Great game! Loved every bit of it!

Interesting take on the theme! It was a bit confusing when i kept dying until i realized it was because i ran out of coins! I think it would be a bit nicer if there were a meter or something to let the player know how much "power" they have. But, overall, a pretty alright game

Thanks @kade we thought it was clear adding the glowing effect around him because we didn't want to add any UI but maybe we need some polish, thanks for the feedback!

This is good use of theme to disguise timed platforming. The game is charming. All the assets in the game look and feel great. The effects used are very nice and add some visual interest to catch the eye. The platforming on the second level is a little harsh, but it did teach me the core mechanics of the game, so well done on game design too. The final level I was able to run right to the end using the gap the pinks guys go through, is that intended? Haha. Overall, a great package here because it had me wishing for more.

@flukeshot thanks for the feedback. We started with the level design seriously just 2 hours before submission but we'll try to improve the levels for the post ludum version. About the final level, isn't intended but I'm glad you found it, haha!

Another C++/custom engine game - nice! (Windows AVG thinks it's dangerous but it's fine on MacOS.)

Running/jumping/wall-climbing feels tight and responsive. Love the art, animation and the colours. Love the visual representation of 'time remaining' and the little critters. Love the tiny amount of squash and stretch on jump/land. Yeah, I noticed.

Only thing that was missing that would have been nice to see is a visual effect on player death.

Great work peeps. I think this will do very well in the jam. :smile: :thumbsup:

I really loved to play your game! The art and theme are awesome and the sounds really added to the mood.
The only thing that confused me in the beginning is jumping with "z". I have a german keyboard layout and I have to press "y".

I'd love to see new levels in the future! :thumbsup:

Ah, ye olde LDJAM pixel platformer :P An olde staple :P
Very well presented, great polish, really pretty with great sounds, good stuff.
The wall jump is great and the general versatility of the character was good.

though:

- Why even use enter to start? Why not use a key already being used? Moving my hand away from controls to restart and coming back was annoying.
- The last level was confusing (SPOILER AHEAD), some walls could be crossed, some couldn't. It was unclear by just looking. Also there was a bit where you could run and run... into nothing. Why even have a path there if it only led to nothing? (Top right). In fact the entire level was completely unnecessary once I just kinda ran towards the exit out of sheer frustration.
- The controls were generally very tight and very good, but at the last level the super tight spacing of the enemies there shows that there is a weakness to the controls at tight quarters, either tighten the controls to allow finer degrees of control more easily or don't have such tight situations.
- The overall mechanics weren't really all that interesting to support the great feel of the game. Running out of energy over and over didn't create interesting decisions. It was purely a timer that ran out. The coins may have added a cool challenge to hit precision platforming acrobatics but that wasn't really implemented as such.
- That bit of floating city in the last level LOOKED LIKE a thing to interact with. But it didn't do anything and felt like it was broken.

Overall, great job :)

PS I just realised that I completely missed the presence of this "turbo" thing. In-game teaching is always better than expecting people to read ahead of time :P
PPS Lol then I realised that your screenshot above is old as there's no turbo in-game, you might wanna fix that :)

It does not run for me :( I can only see the splash screen and listen to the background music, but as soon as I hit enter, it crashes...!

Really nice art and atmosphere! I think it would help to add some kind of ui indication of objective and running out of coins thing. Also it would be nice to have some kind of back story to tell you why and where you run. But overall it is really nice game considering 3 day deadline ᕕ( ಠ‿ಠ)ᕗ good job guys!

I really liked the game and main mechanics, I think you should go even deeper and make every aspect of the game revolve around gaining and losing energy (e.g: not having enemies that kill you, but otherwise remove some of your remaining energy). I don't like the fixed jump height thing a lot, but the game felt good even without that. My favotite part was when I realised that I died from falling because my energy ran out, and not because of a kill box. Nice job =)

Wow I'm really impressed. The mechanics are really good, I really liked the art style and the atmosphere but I'm also very impressed that it is made in your own custom engine. Wished there were more levels but I hope this will be updated later. Great work!

Very solid game in this LD. Movement feels so good and the minimalistic art fits perfectly in this platformer.
Also, the particles are amazing.

Well done guys, I enjoy it!

Really neat. Loved the FEZ vibe. Well done!

Really neat. Loved the FEZ vibe. Well done!

Thanks everyone for your feedback! @easy82 could you tell me what's your OS and what version? 👍

@franfox It's Windows 10. Is there a log or something I could help you with to fix it?

Thank you so much for such a great entry!
Visuals and sounds are absolutely awesome!
Moreover what amazes me is that you developed it in custom c++ engine, great work.

Love this so much! There was such a nice ramp in difficulty I couldn't help but want to play over and over to get better. The art style is so nice and effective for this, and the animations make every move feel satisfying. Scoping the vertical surfaces felt particularly fun. Amazing!

@tuism thanks for the feedback. You're right, until the last 2 hours we had a secondary button to use a power that increase your speed but at the end we didn't find the way to explain this and use correctly in our levels. It's fixed now on this page main image. I think we can improve our level design too in a post LD version of the game. Thanks to point that.

@rune-drawer in fact there's a backstory but isn't explained because we want to keep the game simplistic. If you feel curious there's a short brief [SPOILERS]: "Your people carry a course that make you dependent of the energy crystals. You know about an old legend about a city in which the curse should be cured so you decided to find that city. The enemies you found during your travel are in fact other people that tried to do the same journey and failed. At the end you find the city but there's no cure... the city is made itself with energy crystals and you can live there safe but for the same reason your give up your freedom to leave in peace."

@johngun, @unoion thanks! This is the magic done by @davidcollado.

@easy82 we've updated the game, maybe it's working now? (If not feel free to write me on Twitter [francesctovar] to get more info about your hardware. This is the ugly face of using custom engines 😜).

Thanks everyone for your comments, I hope we can make an improved version with more levels soon 👍

Wow i really like it. the colorsheme, sound, and lovely drawn pixel arts.
Great Controls so far too.

Nice graphic. I'm waiting for full version with more high difficulty level :).

Probably my favourite game of LD39 so far. Not the most inventive use of the "running out of power" theme for sure, but certainly the tightest, most polished, non-Unity game I've played. Extremely well done guys. I would play a full version of this if you ever make it.

I tried to play it but my avast acted up and then my computer crashed for some reason. The art and color choice is amazing. Gives me ideas for my game post LD. Great work.

Very nicely done platformer. I really liked the visual style. I wish the music kept continuing on level restarts that is my only little criticism.
Thank you for the game!

Wow this is really GREAT compared to the games I've rated so far. I really enjoyed the challenge to keep my power up.

Amazing... sooo well done 5*. Infact it looks so polished that the lack of a death animation is making it stick out a bit.

Wow what a cool Jam entry :D I love everything from art to gameplay <3 I liked the design decission to indicate the power via a aura surrounding the charackter rather than a simple Bar at the top :)

The graphics and audio in this game are absolutely fascinating! The game has a great atmosphere. For some reason, the double jump didn't always work I don't know why. And it also crashed for some reason. But those things aside it looked really great and feels polished.

Overall a great entry, very well done!

This game looks very good, i think a little scratches dont break the whole and its very nice overall :)

Ouch! @flobar, @fingamer, I'm sorry to hear you... I hope we can fix it soon. Could you tell us what's your operating system version and your graphic card model?

@neowhoru, @dragwa, @richard-bunn thank you so much!

@mrerdalural I agree that it would be a great feature, thanks!

A moody platformer. There is a lot of presentation, and the game teaches itself through level design well enough. But the use of coins could indeed be underlined more clearly, at least for first-time players. @tuism raised many good points about the fundamentals that I also encountered.

A small detail, the music doesn't need to reset every time the player does. The whole piece is nice to listen to.

Wow ! A nice plateformer with a great mode !
A bit difficult for me, I die many times ^^ but it's fun and fast to restart ;)

I love the art, sounds and effects.

Great job team !

Excellent art style. I like the way you use scaling of the world.

Really nice entry.
Controls are maybe a little bit wonky but hey, that's just to be pickY.

**Resolved(see comment below)**

Do you have the correct build uploaded? I can't get passed the first level. The coin seems to be missing. 

Wow @vizitas this is so weird... It seems the framerate is causing this on your computer, no coins needed you should reach the first base only running... Did you tried in fullscreen mode? Are you recording every time you playing (this could cause a low framerate)? Other games are working fine in your computer? Thanks for share with us 👍

Nicely done! An entire engine in a few days, with a really charming art style. Love the aesthetic of the light city, would love to see more about it.

Really nice game, amazing graphics and music. I really enjoued the particle effects and the mood that is present in this game. Great Job! :)

@franfox Ok that is very weird. I managed to get passed the first level. The problem might be related to frame rate. I switched out my laptops dedicated gpu(ati/amd) to Intel integrated gpu and gotten a better frame rate. Usually its the other way around. Sorry for that, I will test your game now.

No worries @vizitas! We're working to improve the performance in some devices so your comments are welcome. I'm freaking out you passed the first level with that problem... you're a beast! 😂 Thanks

Great game! Enjoyed a lot, though mechanics could have been better. The movement felt snappy and accelerated movement would have been much better. Other than that it's a good concept with really cool graphics.

The graphics are beautiful. I particularly love the shiny effect indicating our energy. The level design is good and makes us learn the double jump and the wall jump by ourselves. I just think it would be more enjoyable on a joypad to have a better control over our speed. Nice work!

Really love the art, audio and concept :D. It took me a while to understand why I was dying but the game is really catchy. Must be one of my fav game so far. Great job guys !

I really dig the art style!

The camera zoom was also an efficient way of showing the surroundings - especially because exploration wasn't really possible due to the time limit mechanic (quite usual in this jam!). The zoom could be a bit smoother, tho, there was some jarring transitions here and there.

I think this is one of those entries that really should be expanded further.

Congratulations! Great art.

This game feels very polished and complete, great job! Big props for using a custom engine too, I'm getting too used to seeing the "Made by Unity" splash screen around here. I loved the feel of this game, the aesthetics, and the sound. Using a sparkling circle around the character as a power indicator works so well as opposed to a bar on the side of the screen or something, because your attention is always there.

I loved some of the level design, especially the last part of the last level where you had to drop down instead of continuing on straight. Also the running out of power mechanic felt very tied up with the game style; it was a nice touch that you didn't actually die from falling, you just kept falling and eventually ran out of power.

Don't really have any complaints about the game, other than it's not particularly innovative. Of course, it could be longer, but this is amazing given the time constraints. Great job!

Ineradicable job! This game is so polished! It's hard to believe that this is a jam game. I really hope you're planing on releasing a "full" version of this game in the future.

Thanks everyone for your feedback. We finally have an improved version following some of your comments! https://davidcollado.itch.io/karola/

PS: I hope we can upload more levels soon 👍

Art is lovely, especially particles and lightning! As some have mentioned already, it's difficult to realize that the sphere represents your health. Aside from that, great platformer with solid controls!

Awesome graphics! Neat minimalistic style, allows for faster level design since you don't need a background. I'll remember this solution =)

For a platformer, controls were absolutely adequate, no problems whatsoever. I liked some of the tricks you've implemented, like a far zoom to counter for limited exploration, or the power meter visuality. Great work, congratulations!

Great game all around! Platforming is solid and the graphics are beautiful. Even more amazing that you made this in your own custom C++ OpenGL engine!

Nice mechanics, nice art, nice audio, and most importantly, great gameplay. That's all a jam game needs to be entertaining, and that's the kind of game I love! Congrats.

Really good looking game! It was nice being able to learn through the levels instead of having to read lots and lots of text. It's at a good level of difficulty, as I actually got the satisfaction of finishing the game, which was nice. Good level design and smooth camera transitions. I would have liked a little bit more background/ lore but everything else is great.

Absolutely gorgeous art and effects, and the game is fun and challenging. The shrinking aura works really well to indicate remaining power to me.

Nice little die and retry. Quite hard, I ragequit before the end of it. :)

Nice graphics, music and sounds. I wonder what it would have looked with a background though. The game does well to be quickly understandable by the player, except I totally missed on that "turbo" mechanics, maybe if you put all the controls text together and centered in the screen it could have got to my attention before I launched the game.

Great work!

Wow, props for jamming in C++/SDL!

Re: Vizitas's issue -- you might want to make sure you are fixing your timestep, or at the very least being consistent about how you are tracking time with regards to life timer vs movement speed...?

I played and rated the jam version. (If you already addressed my feedback in the post-jam version, props to you!)

The first thing I noticed was the color palette! Very beautiful, very cohesive, and the non-black background (yes!) brings out the feel of the game a lot. The zooming effect at the power stations was honestly a bit distracting visually, but made perfect sense in terms of gameplay, so I don't really know what to think about it.

Anyhow, the level design was...not bad for being cranked out last-minute! I actually quite appreciated the long jump in the second (?) stage since that taught me the walljump maneuver. Though I guess if you wanted to you could be a bit more heavy-handed with that by just having a narrow vertical corridor that would make it obvious. I'd echo the previous comments that your levels in general could be a bit more trimmed down and clean -- as in try to remove any "extraneous" components.

Regarding the difficulty of grokking the power timer / coins / etc. I think you did a decent effort and I appreciate the attempt to show it visually rather than just slap on a UI meter of some sort. I think really all that it's missing is more clear feedback. Right now when you collect a little bit/coin the radius of your field increases slightly, but it's not obvious from a visual standpoint that those two are directly connected. So some sort of effect to tie the two together could work. Similarly, you die after a certain time has elapsed and your radius has decreased, but there's no visual/audio representation that tells you "you are about to lose because you are running out of power". A change in color, blinking + beeping, just about anything would help make that connection in the player's mind obvious a bit more quickly I think.

One last thing, this is just my personal stance, but I would encourage you to opt out of the audio category since you elected to use 3rd-party assets for your music. From the rules page: "You’re free to use 3rd party Artwork/Music/Audio assets, or assets you previously created, but we ask that you OPT-OUT of the respected voting categories (Graphics, Audio)." I understand that the rule is fuzzy though, so YMMV.

Really good looking game, with good gameplay and music... but just kept crashing on my pc every 2 or 3 minutes T.T .

The graphics and audio of this game was amazing. Level design was alright and served it's purpose. I'm not gonna parrot what other commenters have already said about the game, my feelings are similar.

What really impressed me the most was that all this was done in a custom C++ engine using SDL/OpenGL, and it looks and feels so amazing. It's an extreme rarity these days when everyone's using Unity/GM/etc.. You even did your levels in Tiled, which means you probably had to develop a Tiled parser to parse the tmx files and import them into your engine. You probably also had to develop your own particle systems, lighting, etc.. It's difficult and tedious, but so rewarding since you have precise control over the technical aspects of your game.

I'd love to see a devlog on how you developed the engine, and the components in it. I've done both SDL and OpenGL, and I know how difficult it is to go down this route, which is why I'm also curious why you chose it instead of using an established engine. Perhaps I could get some tips on how I might do something similar :)

Anyway, it's an amazing entry, and I'm glad to have found it within the sea of LD entries!

- Nice gamei like the way you showed your power through light getting dimmer and dimmer
- Sound suits you game i really enjoyed your game with music

Definitely liked this one a lot! The graphics were good and I especially enjoyed the particle effects and the squishiness of the character. The music was nice and fitting and so were the sound effects. The gameplay wasn't super original but it made up for it by being a very solid and polished fun platforming experience. My only two critiques would be that it was a bit short (totally understandable for a LD entry) and the fact that the zoom out effect when you entered the little recharge stations was a bit too sudden and jarring for my personal tastes. All in all though, very very solid entry!

Just a comment to tell you that the double jump fails 1 time on 3, so it makes the game unplayable for me :( I didn't rate your game yet, I'll do if you have some fix for me, don't hesitate to ping me.

Really fun game, finished it. Some nitpicks though: Didn't realize that coins prevent your death, and that circular particle effect looks great but it's not so great at telling when your time is going to be up or that coins help recharge (just learnt via comments above). The zooming out of the camera can be disorientating too. Felt the platforming to be somewhat too zippy and its slightly challenging to land jumps correctly. The levels appear to be not increasing in challenge linearly.
Impressive that this is done in SDL/OpenGL.

@grena could you try the improved post LD version? https://davidcollado.itch.io/karola/ thanks

I didn't even find this on the jam page. I downloaded a game on itch.io, saw some really awesome looking pixel art for a free game and I've ended up back here again!! Honestly top quality artwork, and, if I've understood correctly, you've even used your own custom engine! Some crazy next level stuff going on here!!!

But there were a few improvements I'd like to suggest. Precise controls are really difficult and I think there are two possible contributors to that:

1. When changing direction you don't really slow down at all, you just kind of snap to the opposite velocity really quickly which really throws you off if you're trying to slow down by holding the other key.

2. The camera always follows the exact route the player is following so if you change direction the camera also moves and you lose track of the jump you were aiming at cause it's not still. Some 2D platformers have a zone in the centre of the camera that the player can move around in without the camera moving until they move past the boarder of the zone.

Try fiddling about with those two things and see if the controls feel a bit more precise! Also, if you plan on making the game longer it might be worth looking into some more mechanics or story to add, maybe cause you had so many levels, I felt like I was slightly losing interest near the end sorry!

All things considered, though, this is a really impressive game! Looking forward to your next one!

Really lovely atmosphere, enjoyed this a lot!

Amazing work! Really loved the experience, from the great art to the level design. Sometimes I died right in front of the exit door and felt a bit frustrated, but I think the difficulty progression is quite good. Congrats!

Thanks everyone for your feedback!

We've fixed some double jump (@grena) and crash problems in the entry version and also we're improving a lot of stuff in our [Post LD version](https://davidcollado.itch.io/karola).

Your comments are being very useful, thanks 👍

Points in random order :

- When you fall in void , you take too much time to die, you just fall until you run out of energy
- Lot of crash in the fixed version
- Didn't got music (Got music until i pressed space to start)
- Nice difficulty curve !
- Nice gameplay
- Graphics are really amazing i think , really nice particle effect on your "power" (idk how it's called)
- I didn't understood at first how i died, until i realized the power bar
- Do you loose more power when jumping or moving ?
- Nice game !

Tried the first build, plays great! Felt a bit easy since you have plenty of time to run to each checkpoint before running out of time. I really like the blue colour scheme and the particles, and how the world has a nice glow to it.

Need more. It felt too short bcz it was fun. I love the art style a lot. The gameplay is what I love the most about the game and the controls are really well-done. My only complaint is that the main character design felt a bit inconsistent with the rest of the level art style.

Very nice game. It's very polished for a ludum dare game, the mood and the graphics are amazing. Good job to the team.

Love the game, love the mood, love the graphics and made with custom engine that is so cool. I would really like to see a story of the character. Congrats!

In the 4th I was really frustrated. I was more then one time soooo close to the next level door.
At first I thought 'nope no more I give up' but then I tried again and I was so addicted to the following levels. I love the soundtrack and your leveldesign. :D
But: In one level it was possible to jump the wall up and I could see there was a small way filled with coins. But through the wall slide I wasn't able to get in this tiny path. :o

Very nice audiovisual :) Pretty fun and polished :)

- \+ Nice simple graphics
- \+ Fun idea, jumping/freestyle arcade game
- \+ Clever implement of jam theme

- \- 3+ room stars very hard to beat

I really love this game! It's really polished in every way. It was also quite challenging but still a lot of fun. The only thing I didn't like was that it wasn't 100% pixel perfect but that's just me :wink:

Wow. Really nice graphics and gameplay. I love how the subtle contracting ring shows the remaining power. I think a lot of your other visual choices here (like camera zooms) really serve the gameplay and overall aesthetic. Great entry!

Great graphics and sound, the platforming was decently challenging and a good use of the theme. Definitely one of my favourites of 39!

Solid challenging platformer. Nice controls. Good use of the theme.

Simple platformer, straightforward theme interpretation. It's a neat technical accomplishment, the graphics look pretty good, and the mood is nice. However, from a game design perspective, there really isn't anything novel or interesting, and the gameplay had an odd difficulty curve to it. I thought it was entertaining that one level depended on the rapid walljump. Overall quite solid and I don't mean to understate the work that shows through in making a solid mechanical base that feels good. Thumbs up!

Simple, but very fun platformer with tight controls. Beautiful color palette. Great job.

Great Entry! Your game looks amazing. It was challenging but not to hard. (Maybe I'm a noob in jump and runs :D) For me it was good!

The camera and the controls are commendable. And I like the zoom out in the "charging" bases.

I'm missing a story and some variety. More variety you could achieve maybe with something like weapons, traps or puzzles. Which also bothered me is that the music always starts new if you have to restart. That made me a bit generous.

But overall a really polished and good entry. I'm happy that I played it although you haven't a web version. Well done!

I didn't rate it. I feel like this game should be DISQUALIFIED because there doesn't seem to be any way to play the 72 hour jam version. The link on this page takes you to a download which is version 1.0.4. On the Itch page, there is only version 1.0.1, but supposedly the original jam entry is version 1.0.0, and there is no way to download it. If you're going to make post competition builds, they need to be clearly marked as so and there should be an easy way to download the original competition entry.

Hi @levidsmith! I think you're wrong... The rules of the Jam say it very clear:

As for bug fixes, you shouldn’t be changing your game, **with the sole exception of fixes for problems that are stopping people from playing or finishing your game (and thus rating your game)**.

As you can see in the comments above yours, some people have been reporting crashes and frame rate problems that made the game impossible to play for them (for example in the comment by @vizitas and others...). So in our entry builds we tried to fix those crashes and game-breaking bugs that people have been reporting.

I hope now you can play our game and enjoy it 👍

Good and solid platformer game. Very nice graphics

Fun game, although it seems that it only lasted for 3 levels before abruptly closing on my machine, not 6 like it said on the itch.io page

haha, I like to speed run and it reminded me of super meat boy. I was wondering how it fitted the theme as i was always rushing but i finnaly figured out that the light was shrinking and that rushing was the goal to finish the level before running out of light. Nice game with nice pixel arts, feels too short, i was having fun !

Your graphics are very incredible for pixel art, it looks very good, i'm really impressed. I love the particles effects around the character. Moreover, It's a good platformer game. Good job.

Really beautiful art, great graphics as in how it flows and feels, and great execution in general. The platforming feels good without being incredibly refined. The idea that ties to the theme about running out of energy is good and works really well with the game world and can easily be expanded - it's a good foundation.

This game was visually beautiful. Nice platformer, although I felt it was lacking in challenges. The music was nice, but for me it doesn't match with the mood and the visuals. I also felt that the use of Z was awkward to Jump. Overall nice concept though.

I really liked the polish but I'm not a fan of collectibles with no purpose. It would have been cool to get something out of painstakingly collecting each one. At least some sort of notification for doing such. Also there seemed to be certain gaps that led nowhere that totally looked like they could have been alternate pathways which got me excited. It looks like you're going to continue work on this one so I recommend exploring that idea more.

Very well presented, great polish.
It's really pretty, I really liked the visual style, great color palette and use of ilumination and particles.
Also, great sound effects, the wall jump is great and the double jups feels perfect. Good thing the "power" wasn't a bar at the top of the screen, instead being indicated with the character's aura.
My only suggestion would be to not restart the music in each level, maybe would've been better to let it play all the way and start over when finished.

Overall, nice platformer with great movement and level design and a unique art style.

Felicitats!

PD: Veig que sou de Barcelona, espero que estigueu tots bé!

Despite simple mechanics, jumping and sliding are satisfying and fun. The mood got me playing through 5 or 6 levels. Also, cool idea with respawning enemies (start at point A, go to point B, return to point A). Thanks for the game!

Simple & effective.
Beautiful art style.

Very well done!

by screenshots and gifs look great. But no web/linux version :(

Thanks guys for your comments.

@alexandr-androiddev I'm afraid we won't have a Linux version, sorry.

@ferran-benavente, the music suggestion was solved in the final version with a lot of more improvements but thanks. Per sort si, gracies ✊

pretty neat game.
Liked the graphics!