Skulls n' Ladders by arly
Climb as many floors and collect as many coins as you can without getting hit by the ghosts.
Use A and D (or arrow keys) to move left and right, and W and S (or up and down arrow) to climb a ladder if you’re near one. If you are about to get attacked by a ghost, hit spacebar to throw a coin at it. Alternatively, you can throw a coin near a ghost, and if the coin lands within earshot, the ghost will get distracted while you sneak by. Don't be too greedy with your coins; the more you have, the more noise they make when you run. There are 14 floors total, see if you can reach the top!
| HTML5 (web) | https://arly.itch.io/skulls-n-ladders |
| Windows | https://arly.itch.io/skulls-n-ladders |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/skulls-n-ladders |
Ratings
| Overall | 151th | 3.885⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 28th | 4.103⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 366th | 3.408⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 316th | 3.744⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 181th | 4.171⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 471th | 3.129⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 41🗳️ | 37🗨️ |
Gostei muito da mecânica de iluminação baseada no movimento e na possibilidade de distraír os fantasmas. E a estética visual também ficou muito bonita. Parabéns pelo jogo. :flag_br:

Played up until about half way until I noticed that you can throw the coins. Didn't really read the description that well so I missed that part and I tried to press it first so early that I didn't have any coins yet.
Felt like the noise level didn't really matter that much at all. You could always just always just inch your way forward one pixel at a time without making any noise no matter how many coins you had. And when I realized you can throw the coins and kill the skulls, it just got too easy. It was more fun trying to juke them before I knew I could throw the coins. It'd probably be more interesting if you couldn't kill the skulls, maybe just stun them for a short while instead. Or maybe not even that and you could only distract them with the sound the coins make. That would need quite a lot of redesign of the level though.
Pros:
- Elegantly simple yet incredibly fun
- Probably the most fun thing I've played yet and its just a 2/3 button game really
- Easy to learn
- Great choice of colors to highlight where player should be looking
- The randomly generated ladder positions helps it stay fresh
Cons:
- It took me quite a few runs before I realized I could kill the skulls and even more before I realized they could be tricked by the light my coins emit. This is fine though, I picked it up naturally with no tutorial.
- More coins is kind of a good thing even though you light radius grows
I feel like this game needs a bit more balance since it's easy to kill sculls when you have a lot of coins, I'd expect some moments when player has to throw all coins away to be more stealthy and progress further. Rare immortal skulls, maybe? Speed reduction could work too, but it's less fun.
Level generation, art style, coin sounds ++.
Here is my playthrough:
https://youtu.be/U0KJ_bRFg_Q
It was fun to play, thank you!