ESCAPE KEY by Empyrean
PLEASE SET YOUR KEYBOARD TO ENGLISH (US) LAYOUT BEFORE PLAYING!
Your keyboard IS THE MAP in this dungeon escape game!
Escape the pyramid using each keyboard key as a stepping stone, as if your own keyboard was the level! The more keys you have to press, the harder it gets!
Be careful with your movements, you can easily lose your bearings inside the ancient tomb of IMAHOTKEYP. But not too much - the old building looks prone to falling apart any second now, so be quick about it!
Changelog:
v1.9-ld:
Fixed the Enemy killing the player through boxes
Added visual information about changing your keyboard to english
Added team names
Minor bug fixes
Missing level was re-added
v1.0-ld:
Original Ludum Dare Submission Version
PLEASE SET YOUR KEYBOARD TO ENGLISH (US) LAYOUT BEFORE PLAYING!
Ratings
| Overall | 183th | 3.839⭐ | 61🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 183th | 3.75⭐ | 62🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 14th | 4.216⭐ | 60🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 928th | 2.9⭐ | 62🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 517th | 3.59⭐ | 63🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 335th | 3.418⭐ | 57🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 445th | 3.455⭐ | 57🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 53🗳️ | 37🗨️ |
EDIT: It totally is.
It's difficult to play on a AZERTY keyboard (even with the good layout)
Otherwise it's fun, and the idea is cool!
Well done :D
*PS: a little bug when you push a crate on a Skeleton the Skeleton hits you*
It was really fun tho ! The concept is great, I loved how you managed to get a turn based feel working in real time. Graphics are great too ! Music is okay, a bit repetitive at the end.
Congratulations on the entry, it is a lot of fun and really innovative.
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@victor-sette It should be working on both 32bit and 64bit systems! o.O'' We're going to release a web version soon, though!
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(@renato-felix-martins Thanks :D
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@drauthius Thanks! We're working on more! Hope you like it ;D
As another Azerty player, I second the need to offer the player a choice between keyboard layouts. Yet, it was still playable and enjoyable enough to finish the game, so well done overall.
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@ratbird @swen Thank you! We will released a bigger, free, version in the future ;)
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@ExNihilo We didn't know there was so many of you haha Is it a country thing? We're very curious XD
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@toboggan That was a last minute change, we thought that it would be better to let you see all the levels than to punish people and risk losing them before the end. The counter visually going down was the only punishment, as no one likes to die hehe
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@fluidvolt A big thanks from the team! The music restart was fixed in the "Improved version" - it just pauses now ;) !
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PS: If anyone is interested in improved versions with more levels, please follow us on http://facebook.com/escapekeys
All in all, it may be a bit of a hassle to take into account all the local specificities, but considering the very premise of your game, being as faithful as possible to the user's actual keyboard should be worth the effort.
The sounds for death and victory are the same, which can be confusing.
The sound and graphics were spot on as well.
Caramba um dos jogos br mais interessantes que vi nessa jam, mandaram realmente mt bem, impressionante, parabens pessoal, o estudio de vcs tem algum twitter ou algo do tipo ?
@ahintoflime We tried to be smooth on level design, but I'm glad you had fun anyway :D
@lexi Thanks, we put a lot of work on those too! Up to last minute we were polishing (volume levels, ammount of compression on the game over voice, song velocity, character shadow, wall joints). The little things for that extra shine ^^. Even in such a simple game, it takes a lot of time.
@michael-silverman @disperse We will try to take that into consideration for new levels!
@cubeeo We did check it out now that you mentioned! haha thanks for the tip. A lot of people reported that, we will add a tip in the first levels. That is definitely a problem.
@svr-audio Thanks for noticing, in such a simple game people sometimes think everything was done in a few minutes, when it took hours and hours up to the last minute to polish it all hehe Only a few sound effects were bought, everything else was done at the Jam, including the music, "Compo style".
@papaver That is cool! To see an idea come to life, even if not by your hands, I had that happen to me too :D We are honored that you played it again, and sorry for not having a "last screen".. we were in submission hour, so we had to run! The improved version shows a "Thanks for playing" screen, with team names and all.
For everyone interested in new levels (escaping a burning spaceship maybe?) please follow us @gameblox and/or http://facebook.com/escapekeys
Of course, there's the challenge of dealing with all the possible keyboards the player may have, but this is a bold entry!
Good job!
If someone else wants to try another typing game (I am not affiliated at all, just apparently this jam I have been impressed by typing games)
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/type-them-down
Very cool concept! Definitely has a lot of potential for sure. The limited light radius was a pretty good design decision I think, too.
Funny that you had no problems rendering your sprite graphics for the main game, but your UI doesn't seem to handle the pixeled sprites correctly, which looks a bit messy.
@racso Thanks! We tried a lot to have both good level progression and fit the theme - more keys, more problems!
@jfraser314 We found 3 other games this year that used keyboard creatively in one way or another, "Kiwi is the Key" is the most similar to ours, but please prefer our implementation of the concept haha ^^ I used your gif in our recent post, thanks for it, hope you don't mind :D
@professor Thanks professor, your are a scholar and a gentleman!!
@banan The "steps" sound and the quick response to input really help the typing feels good, I think those things were key! About the music, our music designer was originally on other team, so he had to rush, but managed to help us a lot! Even though it is short, it surelly feels egyptian-y haha :D
@ddrkirbyisq Thanks! The limited light radius was a last day change, and as you said, the difference was "night and day". We changed the level design to better fit the new radius too. That shows the power of iterating over your ideas, a lot of things improved like that, in the last day.
@gustavo-christino Thanks!! We're also super happy with it :D
@ardorugus It really does, doesn't it! The experience is what makes it special, and we tried to fit the theme in some design decisions, meaning, little changes here and there could make it more "fun", but distance it from the theme. Overall though, some people reported it being easy, and others difficult, so I'm interested in undertanding the source of this perception, as a game designer ^^ Thanks for the feedback!
My only gripe here is that I cant get more than a few levels in dew to my Swedish keyboard.
What am I supposed to type here? Apparently it's not '-'.
Edit: Actually, all the letters show up as magenta boxes, the game is still playable but I'm not sure I should rate it. Anyway, it's a fun game with an interesting idea, and the graphics and sound are good.
@justinooncx haha think about it this way: "The more keys you have to press, the worse it is to Escape" (since you have to "wrap your brain" around a bigger area of your keyboard).
@jonathan50 Hi Jonathan, this is the first time we are hearing this :P Sorry that you had problems, were you playing the web build? The improved version (available for download and as a web build) is rateable up until the last level. The last level was added after the jam, so you shouldn't consider it. The rest just have bug fixes (so it is within the boundaries of what the Jam allows to be rated) ;)