JellyWay by auxC
This game is a puzzle-platformer in which you explore the forest, find all the stars and hardly ever throw your jelly companions into lava. Have fun!

Magical jelly cubes are delightful little creatures. Colorful and bright, they would be perfect, except they don't have legs. Luckily they have a friend in Purple, who carries them around on its head.
Although Purple likes to visit the scary, old forest to collect shiny objects, its jelly passengers are not afraid. Their friend would never put them in danger after all.


| HTML5 (web) | https://auxiliarycarry.itch.io/jellyway |
| Windows | https://auxiliarycarry.itch.io/jellyway |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/jellyway |
Ratings
| Overall | 37th | 4.16⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 54th | 4⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 55th | 3.96⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 27th | 4.4⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 127th | 4.26⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 190th | 3.563⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 128th | 3.896⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 37🗳️ | 6🗨️ |
The changing of face and sound when I put them on the stinger make me feel a little bit guilty
but yeah, sacrifice must be made :smiling_imp:
Though I did manage to find a cheat? If you stack 2 jellys on the ground and jump on top of the second one, with great timing you can grab the bottom jelly and cause the whole thing to fly up and up!
Only think I would want is to be clear how I should solve the levels, because sometimes I thought I was cheating but maybe that was the intended way?
Great work overall guys!
I was mad at myself because I found some mechanics that look like exploits (grabbing jellies while in mid-air, or suiciding to get a star), and had to control myself to not use them. I think if removed would make the game more challenging.
So is there actually an 11th star? Played it through second time just to verify that I grabbed a star on each level. Did one level have two of them or what? A level select would be nice for star hunting reasons...
edit: Now right after writing this I immediately got it. Pretty clever, I'm dumb :blush:
Found a bit of a game breaking exploit quite early on:

It would have pretty much trivialized all the puzzles so I decided to play the game without it. And leaps of faith are never fun especially so if there is a specific spot you need to land at not to die.

The leftmost guy on the last level was completely unnecessary, because first you could manage to jump and grab this dude:

And then dunno if this was even how you were supposed to do the next bit:

And even with that skip the last level felt a bit too long and hard. Sure it was easy on my second time through but I think it was just too much too fast. It would indeed be fine if the game had more levels and a more linear difficulty progression.
The game looked and sounded sweet. I guess there was bit of a mismatch between the colorful characters and moody dark backgrounds but it still kinda worked. The laser cannons and the beams themselves looked quite out of place quality wise compared to the rest of the art. The same kinda goes for the spikes.
That's pretty much all the critique I can come up with. I would happily solve more puzzles of this, good job!
I found the left-right movement a bit too sensitive. Given the amount of spikes everywhere I think the movement needs to be a bit more manageable.
The individual visual elements are all great. The background, the silhouette of the actual level, and of course the block people. However, they don't really hang together cohesively, from a visual design standpoint. The characters are cartoony and fun, yet the background is reminiscent of grim moody games like limbo.
Likewise the music. Very beautiful, if its an original composition then I'm very impressed. However, as with the visual design, it didn't seem to fit.
Overall, the audio-visual design of the game is not cohesive. So even though all the individual elements are well done, it kind of falls flat in terms of making an emotional impression.
The best thing about the game is the level design. I've not finished the game yet, but so far I'm very impressed. I think you could really make something of this game. You just need to focus on a cohesive mood, and add a ton more levels, gradually introducing some new mechanics as you progress. And tighten up the controls a bit :-)
Like I said, I'm only being extra critical because I actually really like the game. Good job, everyone on the team should be proud :-)
Thank You for your comment. I was resposible for the visual part of the game (minus faces and placeholders) and I agree with what you wrote. I was trying to create a "happy tree friends" atmosphere where cute little creatures can die in a gruesome way. Sadly, I didn't manage to achieve that :S.