Hyperloop by very dark lord
All aboard the Hyperloop, a new generation of public transportation. What could possibly go wrong?
“Hyperloop” is a small 2D action platformer with handcrafted pixel art, an emphasis on mood, and a blasting original soundtrack. Also featuring a unique and immersive death and respawn system! We hope you’ll have a good time with it! Feedback and ratings are very much appreciated. Our team is very keen on reading every comment and we will definitely return the favor.
Have fun!
Controls
WASD + Mouse to aim and shoot
E / Enter to Interact
R / Right Mouse to Reload
Space to Jump
Shift to Run
Platform
Gameplay happens in your browser (we suggest Google Chrome™ or Mozilla Firefox™), so no additional download is required.
Known Issues - After clearing the game once, it is not possible to start again because the game state does not reset correctly. Please refresh your browser tab if you want to play again!

| Youtube | https://eduke.itch.io/hyperloop |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/hyperloop-2 |
Ratings
| Overall | 90th | 4.147⭐ | 118🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 272th | 3.816⭐ | 116🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1113th | 3.03⭐ | 118🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 969th | 3.47⭐ | 118🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 90th | 4.448⭐ | 117🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 23th | 4.435⭐ | 118🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 526th | 3.054⭐ | 103🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 26th | 4.404⭐ | 117🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 202🗳️ | 217🗨️ |

I believe that this project will be one of the best <3
The gameplay was a little simple and I kind of wish there had been a bit more "story" to it, considering how well developed the other artistic aspects were.
Overall, amazing work! Loved it!
It is really easy to die, and I had to switch my play style to be super defense so I could cheese the AI. Finally got it after four very quick deaths. I think tweaking a few things could help elevate the experience: jumping felt delayed so platforming was a bit clunky, I don't how much life I have left which made it harder for me to take risks, the numbers of possible player characters dwindles but the AI reset every time you die... a lot of games follow this style but it can kind of tedious to kill the same thing over and over again until you can dance around them carefully enough.
The game is crazy beautiful and the mood, reinforced by the music and sound design, is amazing. Really well done!
A little complain though: in the dark, it is very hard to see close enemies because of the way the light works. I don't know how it would be better, but the contrast of light makes it hard to understand what is just in front of us.
Otherwise, really nice job!
I liked that you can look through walls with your flashlight, even though that might not be intended.
After playing the second passenger, the monsters ganged up on me where you have to jump down. SO I was dying there everytime and could not even shoot down from above.
In the intro scene it was not immediately clear to me, that i have to press enter to progress in the conversation, and something like elevator music would have been nice.
other than that i do like the graphics, soundtrack and the mood it creates.
Very very nice looking game, and combined with the story and sound design the atmosphere is incredible. Great job!
The gameplay though seemed a bit trivial, I was really looking forward to some creative game mechanics. The enemies were rather easy, so I haven't found much challenge there.
That being said, it all fits really well together and makes for a really immersive experience. I really liked how you implemented the dying/replay!
There are a couple of weird thing I've found that would hopefully be useful for you polish the game even more:
- when going all the way to the left the game weirdly teleports you a couple of steps back which ruins the immersion. When moving all the way to the right there is no visual feedback that it's not the way you're supposed to go.
- since I managed not to die the first time, I tried to replay and some weird stuff started happening. It seems like the game doesn't reset after you finish it. The lights were on and after dying it showed the train moving without any chance to replay.
- so I refreshed the page and tried to die all the way. After game over, if you restart, the light is off and the scary sounds are playing.
But overall, great idea and solid realization! Amazing job!
This may genuinely be the first LD I've ever played that was a little scary and creepy. 3 days is not much time to really work in that ramping atmosphere and pacing. Fantastic pixel art and great audio too, I love the music and voices!
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/762553836?t=01h03m06s
I especially enjoyed the sound design and pixel art in this game. And there was also that interesting fact that you lose vision when you reload. Great idea!
Like mentioned before the atmosphere of this game is just GREAT. This jumpscared me several times!
@blue-pin-studio Regarding the theme, it's sort of a play on words. You're riding the hyperloop ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperloop ) and get stuck and need to repair it. So the theme affected the setting/story of our game more than its mechanics.
In other news, we're going to push a fix today for an issue where low frame rates caused the player to lack the jump height necessary to pass certain points in the level. For for all of you who did get stuck because of that, sorry! And feel very free to try again once the bug is fixed.
One thing thought, the jumps are kind of weird. I spent an unnecessary amount of time to jump on that pipe at the beginning of the game, it was very frustrating.
It is definitely the most polished game I've seen in this jam. Superb visuals and audio. Good job!
First off, there are a few people here saying this kind of game is mostly possible because you have a large team. This is a misconception, I can't stress enough how a a 15 man team is INCREDIBLY hard to pull off. I've done LD with ~13 people a number of times and I know it takes good leadership, communication, systems, and teamwork to do something like that. Hell, brainstorming alone can take hours depending on the personalities involved. A large team is great for a normal project, but under the jam time restrictions it can be chaotic. Big kudos to you all!
I'd love to hear how you structured your team (whether in a blog post or here). How do you all know each other? Did you have a leader or was the direction spread across multiple people? Were you able to get most of what you wanted in or did you have to cut a lot of content? I'm very curious because I was always trying to improve my team's game quality, but since other teams don't get this big I didn't have anyone else to learn from.
As for the game, like others here I am not a fan of horror games or movies. At all. However, because it was a 2d platformer with good controls, that gave me a lot of confidence. I thought "ok well, I'm good at these games, so even if something jumps me I can handle it. That eased my fears quite a bit and I could play it nearly at my normal comfort level.
While the enemies were scary and dangerous, I did feel myself improving each death. I started to understand their AI over time "oh crap they can jump!" and where they tend to spawn. I game over'd the first time, but beat it on my first try after I tried again. In some ways I was relieved the game is relatively short. I was afraid I was gonna have to go through that entire first section again if I died.
Very well done game. Tbh when I see art that good and clean, I actually get skeptical about if the gameplay can match. This is not the case here. You have a solid project all around, and I hope to see 20 people in the credits next time ;)

- we're all work colleagues (well, 12/15 are) and most of us have worked with each other for years
- around half of us have worked together on previous game jams (e.g. Friendly Fire in April's Ludum Dare)
- we were able to relatively cleanly split into sub teams, e.g. ~4ish people focused mostly on sound and music, 2 on graphics and level design, and one or two who spent much of the time playtesting. From what I can tell (but may be biased) the biggest challenge was having ~6 coders coordinate properly, 5 of which weren't really familiar with the engine @kayahr had developed over the months; so we did a lot of teaming up there where people who didn't yet know how to do something themselves would watch one of the other coders using discord or VS Code Liveshare, but it didn't take much time until everybody had their own couple of features to develop in relative isolation, which worked quite well, I think
- also, 15 people may sound more than it was from a pure workload perspective, as many didn't have the full 3 or even 2 days
- the brainstorming itself was quite intense and took probably around 4 hours, most of which we spent discussing variations of time loops, until we unexpectedly settled with the Hyperloop idea in the end instead. I was indeed surprised we managed to end up with an idea all of us seemed to be reasonably happy with (I hope this is true and people weren't just too shy to communicate their real preferences.. :D)
Did we have to cut a lot of content? Surprisingly, I don't think so. There were a few ideas we scrapped in the end due to lack of time, such as avoiding Game Over scenarios altogether by having a second pod replace the first one, with a new team of 5 individuals. Or small things such as having the player character react to things more often, such as the corpse. I for some time had "make light cast shadows" on my list, but then other things were more important and the not so accurate lighting seemed to work well enough. I'd also have liked to have the dialog scenes a bit more dynamic, with proper sitting animations, and the designated problem-solver actually getting up and walking to the door. But in the great scheme of things, that's all not too relevant and we imho ended up with a game much more complete than in our previous iterations.
(update: talked to the team about this, and turns out I just forgot a lot of things. Among them are a "proper" intro and outro with the character walking around in the non-hyperloop-world, a flamethrower which you'd find in the level, but also needed to find fuel to use it, death traps in the level, and an Elon Musk appearance of course because why not)
I'm glad you managed to get to the end, and sorry (as well as thank you) to everyone who dislikes horror games and still gives it a shot. Actually managing to create an effective eerie atmosphere and have working jump scares in the game was a great motivation and interesting challenge for a jam game which we hadn't tried before.
- Ah ok, I was suspecting that about work colleagues. It helps a ton. I tended to pull in random folks a lot ("hey you code? Why don't you join me this weekend...") which made it hard to grow quickly in overall skill across jams, but I liked the challenge.
- Yep I totally get it, it's very rare to have people that can do the full weekend. We rarely even got 1/3 to do that.
- Haha, for brainstorming I would usually try to take a backseat because 1 less voice helped reach an agreement faster. I'm glad you guys found one that resonated with everyone.
I guess I'll not rate at all, because I don't understand how to compare this game with prototypes made by 1-4 people.
That being said, I enjoyed this game ! The shooting is fun, it had a jumpscare or two and it kept me on edge traversing and finding the switches. Well done, I for one really enjoyed it :)
I played it through and was astonished even by the end credits. Great entry!
@tricky-fat-cat yeah, leaving the HUD out of it was a decision we made in order to maximize immersion and that feeling of isolation/helplessles. We didn't even all agree all in our team that this was a good idea, so it makes sense some players feel similarly about this and dislike the missing information. Hope you still had a good time with it! And thanks a lot for your feedback.
You also did a great job with building tension. The sounds in the tunnels and the lights going out set the stage perfectly for the first enemy encounter. But the dialogue at the start is just as important. It is both effective as an introduction to the world and at creating a sense of unease in an otherwise cheery beginning.
I like that the flashlight beam is so narrow, it adds a lot to the creepiness. I don't think the game would work as well if it wasn't. However, this also makes it pretty difficult for me to see if I hit or killed an enemy. The hit sound is also a little too subtle for me, I only noticed it on my second playthrough. Some more indication would be helpful, perhaps by adding bullet trails or increasing the volume of the sound effect.
I also appreciate that the player can't walk infinitely far away from the train ;)
Again, I really like this entry. I want more of it!
Otherwise, fun experience, right amount of horror to make me jump and I liked that the characters blended into the background a bit. You could have doubled the level size and I would have enjoyed exploring it! Did shooting the rats do anything?
There was a bug at the end though, where the footstep sound loops after reentering the loop.
@matootsy The theme is mostly in the setting - you're "stuck in the (hyper)loop".
Small advise: I know you guys hide the health bar on purpose, but if there is a almost dying effect, like a heartbeat or some blood blur on screen, maybe will add more terrifying~
*Edit:* And [here is the VOD](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/768533153) of me playing your game on stream. Thanks for submitting it!
For me, the whole game played out fairly admirable. The first corpse didn't know that the gun would eventually run out of ammo and died to a mutant(?) after shooting rats for fun,
the second one was very careful with his ammo and made a lot of progress before he died,
the third one did FINALLY learn how to reload (read: I finally learned), but was of course at one point jumped by way too many beasts,
the fourth again made a lot of progress before dying, and then...
with the last person left, I finally got it and made it through!
This learning curve felt... incredibly natural and encouraged without being forced!
This game is easily one of my favourites so far, well done and thank you for your tremendous work!
It's a very polished game and I really liked the concept of playing each passenger in turn. I very much died on my first try (everybody died, I mean) - totally forgot I can reload my gun :laughing: But on my second try, I managed to fix everything with the first guy and all was well... until...
I think the horror elements are well done here. The monsters roaring in the darkness was just the perfect amount of creepy, lighting was great and if you really think about it: being stuck in a fancy metro cart, in the darkness, with strangers and monsters roaring happily in the distance is nobody's idea of fun. I'm surprised the last guy even has the guts to get out of the train car :laughing:
Conversations of the passengers at the beginning was also pleasant and gave a bit of meat to the whole story. If each of them made some little comments as they explored the world - that could give them some personality and flesh everything out even more.
The song at the end took me by surprise! But it was a pleasant surprise. All the soundscape in this game is just glorious (song, music, sound effects - all of it!). The voice-over at the beginning could be a bit higher level in comparison to the music but I seriously have no other complaints at all.
Well done!
The sound design is superb, the visuals and lighting are excellent, the story is simple but effective. You got more than a few jumps outta me throughout the game, and I enjoyed it wholeheartedly.
I do think some of the enemy placements were a bit unfair, especially when they had the high ground in a narrow chasm, so you had to sort of bait 'em down in order to tackle them safely, which I think broke the immersion and atmosphere a bit, but that's a tiny blemish on an otherwise excellent game.
Hats off to y'all, this is prolly the best overall package I've encountered in this jam so far.
It really is a shame that it's so short, but that's understandable. I hope you all continue working on this, as I really dig the premise. Maybe let the player switch between the different passengers, with each one having their own strengths and abilities. There's a lot of potential here!
Visually, it's incredible, it's something I can easily could buy on Steam just for the graphics. The characters, the backgrounds, the monsters, the animations (I liked how the dialogues pop up) Everything it's perfect. 5 stars on graphics.
Music and sound are also great, the monsters grunts gave me chills. 5 stars on sound as well.
The mood is another strong point, great horror atmosphere. 5 stars on mood.
The mechanics and controls are smooth and easy to understand, thanks for that.
I only wish it were longer to play more.
The only problem I can point is the fact that you can get lost by going left at the start, and that was my first instinct, the game is a bit less fun when you stay in an endless empty tunnel ^^
And thanks for submitting your game!