Soaring by Talops
Soaring is a Jam game made in Godot Engine by Talops & Null_Skull in 72 hours under the theme Keep it alive (+ Momentum)
You are Pouce, a tiny little thumbkin living on a humble sky archipel. One day, the human mayor woke you up by uprooting your mushroom-house, seemingly panicked.
"Small one! We are out of fuel! The airships cannot take off! There is only one hot air balloon remaining and the islands are going to sink!" "What does it have to do with me, mayor? And why did you destroy my house?" "You are the only thumbkin in the archipel, lightweight enough to ride the winds on a paper plane!" "Let me guess, if I find fuel crystals around the archipel you're going to handsomely reward me, yes?" "Yes! Whatever!" "...And rebuild my house? And make it bigger!" "Yes yes now go!"
HOW TO PLAY:
Steer with the mouse, Roll with Q/A and D or the mouse buttons
To gain speed, dive or ride the winds
Pick up Time Watches to extend your remaining time
Find the crystals hidden across the archipel Keep your momentum, and more importantly, the islands, alive!
Keypad +/- to change mouse sensitivity Keypad * to invert Y axis R to restart
TIPS: - Try to balance your focus between gaining speed/altitude and grabbing Time Watches. Finding all 9 crystals in time is tricky and will require you to plan out an optimal route and to know when to dive. - When your speed is below 20, your lift force will not be enough to keep you in full flight, dive early before it is too late!
Changelogs & release states:
Soaring v1: Due to pipeline issues (mostly triangulation and resource import going wrong, ending up in broken collisions, missing triangles, whole islands being black, etc.) the map couldn't be included in time, although it was complete, so we included the prototype map in that build instead. Also Pouce fell from his plane before we made the build :(
Soaring v2: - Fixed an export issue that prevented all audio playback.
Soaring v3: - "Fixed" player input for restarting the game doing nothing after a game over/victory. - Fixed all the map issues, and reintegrated it as it was supposed to be in the first place. - Fixed Pouce falling from his paper plane. - Added some post process.
Soaring v4 (Post-Jam): - After receiving numerous feedbacks on the game's difficulty being too hard, a difficulty setting has been added with three levels: HARD (original), EASY (Time Watches give twice more time and Wind Gusts don't disappear), PRACTICE (no timer)
IMPORTANT: When reviewing the game, please do not take the post process (fog & dof) and Pouce's presence, which have been added later, into account. All other changes however were critical bug & integration fixes.
By:
Talops (https://twitter.com/talopsit) - Code, Audio, VFX
NullSkull (https://twitter.com/NullSkull) - Art, Code
Tools used: - 3D: Blender - Engine: Godot 3.2.1 - Music: Reaper + (VSTi) DSK Overture - SFX: Audacity - VC: Gitlab
| Youtube | https://talops.itch.io/soaring-ld46 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/soaring |
Ratings
| Overall | 1590th | 3.333⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 900th | 3.476⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 2081th | 2.81⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 2129th | 3.095⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1630th | 3.31⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 617th | 3.571⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 1755th | 2.342⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1561th | 3.19⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 16🗳️ | 16🗨️ |
Thank you, glad you liked it! We didn't feel inspired by the theme at all so we decided to mix it up with the theme I suggested which ended up surviving until the last round: Momentum!
@shaubbyplayz Hint: You can actually go inside the windmill :wink:
And thank you for reminding me about the build categories I completely forgot about that!
The flight physics seem extremely janky. In most flying games (and in real life), turning loses energy, and the optimal path between two points is almost always to fly in a straight line, so you try to fly directly between points while making smooth turns when needed. In this game, you will crash very quickly using that strategy, even if you hit every air boost. Instead, you have to exploit the weird physics. It seemed like if I dove straight down and reached a speed of 30+, I could then swoop back upwards and actually gain energy. This was how I managed to navigate the map and find most of the crystals that aren't placed along the boost path. But the problem is that it takes 5 or 10 seconds to reach 30 speed, and then swoop back up, and there aren't enough stopwatches on the map to keep you alive. Also, while this technique can help you gain altitude, you still lose speed very quickly while flying horizontally, so you have to keep repeating the technique just to stay above the ground.
Oh, also the roll keys seemed way too sensitive and hard to control. But it didn't seem like there was much of a reason to roll in the first place, so it's not a big deal.
As for the theme, it seems like a bit of an afterthought. I think there was a bit too much text to try and explain the plot. And while playing, the gameplay didn't really give me the feel of "keep it alive". It was more like "don't run out of time".
The graphics were fine, it's a cute low-poly style and the island has some decent variety, especially for a game jam. I think some animations on the main character/vehicle could have made it a little more interesting to look at, and some trees or animals on the islands would have helped them feel alive. I wish the UI had a little bit more love. I spent a lot of time staring at the little speed meter in the corner. I wish it looked a bit prettier, and it might have been better to have it bigger.
The music and sound effects were great. The music is really the thing that made me keep trying to figure out the game, it really fits the atmosphere perfectly. I think the wind sound effects were also very good: subtle but really makes it feel satisfying to be diving through the islands at high speed.
Concerning the flight physics, I wanted to go for a feeling between Pilotwings' hang glider and Mario64's winged cap, using a combination of air currents and dives to gain momentum, and a slightly downwards angle to keep it optimally. Once you know the location of the crystals, it becomes more about planning your path and knowing when to dive without losing much time (the perfect moment to dive is when you reach 20 speed, then climb straight up after either grazing the altitude limit/collision or getting 50 speed). Personally my best run was a 9/9 with ~30s left and leaving two (+10s) watches! Although I admit the topmost crystal is the game's biggest challenge, requiring you to do one full 50sp dive at the island's height in order to reach it.
For the roll, I intended it for moments such as the end of the bridge islands. Maybe I should add more angular damp to it? :thinking:
I also really wished to make a more polished UI, unfortunately the pipeline issues I mentioned in the description took us so much time we barely had enough to finish the core game. So we settled for the bare minimum: a non-default font :sweat_smile:
I am really glad you liked the audio so much! I've always wanted to try and make BGM but never had the occasion in my past jams, so I used this opportunity to put a ton of effort in it!
For the roll, I think more angular damp would help a lot. Also, add a bit more acceleration but put a hard cap on the angular velocity. Another solution would be to just implement auto-roll, so the plane slowly rolls itself upright. I realized that going through the rings automatically levels you out, so at the bridge island part I just flew upside down until the ring at the end spun me around.
No matter how hard I tried, I never seemed to be able to make it past the bridges after the windmill island. There just aren't any boosters in that area, so it's not clear how one is expected to get through there. It also doesn't help that the controls are inverted, an option to invert the controls would be nice.
You can also invert the Y axis with * on the keypad. Was your X axis inverted as well? If so I can also add a button to invert it.
I have released a new version with a difficulty setting that allows for a much more relaxed exploration, you might want to check it out!