Grim Adventures by ursagames
3D Action Platformer with a boss fight and upgrades!

* Your soul count will drain by 1% every couple of seconds when in an alternate dimension and you will be kicked out when your soul count reaches 0! There is an upgrade that removes this. *
Controls * Movement: WASD or Joystick * Jump: Space or A button * Attack: Left click, Ctrl or X button * Dash: Right Click, Shift or B button * Interact: E or Y button
Music created by https://www.twitch.tv/TinyViking
Everything but the music was created live on stream: https://www.twitch.tv/ursagames
I will be streaming LDJAM44 submissions there starting 7PM PST Tuesday 4/30. Submit your games to be played here: https://tinyurl.com/ursaLD44
Ratings
| Given | 85🗳️ | 91🗨️ |
@Robber Thank you! I actually forgot to test it all with a controller, so I'm glad it plays well with one! The cloth was a big struggle, it does fix itself if you stand still a moment. It can get bugged in either world when the character controller moves up quickly - just more common on the stairs.
@nexusviper Ah right! Issues with the depth perception for the jumps, that's understandable. I was considering switching to a straight overhead light source to help that but it felt okay for me while testing the level. Really I should have done a player controlled camera.
@mickxe Thanks! TinyViking did an amazing job with the music in such a short time! All the music was made in one day.
@szabe Sorry the camera was frustrating for you. The jumping felt easy for me, but that's always an issue for level design without iterating through testers. The Firelink Shrine reference makes me happy though, that's what I was going for, but I didn't have time to add in shortcuts. By the way, you don't have to get through the narrow area to complete the game- but I could understand getting stuck at the checkpoint in it.
Also sincerelly I would like to thank you because you played and rated my game STR!PES - in fact you tried - without succes, but you tried :) Today a hacker had destroyed my leaderboard online and I thought to myself that all previous scores had been lost. Imagine my joy when I saw you in your video displaying the leaderboard with all scores just a few minutes before hacking. I saved all scores - you made my day. Thank you ++
The ethereal manifestation surprised me, I had only bought the dash, double jump and anti-soul drain, but I managed (barely).
I was unsure if I would have liked being able to move my camera, since I felt like you designed the platforming well enough to not need it.
Great entry Ursa! (Also I was totally checking your stream while playing your game haha.)
I struggled a bit since it was a bit hard to see if I the character was over the platform or not. One thing that's common in 3d platformers is a shadow projected straight down from the character onto the ground. This makes it much easier to judge the distance and makes platforming easier.

I think something like this would have made the platforming bits feel much better.
It took me a long time and I lost thousands of souls before I finally figured out that there were more rooms upstairs in the house. I think it could be made a little bit more clear that there is an upstairs corridor you can walk down.
The controls are tight. I like the character, the movement is very smooth and satisfying.
I absolutely loved the boss fight!
Good job!
@geckoo1337 Thank you! I had a lot of fun learning shader graph during this jam! Definitely going to play with it more before next jam. I love the music, especially considering how quickly TinyViking put the tracks together while dealing with bad allergies. Also, I'm glad you enjoyed the video and got a record of the leaderboard before it was hacked! Always surprises me that people would bother hacking jam game leaderboards.
@gamepopper I'm glad that you think my concept ended up fitting with the theme! I was a bit worried as my original ideas didn't feel very good, but I ended up happy with the end result. I really wanted to add in more enemy varieties as well, but I decided to spend more time on level design and a final boss.
@gamesplusjames Thank you very much! I'm glad you enjoyed it! It was a lot of fun to develop and have you stop by during the streams! I'm pretty happy with the game feel this time around, which is rare for my game jams.
@kuro Sorry the multi-verse concept didn't jive with you! Unless you mean the way it was designed, in which case I agree it was a bit of a hollow hide and seek mini-game. I do wish I had more time to make that bit more interesting too. It definitely gets repetitive fast
@cheesepencil Thanks! There was so much I still wanted to do for mood stuff that I ran out of time on, but I'm glad what I did do worked out okay!
@youbestrong Good job defeating the boss with half damage! I'm glad you like the movement, I tried to give it a mario style jump curve with the way gravity is applied depending on the jump being held and different gravity magnitudes for upward and downward movements. I did try and take in consideration the camera, but there are a few areas that can be a bit rough for depth perception that I would have done differently- mostly the moving platforms on the right.
@lagman9000 I really wish I had the time to add in the vacation scene too! It was really last minute to even get the ending screen in at all with my time going into making the boss during the last couple of hours. I'm glad you enjoyed it anyways though!
@dev-for-pizza Glad you appreciated the humor! I like to try to put more in, but I ended focusing more on the platforming mechanics that I had initially thought I would.
@jaoel I do wish I would have put in a projection shadow or at least turned the directional light to be straight down in retrospect. I had considered it during the development but I fell into the trap of thinking it felt pretty easy to me so it should be okay- and I liked how the shadows looked with the current lighting. I agree, some better level design and hinting for upstairs definitely would have helped, even just some rugs or something. Time limitations had me getting the bare bones of the house in place and then I ended up focusing on just the platforming areas afterwards.
@artyom-volkov Thank you very much! I love the music too, TinyViking did an amazing job making music to fit the concept!
@drvernichter Ah, it's also mapped to the Ctrl key, as well as dash also being mapped to right click, but I didn't actually mention that anywhere. Didn't think about notebooks! I'll update the description with that. Thank you!
@drunk-wizard Thanks! There are a few places that definitely could have used a couple more check points, especially near the lavapit after the double jump (which I should have made the timing on those more forgiving too) - things I will definitely consider next time around! I'm glad you had fun though!
I quit when i finished the 2 doors at the end, and didn't really want to walk all the way back. I felt like "i solved this challenge and now got my reward" - it'd have been awesome if could've teleported back to the center to spend the souls.
And, thank you so much for playing Fluffensnuff! You are one of the few players to finish it completely. It's always fun to watch you play and you did actually uncover a bug with the highscore: at one point you restarted the level when it was already solved. This offset the level counter for the highscore by one, which you already figured out in the stream. The level design was pretty fast actually, maybe 5 hours in total. You were right, we started with the mouse only, having the basic mechanic running after 4 hours, and the first 7 levels done on day one. This was also a great learning, it just helps sooo much if you can play the game on day one and iterate on content, expanding from there.
I enjoyed Fluffensnuff a lot! The puzzle mechanics were well thought out and well designed levels! I think one thing that would have really helped the flow would be a level that forces you to do the pushing mechanic (maybe by tunneling you in-between rocks) before the level where you need to push the bird.
Regarding fluffensnuff, thank you again! What you mention is something i struggled and still struggle with a bit: How do you ensure that a person really *learned* something they did in a level? If i force this type of pushing through the level layout, anyone will solve it without needing to think about what he/she is doing. So whenever i added a new mechanic or spin on a new mechanic, i tried to add a level first that you cannot easily solve by accident and that forces you to apply a mechanic. Like even in the first level, the pushes the player does initially will lead to failure, so he stops and thinks and sees that the grass plays a role. So either the mouse goes into the grass, or the cat. After that, there is no question about it, every player knows how to use the grass. For pushing, this is more difficult to convey.
At that stage you used mice to push mice before, but not to push birds before, and also not really to solve the level - they just moved because they were close, not because it was necessary. I'll try to come up with something where the player can better learn this, so far nothing came to my mind. This whole topic is also why i added hints to the game, since i feared players might miss a mechanic i wanted to teach.
I agree with what others have already pointed out about the camera. Sometimes, I found it really difficult to jump in certain directions due to the fixed camera, using a controller was much better.
Apart from that, the game is really nice. The mechanics, enemy variety, audio - all work nicely. Great job!
If i must say something ı really enjoyed it but the camera angle was bit annoying. I can't see where am i. Good Game!