Running out of Keys by OadT
The idea was 'Run out from Space while running out of space'.
How to play: You are always starting from space. From there you can jump to all adjacent key (on an QWERTY-Layout that would be e.g. X, C, V, B, N or M.) You can remove locks by picking up the right key.
If you are using a recent version of Firefox or Chrome you don't have to change your keyboard-layout. Source code is downloadable over the itch.io page.
| HTML5 (web) | https://zoadt.itch.io/running-out-of-keys |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/running-out-of-keys |
Ratings
| Overall | 248th | 3.561⭐ | 51🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 377th | 3.214⭐ | 51🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 13th | 4.276⭐ | 51🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 173th | 3.917⭐ | 50🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 475th | 2.968⭐ | 49🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 448th | 2.663⭐ | 48🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 389th | 2.25⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 403th | 2.857⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 56🗳️ | 36🗨️ |
Maybe a countdown timer to add some time pressure? Great job.
The game was quite hard for me, maybe you could've added some simpler levels as an introduction. Right now, you already introduce no less than three special mechanics just in the first level (bombs, points you have to take in a certain order and portals) and then two more in the second level. It gets a bit overwhelming.
Also, it seems a bit unfair that other blocks suddenly appear in the third level, making it necessary to restart just because you took a key earlier than you needed to. I always like to plan my moves before playing and this made that impossible, just like the keys that didn't indicate the door they belong to.
Also, I would've preferred if you simply prevented the ship from going to keys you'd already been to instead of having to restart the whole level, especially as it was sometimes hard to keep track of where you are.
To end with some positive things:
The graphics were really good and crisp, it's nice that there's sound and I thought "Ground Ctrl" was funny. :slight_smile:
@florian-van-strien Thanks for the long comment! Yeah, I fell in the typical developer trap, thinking the mechanics are clear and fast restarts make it less frustrating. Next time I know bettter. Nice, then putting ground ctrl in was worth it :smile:
I had lots of troubles getting into how you play the game though.
The sounds are pretty harsh, not very pleasant on a headset. The graphics have room for improvement but do their job (so much grey though).
Clever concept that just got a little too difficult too quickly for me, but I'd say go post-compo with this.
You managed to do a double-take on the theme and that's nice!
In the end it's a nice puzzle game which is made quite a bit more difficult due to the control scheme. Couldn't fit the theme though without ;)
I personally would have liked captions on the keys. The way it was, I always had to look back and forth between screen and keyboard to make sure I always hit the right key and don't accidentally die. Mouse controls would have worked as well, but I admit pressing virtual keyboard keys with your mouse in this game would have been somewhat weird.. :)
One thing... it became slower and slower when you retry(or just keep playing?) in Google Chrome. so I reloaded the web page every time I retry.
@geekdrums Thank you (and the others) for playing the whole game! It sounds like a memory leak (well, thats fitting the theme :smile: ) Idk if I can fix it, because I am not on my dev workspace, but thanks for reporting.
Thanks for your feedback on my game, and good luck :)
I found myself really enjoying the game despite having to replay each level around 6 times to finally complete it. At first, I was moving slowly through the game, pressing one key feeling for the next then hitting that next key, but I eventually found myself dancing across the keyboard with my fingers to clear out a large area.
I disagree with comments about labeling the keys. Doing that would take away the challenge of remembering where you were and reduce the player's reliance on patterned movements across the keyboard (which was the best part of the game for me). You could possibly add an easy difficulty that adds the labels if people really seem to want them.
I usually try to offer advice in my reviews but I honestly can't think of a single way to make this game any better than it already is besides obviously making more levels and maybe adding more game mechanics in the future. I'm surprised by how much I enjoyed this game. Easily the best one I've played from this jam so far. Great work.