Slime Escape by Dom Harris

A fun, fast-paced, speedrunnable platformer - can you beat the fastest time - ~~11.64s~~ 10.92s?
Move: A and D or the Arrow Keys
Jump/Double Jump: Space
Dash: Shift
You'll gain an extra dash and a jump when you go through a portal!
Please note - there are a couple of audio glitches on the WebGL version, the Windows/Mac builds are preferable!
Try out challenge mode to earn a shiny gold name on the leaderboard :grin: in challenge mode, a few of the helper platforms added to normal mode have been removed.
If you want to know how development went, check out my post-mortem!
If you're streaming, tag me on Twitter!
Fastest time gif, courtesy of @fmproductions :

Edit
Fixed the audio glitch and physics! http://domharris.uk/ld/fixes - rate me on the broken version obviously, but if you enjoyed it enough to play for longer use that link instead :grin:
| Source Code | http://domharris.uk/ld/src |
| Windows | http://domharris.uk/ld/win |
| HTML5 (web) | http://domharris.uk/ld |
| macOS | http://domharris.uk/ld/mac |
| Source code | http://domharris.uk/ld/src |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/slime-escape |
Ratings
| Overall | 122th | 3.785⭐ | 67🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 104th | 3.754⭐ | 67🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 569th | 2.762⭐ | 67🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 429th | 3.4⭐ | 67🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 71th | 4.031⭐ | 67🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 290th | 3.061⭐ | 68🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 379th | 2.284⭐ | 53🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 158th | 3.398⭐ | 61🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 20🗳️ | 28🗨️ |
If I put out another version (separate from the compo game) that made it a bit easier, would you come back to it?
Thanks for the feedback!
OK, lets review!
I'm not by default into platformers, so my review is therefore biased.
Difficult as hell, but we are in hell right? Dashing on the right spot is difficult to predict. I couldn't get too far with this came. I feel that the jump needs to be higher and more floaty, but that's just me who is bad at platformers. :)
Rising lava gives immediate goal of not getting horribly burned, tying this game with the theme.
Graphics are pretty as well as the animations and particles. Lighting adds surreal and dreamlike touch. I feel everything is kind of tasty and sugary.. Hmmm, yummy..
Music fits with the cutesy graphic style being as sugary and upbeat.
There's not much humor here so I leave that unrated.
Overall graphics, audio(-glitching) and graphics are the strong force here. Other areas need work.
@talios I'm glad you found the difficulty to be alright, and thank you for the kind review :grin: and I'm happy to hear the post mortem was interesting! I do love a good write-up.
@keppu ah I'll try that, thanks for the tip.
I've had a few pointers about the dashing, I'm going to try a few changes and see where I get. Would you be interested in playing a bug fix release? Though I guess if you're not into platformers you might not be :wink: I love that people enjoy the art and audio. I'm way more of a programmer, so it actually makes me really happy that I can do pixel art well enough to outshine the programming side! I'm not really a gameplay programmer, though, which I think has let me down slightly. I clearly need to up my game there :grin:
Overall good game.
the WebGL jump click sound hurts the ears hard.
couldn't figure out how to jump after falling in the spot were you have to fall then dash left. jump, nor dash seemed to respond if I just fell.
@triplefox thanks for the feedback :grin: and I'll look into fixing that, but if you have to mash dash and jump to do it, it's not high up on my priority list :sweat_smile: I've had my eye on your game for a while, will be playing it during my lunch break :slight_smile:
Your game is really beatiful, I like the glowing portals and character.
I found the dash hard to use on keyboard, but as I say my skills at this genre of games are about inexistent...
But I kept trying until the end!
zell plqyed ;qn/
it is a fun platformer and I think you can do a lot more of it. maybe some different levels for the hardcore platforms under this game. instead only have a challenge mode. :P
I liked the sound effects in the fixed version but unfortunately I had to rate it a bit lower because the fix was submitted later. Overall, a very enjoyable entry.
Cheers!
- The Koala Squad
(Edit: I just realized you can dash...)
## Great entry!
### [Want to give ours a rate?](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/42/tcgd-antivirus-98)
The controls felt a little sticky at times, but with a bit of practice and some frustration, it's possible to not keep getting thrown out of a portal right into spikes every time :p
The theme wasn't too present though.
(Also you can triple jump but you description only says double jump)
There is a place where you can sit and reset the jump/dash:

I'm really bad at timings, you can see me struggling :smile:
https://youtu.be/VTpbrY7pA88
Now for the good stuff - amazing graphics, this is something that you would expect from a team of experienced devs who worked on the game for at least 3 months, not 3 days! I definitely enjoyed it being challenging. The only thing that left me sad was not finding hidden areas or easter eggs or something in places that look like they should contain such things due to being unnecessary and hard to get to (e.g. start of game, see screencap below). Great work, man!

And there were collectibles planned, where you are in that screenshot is where one of them was supposed to be :slight_frown: