarious. Found the controls a little hard to come to grips with, but other than that it was really excellent! Loved the art.
ratboy2713
01. May 2012 · 20:25 UTC
It was hard to get used to the controls, but it was very pretty and I liked the music.
Fireblend
01. May 2012 · 21:24 UTC
Eh, the controls weren't as bad as some people say they were; at least they didn't distract too much from the actual game, which was pure brilliance! Really good job :)
davisan
01. May 2012 · 23:33 UTC
Wonderful Game! Very good!
Christina Antoinette Neofotistou
02. May 2012 · 01:57 UTC
This is beautiful!!!!!!! And the music is very cool, good job on writing it first. Also, thank you for the postmortem!
rvmook
02. May 2012 · 11:05 UTC
At first I didn't really knew what to do with the sword, but then I had to laugh. Took a while to get the hang of the controls maybe use left and right to walk forward and backward and up to jump? Great game nonetheless
Pierrec
03. May 2012 · 18:18 UTC
48h, really ? That's very impressive! Some jumps were very hard! But I enjoyed it.
Pavel Dlouhy
04. May 2012 · 15:25 UTC
One of the best looking games I saw since now. Really good job! 48h? Unbelievable!
marudziik
07. May 2012 · 09:21 UTC
Got stuck for a while there, but was able to get to the ending shown in the walkthrough. Great game - with beautiful graphics, good music (kinda reminds me of Dizzy game series) and interesting mechanics. Liked it!
ratking
07. May 2012 · 22:47 UTC
I dislike platformers a bit, but this game is rad! Even dying is fun! You achieved being dead in this game is lesser frustrating then in other platformer games.
I just got stuck in on place, couldn't get forward/backward.
I love it, though, will play it again!
thegreystudios
12. May 2012 · 14:09 UTC
GFX and mood are awsome on this one! Love it. :)
free_napalm
12. May 2012 · 17:52 UTC
I loved the graphics and the mood. And it was a lot of fun to explore everything :)
Only flaw: Controls were a bit confusing around the corner. Maybe you should have add the option to not use absolute directions, and just left = counter-clockwise, right = clockwise.
Great game anyway :)
matthias_zarzecki
13. May 2012 · 00:17 UTC
impressive. Love the mechanic, and definitely want to keep playing it. Nice work!