Strata: The Shapeshifting Microworld by AtomicPair
In Strata, you must find your way out of a shapeshifting microworld by indirectly manipulating walls, crawling through tunnels, and avoiding a squishy death! This game combines several of the other LD35 theme suggestions in a 2.5D first-person engine to produce a patient, if not shifty, experience.
Although the core engine was ported from another recent project, everything you see was created solo, from scratch, in the past three days. Unfortunately, the engine porting work used up most of the time I had for this event (doesn't it always?), so there are no sounds or texture mapped walls in this version. Next time, we'll see if we can pack in more features!
NOTE: This version is for desktop web browsers using a full keyboard.
Haxe, Luxe, Pinta, and Vim were all used to create this shifty little gem.
Please report any bugs below, and thanks for playing!
Although the core engine was ported from another recent project, everything you see was created solo, from scratch, in the past three days. Unfortunately, the engine porting work used up most of the time I had for this event (doesn't it always?), so there are no sounds or texture mapped walls in this version. Next time, we'll see if we can pack in more features!
NOTE: This version is for desktop web browsers using a full keyboard.
Haxe, Luxe, Pinta, and Vim were all used to create this shifty little gem.
Please report any bugs below, and thanks for playing!
| Web | https://atomicpair.itch.io/strata |
| Source | http://github.com/AtomicPair/ld35 |
| Original URL | https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-35/?action=preview&uid=89547 |
Ratings
| Coolness | 32% | 1808 |
| Overall(Jam) | 2.65 | 1036 |
| Fun(Jam) | 2.35 | 1053 |
| Graphics(Jam) | 2.71 | 878 |
| Innovation(Jam) | 2.59 | 898 |
| Mood(Jam) | 2.29 | 982 |
| Theme(Jam) | 2.76 | 908 |
@kabel (Small spoiler, but) did you try pressing space close to any of the three darker-colored walls in the first room?
Honestly, I found the pace of the game and the lack of apparent progress (and the lack of a way to see what progress I'd made) rather frustrating. Games meant to be played slowly or meditatively are fine, but it's also important for game developers to be aware of and respect their player's investment of time in playing, too! A birds-eye map of the tiles you've explored so far would help create a sense of progress; even just a tiny box of nearby walls and tiles would help in navigating and remembering where you've explored if you wanted to preserve the feeling of being lost. Also, when progress isn't being made, it helps to give players small bits of positive feedback or encouragement, like the "reward" of getting a new song in the background, a new level mechanic like the automatically sliding walls, some new visual elements to see, or even just a new color of wall! Part of game-making is convincing the players that your game is worth playing for a bit, and will be fun, interesting, challenging, or otherwise engaging.
That all said, thanks for putting this together. Keep making cool stuff!
nice job on the engine and congrats for completing a game for LD! :)