Total Party Kill by adventureislands
Your party enters a deep and dark dungeon... but the only way forward is creative use of friendly fire. Sacrifices must be made...
Control 3 different heroes: a knight, a mage and a rogue, use their special abilities and sacrifice your teammates to reach the goal. As long as one hero survives, you complete the level.
- Arrow Keys = Move
- Z = Jump
- X = Use character's attack
- A and S = Cycle between heroes
- R = Restart a level
- M = Mute music
- N = Mute Sounds
Created for Ludum Dare 43 compo in under 48 hours. Theme: Sacrifices must be made. Made with Stencyl: http://stencyl.com/
Ratings
| Overall | 1th | 4.528⭐ | 393🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 2th | 4.434⭐ | 394🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 7th | 4.242⭐ | 393🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1th | 4.664⭐ | 393🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 6th | 4.532⭐ | 394🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 7th | 4.165⭐ | 386🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 18th | 4.034⭐ | 379🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 19th | 4.133⭐ | 385🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 59🗳️ | 72🗨️ |
- Automatically switch to a different party member when one dies
- have A and S cycle to the party member to the left or right on-screen, or maybe even have one key to cycle them (like C or something).
Overall this is really, really good work. Congrats!
got stuck at this part
I love the game! only thing i didn't like was the controls, but i got used to them after awhile <3
I agree that the controls are a little bunched together. There were several times when I was trying to jump, but instead my fingers were shifted up one row and instead I was randomly cycling through the characters instead.
But overall, that's a pretty minor thing. I really love this and it almost feels like it could be expanded into an even longer adventure if you wanted to.
I love it, the similar thought what I thought but finish it very great. my thought is only one player but die can make for easy to complete.
really cool puzzle and level design and very amazing game. high level of completion levels and great pixel art. I really like the music and the 3 characters.
As for the feedback, I had the same point as @numeralien: There are more buttons than needed, switching would be easier with one button and when someone selected dies, it can automaticaly switch to another one.
I didn't finished it yet, but I will after some sleep! Great job!
The cutscenes were polished and I enjoyed the ending. The biggest gripe would be that the controls are a bit much to get used too, but there isn't too much that can be done about that with this kind of game.
Overall I think you did a great job with this entry!
Great use of the theme, attractive art, solid music and sfx, fun level design and interesting mechanics.
Reminiscent of the Lost Vikings.
Loved the ending, it got a laugh out of me!
I liked the concept a lot, but what I love the most is the order you presented the levels. A nice, nice, nice way to make a tutorial!
I don't know if I am the only one but I feel the spikes's hitbox are too wide... But everything else is really fantastic! Great job!
edit-
OMG, you're the guy from Super Dangerous Dungeon! Just realized now, no wonder why this game is so awesome! Greetings man, love your game! (:
My only complaint is that the keys are bit awkward. AD to cycle, W to jump and S, E or space to fight would have worked better imo.
Really, music fits perfectly with an amazing pixel art style and of course, unique puzzle gamplay!
Hands down! :crown:
- nice thematic character abilities
- intresting puzzles that were definately theme based.
I may have simplified the controls though. Maybe UP arrow to jump and just one hero swapping button instead of 2.
Congrats on your entry!
I hit a strange bug where the menu music didn't end when the levels started so I had both playing at the same time. It was really distracting and I thought I must have had something else playing music in another tab or something. A refresh took care of it.
Those were some great puzzles. I'll have to come back through it again and see how many levels I can beat without killing the other party members. I'm thinking there are some with some crazy jump/switch combos that are possible.
One of the ideas in our team for this LD was something similar to your game. In the end we decided to go for another idea but it's so cool you've done it so well and alone.
Keep up the great work!
My only complaint is that a few of the levels required very tight platforming, such that it was unclear if I was solving the puzzle incorrectly and needed to figure out a different approach, or just needed to execute better. It turned out that I did have the correct solution figured out, but I was just a few pixels off from where I was supposed to be when jumping, or throwing a corpse around as the knight. Once a player has the correct solution to a puzzle, it should be clear that they're on the right track.
One level in particular that I remember having trouble setting up properly was this one, where the mage had to stand almost entirely off of the platform, in order to hit the switch when thrown by the knight.
The concept is different as it's only 1 player and it works very well with the differents mechanics on the differents characters.
I can't rate 5/5 because to me, the perfection doesn't exist but your game right now is not too far ;)
Great work !
The polish was pretty good, but what blew me away was the fact that there was an animated ending cutscene. How on earth did you pull that off for the compo? Insane!
I also found a few levels where I didn't need to sacrifice anyone in order to beat, so I assume there are more than one ways to beat some of the levels.
Also I like that the mage can turn those already killed to ice cubes, it makes it alot more interesting
It this the actual intended solution? Seems kinda weird that the arrows behave differently on already dead comrades...
And I know for sure this one isn't the intended way...
Difficulty progression was a bit off and there were some levels next to each other that had the exact same solution. Even those samey levels would work if they didn't come right after the other. And the the difficulty curve doing a bit of a sine wave wasn't a huge issue either since it actually made the pacing feel nice since you didn't get stumped on every single level near the end. And the knights ability was completely pointless if you exclude the tutorial level. He was just there as a meat shield for the whole game afterwards. Well not really, he was kinda useful as a frustration vent when not figuring out the solution :wink:
Anyways, great job! Easily my favourite so far...
edit: Oh yeah, I actually worked on a game (that I never ended up finishing) with very similar idea couple of years ago but in it all the characters were the same and level varying amount of them had to reach the end.
I only have 2 nitpicks: control scheme is weird (responsive, but odd setup), and those spikes are a bit misleading, it's not clear that ice cubes can pass through them, for instance. And the levels are so clever. God damnit!
It's the best game I've played so far, I can see this becoming #1 in most categories.
**somethings I've noticed that could be even better:
- I feel like the order of the levels are a bit scrambled. There were one or two levels that were pretty easy in the second half of the game, it felt like they were trying to teach me the basics.
Cheers and congrats
[11:20 AM] The two minutes I just played of that game were far better than like 56% of everything I ever played on NES
[11:21 AM] Like, Deadly Towers probably took months to design, and those two minutes of that game were like 1000x more fun
Got a little bug (I assume it's a bug since it's not needed to complete the game) where if you have a key down when you switch to another character the other character will get the input or the previous one will keep its input going (like keep walking even though you're not controlling him anymore).
Thank you very much for this little game!
Great level design making you utilize all of the mechanics. Not to mention cool mechanics you learn via experimentation!
Awesome ending XD
Beaut of a gem.
Only thing I found that might have been unintentional, (But I actually liked and might leave in).
If you're running, say, to the right, and you swap characters, character 1 doesn't stop running till you let go of the button. It was actually really convenient for getting 2 characters across the map without taking to much time!
Awesome entry, clever design the puzzle do a good job at using each character ability. The art and music are A+ The only for me was the control scheme which was a bit awkward but I guess in a non-jam environment it wouldn't get too long to get used to.
Had no choice but to persist to the finish as I was hooked, and I'm glad I did!
The best game I've played this jam.
Exelent game!
I didn't have time to do proper difficulty curve, so I just designed 15 different levels quickly and tried to put them in some sort of increasing difficulty order.
Agreed that the knight turned out to be a bit useless. He had more utility in early build of the game, but late game change of making mage able to push ice blocks with his attack had unintended side effect of making knight's slash attack pointless. When I do a post-compo version, I'm thinking of making the ice beam unable to push ice blocks again so in some puzzles you have to use the knight to throw them around.
* Music and sound effects were great
* Art style was awesome
* Levels were tight and well made
* Progression was good... I felt challenged but had the feeling of "I figured that out" when I worked out each level
* All the mechanics were used creatively
* Would play again and recommend to others
Now you need to add more levels (if you feel like it) and put it out to the masses :P
I also found a funny little game physics exploit that enabled my characters to use real teamplay instead of sacrificing themselves 😁😇
That said. Your game is awesome. Full points in every aspect.
The only things that could be improved are the controls. And maybe the usefulness of the knight. He is the victim all the time :laughing:
Full points from my side.
You are really up to an awesome game. Please continue the work on it.
And for whatever reason, Stencyl thinks I don't have Flash...
And I'm a Mac user!
I wanna play this game. :( I'll bookmark it and come back when I get on a Windows machine for a while.
the graphics, art, music, sound effects, animations, etc. were epic
the best part is the mechanics. not only do you have to sacrifice your friends, but each friend has a unique attack and you have to use them to solve unique situations this is the only dungeon game i know where you have weapons that you only use on your allies XD
oh! but srsly! this was so good!
my only real complaint was the lack of WASD and a selection number for each character (1-3 instead of next and prev). but other than that, this game is fantastic! 5 stars all around!
EDIT: My fav part was playing back-and-forth catch with the frozen knight between the mage and the archer XD
No real major issues with it though, great game!
Well Done
Balancewise I thought it was a bit mage-heavy but at some point I realized that this was also somewhat dependend on my playstyle and many stages had multiple solutions.
As a lover of puzzlegames this was very enjoyable indeed =)
I'll check your non-jam games too, they look great!
I found a bug where you can infinite jump if you have an ally over your head (sorry if it already have been pointed out, there's a lot of comments over here :smile:)
Good job, and continue producing quality games like this one !
This is the highlight of the Compo for me. Incredibly well done!
Let's be real: This will make the top ten.
And to think you made it by yourself in 48 hours! For me, this is a perfect entry. Congratulations!
Thank you for this fun little experience!
Graphics and audio are very cute : perfect old school pixel style.
The concept fit perfectly to the theme and puzzle are all nice : not too easy, not too difficult. It was very fun to solve all of them. Nice ending as well !
Very impressive work, congrats !!
I bet that party hates their mage :P
Greatness!
My only complaint is that the jump and attack controls are a bit tricky to adjust to.
I hope this game gets a port soon!
The only thing that makes me sad is that most of the time knight is just a stepping stone like in most of the RPG game :cry:
The music was good. I liked how interesting and varied the main menu music sounded. It was sharp and clear. The music was very interesting and it supported the mood of the game. I liked that the main menu music was pretty long and it was not annoyingly extremely repetitive. I also liked the music in the levels because it was not repetitive and it fitted the mood of the game. I liked how the music in the levels have an interesting melody and I liked how other notes in the music support this melody.
One concept I did not like:
I could not complete level two. No matter how much I tried, I could never get one of the playable characters to hit the lever. I strongly suggest to have player feedback be given during the creation of your games. This is because players play much differently than that of a developer as they do not know the game as well as the developer. Study your players and see what they are doing. Studying your players sufficiently will allow you to know what their thought processes will most likely be in the game, and this can help you design your levels in a fashion that will allow players to actually know how to complete the levels. Also, other than collecting player feedback, you could also help players learn how to complete the levels by giving players a video walkthrough or by giving hints during gameplay.
The game mechanics are superb. Indication is: You can solve your puzzles on different ways :smile:
You can either shoot your heroes to a location with the rogue, smash them to make some ground or you just freeze and shoot them then to your desired location. The mechanics are simple to understand but you can combine them to achieve some great combinations of complexity to solve the puzzle - just pure genius.
This is so much fun!
Obviously very good graphics and audio and it feels very polished and complete, but the underlying mechanics are very clever and fun too.
I didn't like the key controls (A S to change characters instead of A D or Q E).
I love the artwork, sounds, music, all the game!!! :smile:
Wonderfu work, Is a jewel! :smiley: :v:
Beautiful, good job! :smiley:
On the web build on itch, It was playing two songs at once for me and I had to refresh- might be because I changed tabs while it was loading?
Really loved this experience, great concept, great puzzles. I was able to beat level 14 without killing anyone just by having them jump on each other by quick switching and moving them mid jump. Which was pretty cool. - having like another meta challenge of keeping them alive is interesting.
I feel like the only thing that could have been more fleshed out is the music, but all the rest - from game design to level design, character and everyronment design, is quite perfect for this scope !
Congrats !
You give three simple features that offers enough creativity to player to achieve each levels.
A pretty Game !
Sometimes I found the timing to be a bit tricky for a puzzle game, but maybe that was just me not finding the intended solution and cheesing it in an overly complicated way, I'm not sure haha.
I did have to subtract half a star for fun because some of the keys do not play well with international keyboards. For me it was Z which is next to T instead of at next to X as for everyone else. Fortunately I was able to jump via the up key. I usually suggest allowing multiple input choices, e.g. Y or X for jumping, WASD or Arrow keys for movement, etc. This is not even about different input schemes to choose from, just bind more than one button to the same action. Controller support would have been awesome, but I don't know if Stencyl supports it.
Another minor thing: I noticed you uploaded your HTML version to Itch, but didn't for the Windows version. You can also upload your sources there. That may help keeping all your stuff in one place and avoid confusion in lazy people (aka me) ;)
Overall I think one of the best games I've seen so far. Kudos!
I'm disappointed with myself for not being able to get further than Level 6, I wanted to play more of this!
The music was nice, the puzzles were a bit easy, in my opinion, and I would've loved to have some function for the knight, maybe things that need sword slashes that the others can't break, etc.
