Master Key by Jeremy Ryan

[raw]
made by Jeremy Ryan for LD 43 (COMPO)

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The Premise

Keith the Raccoon has a hunger that can only be sated by material wealth. Help him explore the mazes of an abandoned temple in search of riches.

The Game

Keith has a number of abilities:

  • Arrow keys: Move
  • Z: Hold this button while moving to dash across gaps
  • X: Hold this button while moving to push blocks
  • C: Hold this button while moving to jump onto ledges
  • Mouse: Drag and drop key tiles onto altars when you're standing next to them

sreenshot_1.jpg

The Link

You can download my game from Itch.io here.

The Tools

  • Programming: Python/Pygame, with a couple classes from my Pygame graphics toolkit, pyracy.

  • Graphics: Paint.NET

  • Sound Effects: SFXR

  • Music: Sibelius 7

Thanks to Pyinstaller and this Pyinstaller tutorial for letting me magically get Python into an executable form.

Source Code

You can see my working Git repo here: You can see my original Git repo that broke Saturday night here:

Ratings

Overall 16th 4.138⭐ 49🧑‍⚖️
Fun 21th 4.076⭐ 48🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 19th 4.053⭐ 49🧑‍⚖️
Theme 17th 4.266⭐ 49🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 42th 4.138⭐ 49🧑‍⚖️
Audio 29th 3.966⭐ 46🧑‍⚖️
Humor 132th 3.218⭐ 41🧑‍⚖️
Mood 62th 3.804⭐ 48🧑‍⚖️
Given 48🗳️ 36🗨️

Feedback

Paul Nadan
03. Dec 2018 · 06:04 UTC
Great game! The graphics and music create a really nice feel, although it might be cool to add more of a storyline. The graphic design also does a great job reminding the player of the controls. The puzzles are really well done and you pretty fully fleshed out what can be done with the basic sacrifice mechanic. I would enjoy seeing the more difficult levels you could add with a couple new mechanics, if you decide to develop the game further.
MCRewind
03. Dec 2018 · 07:38 UTC
Fun game!, I enjoyed the action sacrifice mechanic and I thought the graphics were nice and the music fitting. The UI was good but it could have been made more clear that I could swap keys and sacrifice inputs without having to figure out by using a hint. Overall fun game but it would've been nice to have a few more levels, especially with the input sacrifice mechanic.
JCMonkey
03. Dec 2018 · 18:51 UTC
telling me i could sacrifice more then one item each level should have been in the tutorial levels and not a hint. other then that this was a fun little game.
Bartosz
03. Dec 2018 · 18:56 UTC
Great idea and awesome execution. Although folder with game is named LD42 - is it really only 72h work?

Btw - i got stuck in this level:
![ld43-master-keypng.PNG](///raw/82b/d/z/1d01a.png)

Is it just me being stupid or to solve this puzzle you need to actually pick up back all 3 moves, but there is no way to take power back - you can only swap them...

PS. Is music yours? I just got in love with it!
Bartosz
03. Dec 2018 · 18:58 UTC
Never mind, i just used 'HINT' and got MIND BLOWNED! This game sir deserve 5 stars! <3

PS - it would be easier to not use mouse to make sacrafice - it distracts from the game flow.
🎤 Jeremy Ryan
03. Dec 2018 · 19:51 UTC
@Bartosz Thanks for the feedback!

Yes, the music and graphics are mine, made for the 48-hour compo. Whoops on folder name --- I forgot which event number it was, haha.
Querk
03. Dec 2018 · 20:08 UTC
great game , great graphics , great idea, great everything's. only irritate me that i must spam arrows key. and i think that if player has smoother move. would be better. i love thinking which "player control" when and where i should leave to pass level. good job :)

(sorry for my bad english)
KiisuK
03. Dec 2018 · 20:34 UTC
Thats a nice game, i liked it !
I was stuck in the last level too until i found the "H" key aha
Discorde
03. Dec 2018 · 20:34 UTC
Really cool game, fun mechanics, nice audio and graphics ! It was a bit frustrating on the last level until I opened the hint but that's all :)
Laien Pathfinder
03. Dec 2018 · 23:44 UTC
Really nice game, enjoyed it very much! Cute graphics and audio make it worth 5 stars :)
Marc Grabow
04. Dec 2018 · 00:10 UTC
Well done, I like the idea of sacrificing controls, cool take on the theme. I think the only thing I would add is that you can keep pressing a key to move, it gets a bit cumbersome after a while to keep takking. Apart from that, well done, especially as a compo game!
saoi-games
04. Dec 2018 · 08:06 UTC
Thank you for sharing your game with me. I played it on my stream tonight at https://www.twitch.tv/saoigames

I have rated your game, but all of my feedback was captured in the stream.

You can hear my comments in the archive at https://www.twitch.tv/videos/344422214
Baptiste Guerin
04. Dec 2018 · 09:57 UTC
I think this is the best game I test. Very nice work <3
Sapphiris
04. Dec 2018 · 12:24 UTC
Good game, I like the idea of sacrificing some controls to keep moving. I'd prefer not to push the key arrow everytime I want to move more than a tile, it may be kinda difficult to coordinate with the moves (jump, push, dash).

Well done.
Game-mon
04. Dec 2018 · 17:23 UTC
Wow, that's an amazing game! Nice graphics, nice music, cool game mechanics that fit the theme! :D You made an awesome job making this in only 48h, congratulations! (It is so cool that it actually looks like a jam game, and I checked if it was really a compo haha)
rexpeppers
04. Dec 2018 · 21:11 UTC
Good job, lovely cat animation
rhewid
04. Dec 2018 · 23:32 UTC
Great game. Nice twist at the end there!
Josh Bothun
05. Dec 2018 · 03:55 UTC
Awesome little puzzle game. One of the better uses of "sacrifice controls" I've seen so far!
foodzilla
05. Dec 2018 · 04:17 UTC
I love the innovation of this game! The look of this game is awesome too.
FireBug
05. Dec 2018 · 23:33 UTC
Simply gorgeous game. I absolutely love Keith's design! There's something scary about giving up controls, a clever idea!
Pandanym
06. Dec 2018 · 14:22 UTC
I saw this concept numerous times, but no one came close to this level of execution. The camera and controls felt smooth and this twist is great by being self evident but still a reveal in itself. Great entry !
watdowtal
06. Dec 2018 · 16:06 UTC
Woah, this was really good! I love the cat :D
The one thing that got me was holding an action with the arrow key(s) to preform the action, which got a bit annoying. Another thing is that you can dash through some walls? Probably not supposed to do that. Other than that, good job! I've wanted to learn Python/Pygame for a while, and you seem to know the ropes.
🎤 Jeremy Ryan
06. Dec 2018 · 18:02 UTC
@watdowtal Thanks! It's correct that you're not supposed to dash through walls, although it somehow slipped through my debugging.

If you're interested in pygame, I have some tools to handle sprites and camerawork you can feel free to use for future events! They're linked in my bio.
ruba
06. Dec 2018 · 19:43 UTC
Very nice entry! I loved base gameplay.
JorgeGameDev
07. Dec 2018 · 19:52 UTC
![2018-12-07 19H-14M-39S.png](///raw/e5/z/1f641.png)

Well this was a pretty neat little entry! I really liked the puzzles that were on it and the whole idea of sacrificing game keys in order to try and solve the different puzzles. That racoon definitely looks dapper with the hat they have on. :cowboy:

If anything I would have loved to have seen some more levels and challenges come up, especially with all the keys you can sacrifice. The idea of sacrificing movement keys actually came up to me a level earlier than the one you're supposed to use it on and I can think of a bunch of potential ideas for going back and forth swapping your keys. It'd also have been fun if there were multiple altars across a single level, forcing to micro-manage the keys you have sacrificed along it, but those are really just ideas that popped to mind. :bulb:

Other than that, I really liked the presentation and the graphics were clean and accomplished what they needed too. The music was also fit the raider-mood well enough and the key combinations were also comfortable to play on.

For me, again, the only sad thing is the lack of more content, but I hope you get to pick on it again and add some more levels to it! On [behalf of our team](https://discord.whalesandgames.com), thank you for this neat puzzle game! :whale:
🎤 Jeremy Ryan
07. Dec 2018 · 20:02 UTC
@jorgegamedev Thanks so much! All of the feedback is super appreciated, especially coming from you and your team.

I definitely had a lot of ideas for levels, particularly involving multiple altars, more complex puzzles, and ways to move without using movement keys (e.g. teleporters or conveyor belts) to add depth to the puzzles. Unfortunately, time is not on your side for the Compo, so I had to cut some corners to get the core gameplay as strong as I could in 48 hours.

Thanks for playing!
Matoux42
11. Dec 2018 · 17:12 UTC
Wow, really nice game !
The idea of the sacrifice of your own keys is very great.

And also ... I'm a great fan of Python and Pygame, and you did a really great work with this tools.

Молодец :wink:
Thob
11. Dec 2018 · 19:07 UTC
The game don't work for me, I get a fatal error "Failed to execute script game" :(
🎤 Jeremy Ryan
11. Dec 2018 · 22:09 UTC
@Matoux42 Спасибо :smiley:

I like working in Pygame, because it's low-level without having to worry about weird graphics things. However, it sure is a pain to get into an executable, and you really have to worry about performance.

@thob Oh no! What version of Windows are you on? I'm using a kind of jank means of getting Python into an executable, so I'm still not sure what kind of limitations there are.

I've sometimes seen people have problems literally with the name of the file --- renaming ```.Game.exe``` to ```Game.exe``` may or may not help.
Thob
12. Dec 2018 · 19:30 UTC
Didn't work for me to rename the file.
I use windows 10 V1803, sorry I think I can't test your game ! :/
elysiagriffin
18. Dec 2018 · 20:55 UTC
Hey plasmastarfish! Thanks for submitting your game for me to play on my livestream!

If you'd like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/346057870?t=05h39s

Good luck on your ratings, see you next LD! :D

💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady

https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin
paulhocker
20. Dec 2018 · 04:30 UTC
i think this was one of the most polished games on the dare -- you captured the theme and it is a very fun game -- thanks for making this
skiddings
27. Dec 2018 · 14:16 UTC
Nice work! Cute character and the music was very good for a compo game!
DrEvilBrain
30. Dec 2018 · 20:50 UTC
Definitely one of the most polished games in the entire jam, let alone the compo. Looks amazing and has nice music. Definitely would like to see what the altar mechanic brings in a more fleshed out game with more complex puzzles.