LudumData

Tightrope Gauntlet by Jonno

[raw]
made by Jonno for Ludum Dare 45 (COMPO)

https://youtu.be/5prWwbWi4Nc

NOTE: I have added some minor adjustments to the controls post-compo from the feedback in the comments. Jump and land are now one button(Z), and the game over screen is now skippable by pressing the jump and land button repeatedly. This is because a lot of people (understandably) found the length of time taken to get back to the start screen frustrating. I also increased the range in pixels where the player can use the land button to land back on the rope, as many were finding this extremely hard to do. Hope this helps!

THE CONTROLS

Left & right arrow - Catch weapon/Stab/Aim laser

Z - Jump/Land

X - Fire aimed laser

C - Drop current weapon

Thank you for taking the time to play Tightrope Gauntlet. I've had a lot of fun making this, but there were many more features I wanted to add.

I will continue to develop this game beyond the competition so keep checking back.

And now...

THE PLOT

In the near future, people compete in virtual reality games. One such game is the Tightrope Gauntlet. The challenger has to remain balanced on the tightrope while bombarded with enemies left and right.

To win, they must still be remaining on the rope after 5 minutes is up.

YOU START WITH NOTHING.

You may avoid the oncoming enemies by jumping over them, but be warned... You have to hit the Jump/Land button before your feet fall beyond the rope on the way down.

Occasionally a weapon may fly towards you. You can catch it by using the Catch buttons.

If you manage to grab a sword, you can attack enemies by pressing the Left or Right buttons.

A laser rifle will be your best friend, but you'll have to be quick in dropping the sword and grabbing after. The Drop button will allow you to drop your current weapon. Use the Left or Right buttons to aim, and press the Fire button to shoot.

If you manage to stay on the rope for 5 minutes, you pass the gauntlet. However, the enemy onslaught increases the less time you have left, and the better the weaponry in your possession.

FINAL WORD

Enjoy the game, and if you have any comments or feedback, please let me know.

TOOLS USED

Game engine

Gamemaker Studio 1.4

Art

Aseprite

Audio

sfxr

Audacity

Youtube https://www.dropbox.com/s/kzwy05rgma9w9iz/Tightrope%20Gauntlet.gmz?dl=0
Youtube https://www.dropbox.com/s/h63zsbgjecfpyhf/Tightrope%20Gauntlet%20LD45JamFinal.zip?dl=0
Youtube https://jonnobones.itch.io/tightrope-gauntlet
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/tightrope-gauntlet

Ratings

Overall 426th 2.967⭐ 48🧑‍⚖️
Fun 435th 2.685⭐ 48🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 342th 2.978⭐ 48🧑‍⚖️
Theme 458th 2.644⭐ 47🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 413th 2.705⭐ 46🧑‍⚖️
Audio 329th 2.625⭐ 46🧑‍⚖️
Humor 270th 2.39⭐ 43🧑‍⚖️
Mood 410th 2.721⭐ 45🧑‍⚖️
Given 40🗳️ 46🗨️

Feedback

TwinTurboDouche
06. Oct 2019 · 22:15 UTC
Had a little trouble landing back on the rope. Is there a trick to it?
🎤 Jonno
06. Oct 2019 · 23:18 UTC
@twinturbodouche If you press down just before your feet hit the rope when falling from a jump you should be able to land safely. It may take a little practice. You can press down if your feet go beyond the rope a little bit so it doesn't have to be pixel perfect. If you still have trouble though, I'll make a note of it.
Lars-Erik
06. Oct 2019 · 23:53 UTC
Laughhed hard from jumping, then read instructions and got one point! \o/
Fun idea. With a small tutorial / helping intro it's a golden time killer for a little while.
🎤 Jonno
07. Oct 2019 · 00:12 UTC
@lars-erik Thank you my friend :) I do plan to put an attract screen mode to show how the game is played.
diaonic
08. Oct 2019 · 19:52 UTC
Understanding the controls was alittle frusting, but I think removing the 5 second game over scene before you can start a new game would be helpful. I probably did 10 restarts before I started getting it, and having to wade through that each time was painful.

Gameplay was interesting and captivating once I understood what I was doing. Nice work for 48 hours.
BRTEK007
08. Oct 2019 · 19:57 UTC
Despite still dying from not landing, and wanting to destroy my keyboard, the game is quite fun. I like the neonish pixelish graphic style. Also in the game where you die so often, the after game procedure should be shortened to the minimum. Later I found out that restarting your game is faster than waiting for it to revive me. Overall solid entry.
🎤 Jonno
08. Oct 2019 · 22:36 UTC
@diaonic @brtek007 Thanks guys, I know what you mean about the game over screen, so I will tweak that. I understand that the controls can be frustrating too and have been thinking of having a play around with them (mainly the button used for landing), and add some instructions in game.
Alan123
09. Oct 2019 · 21:24 UTC
Totally agree with the other comments about a way of skipping the game over scene. I spent more time staring at that than playing at all for quite a while at the beginning. I like the style and the idea, fun little game and well put together for the compo.
lesinvisible
09. Oct 2019 · 21:26 UTC
Interesting concept but it's really hard to get to it. Overall graphics and stylizations are great, really like that old feel. I'm sure this is how virtual reality looked for people 40 years from now (and, taking into consideration creation of Virtual boy, maybe even later). The major problem for me - it takes to much time for game to start over, even seems that it's actually faster to reload the page.
Gildar76
09. Oct 2019 · 21:26 UTC
The game has a nice old school arcade (or really old video game) feel to it. It's insanely difficult though :)

Wish I could use some other controls
Annie Owl
10. Oct 2019 · 22:11 UTC
When you finally get the "rhythm" of the game it feels great, but getting to that point is too tedious because of unskippable Starting animation and Endgame screen sequence. It would be great if you add a skip button for those. Also, the sounds and background noise fit quite nicely with the aesthetics of the game.
yodamaster
19. Oct 2019 · 21:48 UTC
Reminds me of Kung Fu Master.
BrokenMirrorMedia
19. Oct 2019 · 22:09 UTC
This game really captures the retro aesthetic really well, from the sound effect the menus, and the graphics. Nice work! Its pretty hard to get the timing right but I enjoyed it as a quick little minigame! Nice work!
Rodrigo Robles
19. Oct 2019 · 22:37 UTC
Good game, innovative playability. I can't point any failures, now you can focus in add more content to extend it.
CafeLovai
20. Oct 2019 · 01:46 UTC
It was a good call to make the death sequence skippable. I think what often makes a hard reaction heavy game enjoyable is the ability to be able to retry quickly. I don't think I would had gotten as far if it wasn't for that. This is an entry I enjoyed alot because I could really feel myself getting better. At first I was blaming the controls when I got rekt, but as I experimented more I found that the controls were pretty tight! The random generation of the enemies and weapons could get a bit annoying as the weapon would fly along a row of enemies sometimes. To mitigate that I think increasing the rate the weapons spawn might be a good idea. I will say however I felt a big feeling of satisfaction when I caught a weapons and I was suddenly overpowered.

![tight rope LD45.png](///raw/a71/a2/z/29ba3.png)
Overall amazing job! I have to say, whenever I died and all the red guys just turned to stare at me I truly felt defeat lol.
peterx
20. Oct 2019 · 01:58 UTC
Overall, solid game! Top improvement would be to add a tutorial: I found the controls a bit confusing to start out with; it's rare to have a game that you have to both jump AND land (though I ended up liking that a fair bit!). Similarly, I thought I could just shoot and kill enemies from the start, and not until a few playthroughs did I realize I have to first get the weapons
philomory
20. Oct 2019 · 03:21 UTC
An interesting if minimal game. The controls aren't super obvious, although if I had paid more attention to the description maybe I would have figured that out faster :stuck_out_tongue:

I did encounter one bug, though: normally when I fall or get hit by an enemy the game tells me I died and offers to reset; but once I got the sword and then got hit by an enemy, I disappeared, but the game just froze, and never offereed to let me reset.
Coda Highland
20. Oct 2019 · 04:21 UTC
The aesthetic is interesting. Reminiscent of REALLY old games, although it's a bit inconsistent in that regard because some stuff is too smooth. :P Took a long time to get used to, but it worked out all right in the end.
LoneWolfDev
20. Oct 2019 · 10:26 UTC
Intersting game, a bit hard to understand it at the beginning, maybe you should explain the mechanic of jumping somewhere. But the gameplay is nice!
Whiteseraph
20. Oct 2019 · 11:00 UTC
It's kind of hard to get a good feel for the hitbox, and when to jump and land. It took me more tries than i'd like to admit. But it's a fun game, I found myself wanting to beat my highscore.
Roka Josh
20. Oct 2019 · 12:37 UTC
Very nice game, a good challenge and I absolutely love the atmosphere with the ominous sound in the background. Great job!
schwede
20. Oct 2019 · 16:02 UTC
Congratulation for the good work! I like the created ambience of the game. The dark theme played good together with the music. I also liked the sound effects, but without that hard distortion sounds, when the game was over. Sounds like the computer has an error.

Sometimes it was a bit frustrating with landing, because I pressed it too early. And when I hit it too many times because I just wanted to land, I started jumping again.

I got an German keyboard layout, this means my z is switched with y. Because of that it was bit harder to control the game.

But overall a really cool game, I really liked the graphics!
hiroboto
20. Oct 2019 · 16:22 UTC
Fun game but to be frank I didn't know how to play it at the first several trial, maybe the instructions can be made more clear I think
afendar
22. Oct 2019 · 18:52 UTC
Minimalist but effective concept. it does not prevent to understand the operation and spend a little time on it. This game reminds me a little double dragon
FinnThePirate
24. Oct 2019 · 10:34 UTC
Love retro Zx Spectrum vibe, some 8bit moody music would be nice but it was fun to play good job
Bernhard
25. Oct 2019 · 16:30 UTC
It took me a while to get to 5 points, then another while to get the sword.
But then it suddenly was easy! Or so I thought! Sadly I got careless and they got me. A few tries later I crossed my arms so I could use the index finger on my right hand to jump. I've gotten better since and once even touched the laser I think. But the hand-off from sword to laser + shooting the oncoming enemy was too many actions to perform correctly and I somehow jumped off the rope. Never gotten the laser back since >_<
Pretty good entry and the quick restart I'm reading so much about sure seems important :-)
kaeveris
26. Oct 2019 · 09:53 UTC
Cool idea, with great retro vibe. Quite hard to adjust to jumping/landing at first