PlatSCII by Matthew Hrehirchuk
PlatSCII
A text adventure platformer!
Type commands to move your player, defeat Mavix the Red King.
https://youtu.be/Mu2DNIv1nbg?t=2m38s
Post jam version now out!
New levels, bug fixes, and a LEVEL EDITOR! Now you can share levels with your friends and have your levels featured here!
Featured Levels:
- @edmanbosch created this level that @matthew-hrehirchuk can't beat:
```
#
! ## ^
! ^
###^# ^
^^# ^^^
#
@ # ^
#^^^^!#^
```
Movement
- f - Move forwards
- forward - Move forwards
- b - Move backwards
- backward - Move backwards
- j - Jump
- jump - Jump
Combo Moves
- j+j - Double jump
- doublejump - Double jump
- b+j - Jump backwards
- backwardjump - Jump backwards
- f+j - Jump forward
- forwardjump - Jump forwards
Note in the post-jam version, you do not need the plus between characters.
Combat
- d - Detonate bomb
Tools Used
- Unity
- Pyxel Art
- Ableton Suite 9
- BFXR
- Discord
NOTE:
In the tutorial, you need to hit all the buttons at the same time. Also, Linux was not tested. Sorry!
Main Programmer: @connell
Lead Artist: @matthew-hrehirchuk
Sound Designer: @evan-juricic
We are all in junior high and would love to see some support!
Ratings
| Overall | 366th | 3.646⭐ | 108🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 345th | 3.558⭐ | 105🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 208th | 3.783⭐ | 108🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 264th | 3.99⭐ | 105🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 539th | 3.538⭐ | 107🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 312th | 3.515⭐ | 102🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 749th | 2.597⭐ | 95🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 469th | 3.416⭐ | 103🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 53🗳️ | 51🗨️ |
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/hype-time
We are also going to try to export to Mac and Linux!
We also make our original. Mind to check it out: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/daxua
Overall, cute little game! I think I kinda cheated a bit by multi-jumping a lot (it's easy to spam j, enter, j, enter..) I like the simple graphics. This sort of interface reminds me of another game I played recently called Duskers, where you control drones with typed-in commands.
I got stuck in the tutorial and couldn't complete it for some reason before starting the game, whoops. Should have read the instructions. :) Oh and having to click into the text box was a bit confusing at first. I thought focus would be put there automatically.
Checkout my team's game : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/im-not-a-hero
Keep coding :)
Man, I'm already excited for the next round!
Check out our team game
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/life-and-death
On mac resolution seems cropped. But works well.
Some feedback thoughts:
The entry of commands could be improved a bit by removing the "+", for example: jj (not j + j), or fff = f * 3.
Anyway, the game is pretty well done and feels good to play. One of my concerns is that the character actually tips over instead of staying upright and as mentioned above the repetitive jumping feels a bit level-breaking.
Aside from that, fun little art style you got going on, including nice music! Good job!
I beat the complete game and everything worked for me.
The only thing that bothered me, was to click into the enter-area after each level. Should have been autofocus.
Other then that: Nice
------------
Remarkable idea and remarkable polish. It turns out to be a very atmospheric game, and the text command twist is really nice.
Since it is so physics based, there are more solutions to some levels than meets the eye. Nice :)
The presentation is spot-on and the use of characters to show the dangers vs. platforms works surprisingly well.
Improvements
-----------
Somehow I keep losing cursor focus, which makes some tighter spots a bit aggravating.
Gist
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Didn't have this much fun since **Snipes** :) Cheers!
If you get chance check out ours :) https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/mechasnek
I really enjoyed your game! The movement felt very smooth, the music was atmospheric, it all just felt very unique and cool! My only suggestion is to think about player convenience when developing controls. For example, "f+j" is much harder to type on the keyboard than just "fj".
Great work!!
I liked the combos, wish I could input more than 2 at a time.
well done :)
And I know a game that also uses spelling to act. You may like it somehow.
https://teamassgal.itch.io/interspeller
At first it seemed a bit two simple, but having to input new commands before the last one was finished was great and added a lot of flexibility to it.
It's pretty challenging though - maybe I'm just lazy but I did get pretty frustrated after failing a level a couple times and having to redo the first part of it lots of times.
Anyhow a great game! The music, sounds and grafics are also very impressive and fitting! Keep it up!
My only gripes are 1) the download was a bit of a pain, maybe host the game on itch.io next time, 2) the main menu is really confusing at first, I first downloaded it on my mac, didn't get *I was suposed to type the menu option*, tried rolling my head on the keyboard and clicking everywhere to no avail. Thought "must be buggy on mac". Downloaded it on my windows. Repeat. Then I saw enter and I was like "waiiiiit". Maybe if we didn't have to click on it and typing would directly write in the input it'd be easier to understand.
Anyways congrats a really cool game, good concept, good gameplay, good polish :ok_hand: (just a sprinkle of UX would be rad).
Now that I can play it, this is pretty awesome!
Some suggestions for polish:
- Always focus the text area so you can just start typing there when the next level beings
- Put a blinking cursor there so it's more obvious to the player that they can type ;)
- More sophisticated parsing, such that I can enter a chain of commands, like "fffj" or whatever, would be cool. Then you could have bonuses for solving the level in the least number of "moves", etc.
- vi-like edit mode commands would be awesome. Your game would have an instant niche audience for vi geeks if you did this, and might even help teach vi to new users.
- I'd like to be able to enter new instructions on the fly, rather than wait for the @ to slow to a stop and type more commands in. This would give the game more of an action flow, and less of a turn-based feel, which I think would be an improvement. I guess you can do that already, but something about the timing for it doesn't feel quite right to me -- I guess because the new instruction isn't acted upon until I hit Enter. So maybe if you type while you're already in motion, new keystrokes take effect immediately, and you can stop immediately by hitting <backspace>.
Just some ideas. When a game gives me a lot of ideas, it's a good game.
Overall, this is a lot of fun, and has a lot of potential.
It feels very puzzle like in with you need to think before you act :)
Big ASCII fan! Music was relaxing and sound fx appropriate to the atmosphere.
Excellent work!
**I am really impress by this game. **
character movement, environment, sound, Particle, all great.
Few things I notice is every time i press same key than also I get little bit different movement of character. some time it jump more & other time it jump less.(might be unity problem).
@ csanyk suggest very good point to improve this game.
You can make this game like Area "A", Area "B" area, etc every area have some different special command.
There is lot of potential in this game
I left my rating of your game, if you can leave your feedback in our game, Witch's Escape.
I hope you continue with the project.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/witchs-escape
Some notes for improvement:
- The tutorial seems broken. Typing the f+j doesn't go through, it would seem. Not sure if maybe I mistyped it, but it's nigh impossible to tell. Also, I feel the text in the main menu did a much better job explaining it than the tutorial did.
- The text field for the menu doesn't really give a clear indication you're supposed to type there. It was by pure chance the cursor was on the enter field one time when I restarted.
- The text field at the start of some levels loses focus, which means I have to know to click into there in order to play.
- The volume level of the last sound was much louder than the others, which is kind of a feel bad. (RIP headphone users)
Otherwise, this is a very solid idea executed well for a short, fun experience. It's well-balanced for what it was aiming to do.
The graphics ar simple but very nice. The music is amazing, it creates a very cool atmosphere that matches with the game style! Excellent work!
Pretty interesting concept. It does feel like it would perhaps be more interesting as a puzzle game instead of a physics-y platformer as right now it feels a bit gimmicky/random, plus there's no limit on the number of jumps you can do or the speed at which you can enter commands. The "combos" seemed like a cool idea until I realized it was more efficient to just spam f, b, and j separately. At that point it just devolved into a platformer with awkward controls. Again, I feel like if it was a more deterministic puzzle game it would have been more interesting.
Still pretty fun though!