.PERIOD by Olivier Millochau

[raw]
made by Olivier Millochau for LD 41 (COMPO)

30421889<em>1695940613824702</em>662264113_n.png

You are PERIOD, COMMA is your girlfriend

You and COMMA want to escape.

Escape from what ? How ?

You will see in this TEXT BASED PLATFORMER !

You will use letters and words to unlock new abilities !

test-0000(2).gif

Tips :

To restart a level quickly you can go to the pause menu (ESC key) and type R to restart :smile:

Changelog :

1.6 : change a bug where the player could cheat the game

1.5 : fixed some typos

1.4 : ... at this point I'm crumbling under pressure

1.3 : more bug-hunting

1.2 : fixed a bug where the last level would not load

1.1 : fixed a bug where the player was stuck in the first level

Ratings

Overall 139th 3.75⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Fun 236th 3.467⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 39th 4.117⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Theme 129th 4.017⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 288th 3.383⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Audio 280th 3.052⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Humor 65th 3.696⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Mood 32th 3.907⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Given 32🗳️ 34🗨️

Feedback

Cryovr
23. Apr 2018 · 04:00 UTC
seamless!
KRP
23. Apr 2018 · 04:02 UTC
I loved the start screen!
Crown Games
23. Apr 2018 · 04:12 UTC
Very innovative, and very humorous for programmers everywhere. Loved it :smile:
caeonosphere
23. Apr 2018 · 09:05 UTC
Cool idea, and a great intro!
Jani Nykanen
23. Apr 2018 · 18:09 UTC
A very original idea and good execution. Great job!
Damienp
23. Apr 2018 · 20:16 UTC
This was a nice little story, with as believable punctuation characters as I've ever read ;)
I found a bug: you can type any number to gain abilities, even if you don't have that number (for exemple `dash100`). This makes the game much less challenging.
ccglp
23. Apr 2018 · 20:26 UTC
Cool game, love the introduction.
I kinda don't like that you can fail or introduce other commmands with the letters. An example of this is when you get "jump2" you can just type "jump" and be left with a 2 and can't pass through the wall.
I imagine that is a gameplay mechanic, but you just have to let you die to restart the entire level.
Kultisti
23. Apr 2018 · 20:35 UTC
Really enjoyabe! Love the story and overall leveldesgin, good work!
🎤 Olivier Millochau
23. Apr 2018 · 20:45 UTC
@Damienp Ahah thank you :) ! As for the bug, I had no idea, it was working fine when I implemented that mechanic ... thank you again ! getting to work to fix it right now !

@ccglp Thank for the review ! Actually it was planned to handle that case in the tutorials but time came too short ...
Damienp
23. Apr 2018 · 21:15 UTC
@Olivier Millochau No problem! Actually, I'm not too much of a hardcore gamer, I mightn't have been able to finish the game if it weren't for that bug ;)
Lawrence
23. Apr 2018 · 21:23 UTC
This is good. It's like you solve a little puzzle by writing a plan, and then you actually have to execute it :smile: I got into it quite a bit.

Good job!
HKoisumi
24. Apr 2018 · 00:05 UTC
Freaking amazing! Excelent work, wanna check ours too??

https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/hype-time
kbjwes77
24. Apr 2018 · 12:05 UTC
Really liked the concept. I think the actions could have been implemented better once you grabbed the letters and typed the commands, it felt awkward to go directly from typing to platforming. Still a nice use of the theme, enjoyed the keyboard typing sounds as well!
madxmd
24. Apr 2018 · 16:12 UTC
Great Idea and great work
🎤 Olivier Millochau
24. Apr 2018 · 16:49 UTC
@HKoisumi I saw the exact the same comment from you for another game... Are you just copy-pasting it and not even playing the game ?...
microwerx
24. Apr 2018 · 16:50 UTC
Fun game--very innovative and had a great feeling to play. It would be nice if you could repeat your actions. For example, if you do the wall jump level and you mess it up, it seemed like you had to throw yourself over the cliff to reset the level instead of being able to type in the commands and try again.
🎤 Olivier Millochau
24. Apr 2018 · 17:05 UTC
@microwerx Yeah I totally agree with you, I should have done that. (you can go to the pause menu to restart quickly, wich is a bit better but not a solution to the problem, maybe a checkpoint system would have been a good idea)
Thanks for your review !
fashionbatman
24. Apr 2018 · 17:25 UTC
Amazing! That intro was wonderful. Great job!
amras0000
24. Apr 2018 · 22:45 UTC
Really nice game; not an uncommon mechanic but I like the unixy aesthetic. There were a few spots where the controls didn't feel perfectly spot on, but I was able to get to the end of the game without much of an issue. The ending was pretty clever, too, merging the mechanics with the story in a pretty satisfying way. That said, I think the game crashed before the ending played out in full. After the 'did you just...' line displayed and I pressed enter, the game closed. This didn't seem intentional.

I was expecting that at some point in the game you'd have the letters jumbled and force the player to unscramble them to get what they need. The closest I saw to this was when "jump 3 dash 4" could be written as "jump 43 dash". Having everything appear more or less in order in the level did communicate what you wanted the player to do, but also removed part of the challenge.

The writing in the game wasn't really its strong point. The relationship with comma felt a bit awkward and unnatural. It didn't hurt my enjoyment of the game, but it's worth mentioning.

I really liked that many levels had multiple routes and backup letters lying around. It's rare to see a platformer with branching paths in a LD entry.

All in all, I'm impressed, and I really enjoyed myself. I wish I could see the full ending, but I got enough out of the game without it.
24. Apr 2018 · 22:58 UTC
I really loved the concept of the game, but it crashed on me and I couldn't ever get a jump to work :(
JanGamesDev
24. Apr 2018 · 23:04 UTC
I really liked the intro, the game was really hard, I gave up trying to finish level 3 after a while. Repeating the levels gets a little bit tiresome after you have to type the same thing over and over again, buts its a really nice game overall. Great work.
acoto87
25. Apr 2018 · 15:14 UTC
One problem I found was that when restart the level by loosing it, or simply Esc+r, you have to type all the words. I know this is part of the concept of the game, buy after while if you loose repeatedly in one level it get anoying. Don't know how to fix it, though.

Very nice game and concept. There is no need of more graphics than that, and the sounds of typing and jumping do the job very well. Good work!
Ongomato
25. Apr 2018 · 18:25 UTC
Well, i really like the aesthetic and the idea but the game is kinda hard for me, lol.
Sound design is pretty nice too!
GoldRanger
26. Apr 2018 · 12:23 UTC
Oh my, the ending is fantastic!
Also, I love your game idea! Instead of giving player certain power to use, it let players think which power they should use.
It's a clever way to make a platform game different!
drikdrok
26. Apr 2018 · 19:11 UTC
Excellent entry! Very unique and fun idea, I had a blast playing it.

Perhaps there should have been a "checkpoint" command? I found myself doing a lot of the stuff over. But nonetheless it's still a great game!
🎤 Olivier Millochau
26. Apr 2018 · 20:05 UTC
@drikdrok Yeah I totally should have done that, this is a great idea !
Never come to my mind to do that while coding the game, that could be a great improvment.
Thank you for your review
Potti
26. Apr 2018 · 22:33 UTC
The idea is brilliant, movement is snappy and the aesthetic is great. The typing in some sections gets a bit repetitive (if you fail a lot).

A great entry.
SandBloom
27. Apr 2018 · 11:43 UTC
Great idea and great mood created whit a few very good elments and ideas. Fun to play and to experiment.
We only felt that it maybe lacked checkpoints to avoid frustration of redoing certain things.

Other than that, great game and experience!
Markus
27. Apr 2018 · 18:30 UTC
Nice entry. The story was great and created a nice setting for the innovative idea.
We spent quite some time trying to find a third "out of the box solution" ending. We had loads of innovative ideas and eventually even looked into the sourcecode, to see if there was one. - would have been the icing on the cake.
🎤 Olivier Millochau
27. Apr 2018 · 20:03 UTC
@SandBloom Thank for the review ! Checkpoints are definitely a thing I would implemant if I were to do it again, you never how hard/frustrating your game can be when you already master it ...

@Markus That's so heartwarming to hear ! Sorry to disapoint you ...
If I knew some people would go this far, I would have surely hid a worthy reward !
TimeLoad
28. Apr 2018 · 10:42 UTC
love the concept behind this game, very well done :)
silkworm_sweatshop
28. Apr 2018 · 18:19 UTC
Lovely! The story was a charming touch too. My only gripe is I couldn't give COMMA my d at the end.. (I'm sorry).
🎤 Olivier Millochau
29. Apr 2018 · 07:03 UTC
@silkworm_sweatshop Ahah I'm ashamed I didn't find it myself.
I would have love to have the time to hide little easter eggs like that !