A Platformer for Ants by Elendow
This game is a simple platformer. If you fall on spikes or monsters you die, and you'll respawn on the last checkpoint.
Oh, also, every new room you discover has to fit to the camera, so, everytime you enter a new room, everything shrinks to fit on your screen. The checkpoints will reset this.
I really love the idea but I had not enough time to polish it, add art or some more mechanics, but eh, it's "finished".
The sprites are all mine except for the main character, made by GrafxKid
Music: "8bit Dungeon Boss" Kevin MacLeod
* The postmortem version replaced the 'keep pressing to jump further' for a double jump. If you get stuck because you can't reach a platform, play the postmortem version. Thanks and sorry! *



| HTML5 (web) | http://elendow.com/games/LD40 |
| HTML5 (web) | |
| HTML5 (web) | https://elendow.itch.io/a-platformer-for-ants |
| Windows | https://elendow.itch.io/a-platformer-for-ants |
| macOS | https://elendow.itch.io/a-platformer-for-ants |
| Linux | https://elendow.itch.io/a-platformer-for-ants |
| HTML5 (web) | https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/703327 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/a-platformer-for-ants |
Ratings
| Overall | 61th | 4.058⭐ | 140🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 50th | 4.033⭐ | 140🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 30th | 4.094⭐ | 140🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 113th | 4.091⭐ | 139🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 346th | 3.856⭐ | 137🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 551th | 2.958⭐ | 108🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 219th | 3.726⭐ | 128🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 46🗳️ | 49🗨️ |
Game is not too hard too, but not easy either :)
Well, no matter what you say, I do think that's some very good art and music! Gameplay was on point too, very confortable movements (is the ability to jump after falling of a platform a feature or a "feature"?). Clever idea for the "more visibility, worse it is" :heart:
So, awesome entry. Loved it!
Give it a bit more dungeons and add a tiny bit of story and you've got a pretty good game on your hands (not the jam kind, the regular kind)
Also, I swear I heard that backing track somewhere before... what is it?
It is a well-polished platformer. I like the expanding level. The graphics and sound are pretty good too.
## Suggestions
I'm not sure how I feel about having the checkpoints in rooms filled with traps. My feeling is that checkpoints should be in safe places to avoid players failing immediately after spawning. However, having them in dangerous places forces the player to decide whether or not to go for that checkpoint.
Wonderful game here sir. But I hated you when I wanted to get the first reset flag...
I liked the game. Platforming generally felt fine, save for the somewhat floaty jump (although I feel the majority of platformers suffer from that so it's hard to fault it). Music and sound effects are cool, and I really like the lighting on my character's face as I pass through the candles.
Good usage of the theme, especially with how checkpoints reset the camera on activation.
@corny the music is from Incompetech, I forgot to write the credits on the description ;)
@colisan it's made on purpose! I wanted to do some room that required it, but in the end I felt that it was too hard to abuse of that...
@move127 the idea of placing the checkpoitns on hard rooms was exactly that, the player must decide if its worth or not. If they were on easy rooms, everyone will go to them.
@jcmonkey that's weird, the camera size doesn't affect have to affect the gameplay, I'll look at that :(
This could be totally expanded to a full game, think about it!
PS: This game should have been called Queen Lucas.
During the fall I was hoping that I become a two pixels hero...
There are things to do with this concept...
Congrats for the work :D
Very strange as in the first run I had no trouble at all to go through it.
Thanks to everyone for the good feedback, I'm improving some things and I'll keep the postmortem version updated :)
Really interesting approach of design,
Here is another playthrough:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSHsPT1yBGE

Excellent idea and great realization, good job! Also perfectly tuned controls, you should receive special prize for this, it happens too often that devs forget about the importance of the good tuned controls.
I fell on the long shaft and because of the speed my character skipped the collision with the ground and fell out of the gameplay area. A "press R to respawn" mechanic should fix this.
Very innovative use of the camera also! (and perfect for the theme)
Congrats!!
Thanks again to everybody for the good feedback, I'm trying to improve the game to make a better experience for everyone. Also, I'm already thinking about new rooms, enemies and mechanics that could fit on a bigger version of the game :)
Other than that, great submission!
Ótimo conceito! Gostei muito da tua interpretação do tema e da forma como aplicou, parabéns pelo jogo. Acredito que seria interessante adicionar um pulo na parede para melhorar a dinâmica da movimentação vertical, mas nada que atrapalhe muito. Parabéns! :flag_br:
@goplite @staircase27 I'm already working on new levels and mechanics to make the game bigger, I think it deserves it!
@erlatronics that's made on purpose, I like that kind of mechanic on platforming games so I reproduced it. I wanted to use as a requirement on some rooms, but in the end I prefered not to.
It's very competitive, I like the idea, reminds me lightweight versions of metroid )
I loved the camera mechanic, altough I would have liked if it triggered a bit before I fell into the spikes on the first checkpoint. I played the jam entry, so you might have fixed it in your post-mortem version already...
The art was good, simple and clean, no bs! :)
Considering the camera mechanic, more detailed art would probably become unreadable.
I do have on question though, are the torches a part of your tilemap? If so, do you know of any tutorials on how to animate the tilemap? I did find Unity's tutorial on "rules" for tiles, but couldn't seem to figure out how to properly use it.
Best regards!
The camera thing you said... well, I'm an evil mind and some of those are made in purpose, but I understand that it can be a little bit frustrating. I'll improve that with new room designs :)
Thanks for the quick answer!
-It's awkward not seeing parts of the level that are already on the screen. This could be easily justified with some light switch or something.
-I loved the checkpoint idea of rescaling the screen. Most of all, the checkpoint before the pit, that was awesome.
-The slime monsters where a bit useless as they just break the pace of the game, I feel like traps (arrow, or intermittent spikes) could fit much better.
-I felt for some spikes just after a portion of the map appeared. I think that there can be juice in here, making the player decide where to just with a bit of uncertainty but, of course, not being unfair.
Congratulations! One of the best and original games I played so far.
character behaves strangely on platform corners. Did you use 2d rigidbody for the movement?
Slimes are very slow, so sometimes you have to just sit and wait until he will move and give you enough space on the platform
Other than that - the game is very cool.
@vlandemart yes, I'm using a 2D rigidbody for the movement, and the character has a capsule collider, that's the reason of the slippy corners. I'll probably change that to a box to improve the collisions.

Great job!!
2. Surprisingly fit the theme, the more the worse.
3. Solid level design.
Now that was a really nice and clever gimmick! It was definitely a very familiar platformer in terms of controls, but the whole camera reducing size as it went made it mush fresher and fun to play. The idea of the checkpoint flags being used as both checkpoints and as a way to reset your camera view was also really spot-on, and I loved the touch how they were always in extra challenging rooms to make you question if you wanted to risk getting to the flag or not.
Overall, I really liked it and the only thing that made me feel kind of sad was due to how short it was. :disappointed:
I'd love to see this idea further expanded and improved upon on (which, given from your comments above is something you already have in mind)! I can definitely see several ways that this mechanic could be used for all sorts of different puzzles and perspectives, and would really like to see it take off.
[In behalf of our team](https://twitter.com/WhalesAndGames), I must congratulate you for the really cleaver gimmick (and fellow _Newgrounds_ feature too!). I will definitely look forward for the future version of this game if you decide to push it forward, which I think you definitely should! :whale:
The level design is great, and quite big for the amount of time, graphics are cute and the take on the theme is brilliant and original (although it is pretty late here and now my eyes hurt a bit from squinting). Gameplay felt solid at all times, I don't really have any complaints about it :)
Congrats, this was great!
I don't think I agree with the checkpoint placements, though. I think that making the player work for them is okay (though maybe not for the first one), I just wish they weren't so far away from the main path, especially the one to the left. By the time you retrace your steps, you've already lost whatever benefit you would have gotten for shrinking the screen size down.
The controlls are smooth and let you play correctly, being an important thing for a platformer : good game.^^
The un-zomm is well "measured" (for lack of a better term).
I tried the web build and the exe, I didn't encounter any bug and completed the game in 2:58. o/ Thanks for the checkpoints, the bad player that I am likes this touch. The "rezoom" when you activate a checkpoint is well thought.
The music is fun and goes well with the game just as the sounds. :)
I didn't find the graphics ugly (as you said in the post mortem) but simple and nice and clean-enough and everything goes well together.
I'm no graphic artist either, but I always hear my artist friends say things like "what really matters is the consistency of your art", even if it's not some king of graphic art masterpiece and is quite simple / light, it can still be pretty if everything goes well together.
I came here after stumbling upon your post-mortem blogpost, I like this kind of posts, it's always interesting to see how people managed their jams.
Great job, fellow 3am-er! o/
I think this was one of the coolest takes on the theme, and the execution was really great. Levels didn't get annoying either - can't think of anything I didn't like!
I think what I enjoyed most was the sense of accomplishment you got from visually seeing the progression in the overview you got of the particular segment of the level you'd completed!
If theres anything to think about, its that sometimes it felt like you got more out of *not* going for a checkpoint, than actually going for one (as the overview you got was actually helpful)
Great work guys :)
All in all I say good job, it's a fun game and I'm looking forward a more polished project based on that gameplay idea :slight_smile:
And its challenging too :) Keep on.