Plum by Heelio157

[raw]
made by Heelio157 for Ludum Dare 46 (JAM)

plum.png

In this 2D puzzle platformer the player explores some ruins and finds a mysterious being in a tank. As you take the tank the floor collapses. You wake up deep in those ruins and find some mechanisms. To find your way out, you must solve puzzles but activating switches consumes the liquid in the tank you carry. Meaning you must find the most optimized way to solve those puzzles so the mysterious being doesn’t run out of its vital liquid. If the mysterious being dies, the game is over.

Note: some mechanisms can be filled/emptied multiple times

A game made during Ludum Dare 46 “Keep it alive”. Every asset was made by the Donut Dodo Team. Even sound effects were made by mouth!

(As of today there isn’t any music in menus and cutscenes.​)

Changelog: - April 22: - jump bugfix (nope sorry, wall jump was not an intended feature) - switches bugfix (the player was able to remotely activate switches in some circumstances, making it difficult to activate others) - fixed a bug in level 1 where you could slip on the top moving platform in some circumstances - added desktop Linux build - April 29: - changed key bindings to fit with any keyboard layout: up arrow to fill, down arrow to empty

Tuto 1.png Tuto 2.png Tuto 3.png Tuto 4.png

Donut Dodo Team

Heelio (MadWayDigital): Lead Developer, UI & FX Artist

Simon Delavenne: Game Designer, Developer & Composer

Louise Geffroy (Kyakune): Animator, Chara Designer & Sound Designer

Flora Meunier (Floya): Environment & Props Artist

Donut Dodo transparent 2.png

Ratings

Overall 692th 3.716⭐ 39🧑‍⚖️
Fun 1499th 3.189⭐ 39🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 774th 3.5⭐ 38🧑‍⚖️
Theme 671th 3.919⭐ 39🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 233th 4.346⭐ 41🧑‍⚖️
Audio 786th 3.432⭐ 39🧑‍⚖️
Mood 363th 3.886⭐ 37🧑‍⚖️
Given 26🗳️ 46🗨️

Feedback

Solweak
21. Apr 2020 · 09:25 UTC
Waa, c'est très propre ! Je me suis retrouvé bloqué dans quelques situation soit parce qu'on ne peut pas récupérer l'eau des objets sans réservoir ou au niveau deux en grimpant pendant que l'objet tourne![Capture.PNG](///raw/abc/c2/z/31482.png)
Sinon gros gg, concevoir des puzzles c'est pas facile et le jeu est cool à parcourir, y'a un bon mood grâce entre autres à la DA. Chapeau pour les graphismes =).
🎤 Heelio157
21. Apr 2020 · 12:34 UTC
@solweak Merci d'avoir joué et pour ton retour ! On peut effectivement se retrouver bloqués dans certains cas, le menu de pause permet de relancer le niveau dans ces cas-là :)
Yoan Allibert
21. Apr 2020 · 12:45 UTC
Bravo pour ce jeu, beaucoup de soin apporté à tous les aspects. Les puzzles sont vraiment sympas, ce n'est jamais facile de concevoir de bons puzzles dans un laps de temps si court. Impressionné par la qualité des détails, notamment sur les arrières plans. Well Done : )
Asue
22. Apr 2020 · 09:16 UTC
Wow, les graphismes sont incroyables ! C'est très très propre. L'ambiance sonore est bonne aussi, c'est un détail mais j'aime bien quand le perso fait "non non" quand on ne peut pas faire l'action x)

Le tuto sur la page du jeu est bien fait, ce serait encore mieux de pouvoir l'intégrer au jeu !

Bravo à l'équipe !
JAsonsumm1
22. Apr 2020 · 09:19 UTC
nice puzzle platformer, with cool art and vibe :)
Kalendhos
22. Apr 2020 · 10:20 UTC
Un sérieux concurrent à Anamo dans mon coeur... Egalité ? Mais c'est seulement parce qu'il n'y a pas de chanson ici, tout le reste est juste génial.

Bon certes, il y a un souci de synchro avec le son des sauts, il y a deux passages sans son et à l'endroit avec les deux récipients vidables j'avais du mal à utiliser celui de droite mais gneu gneu gneu c'est bon je peux passer aux qualités. J'ai fait mon effort d'honnêteté pour critiquer ^^.

C'est vraiment très très beau. Quand on fait attention on voit vraiment beaucoup de détails, que ce soit dans les objets, le fond tout au fond et surtout le fond en premier plan (Genre les roues). Les décorations, les poutres fixées... Et bien sûr les cinématiques qui font un peu tableau/craie et ça rend bien.

Et c'est là qu'on voit qu'il y a les sons à la bouche, et les sons à la bouche de qualité. Ca donne envie de se mettre à niveau ! Et ça rend le personnage vraiment vivant. Aussi parce qu'il est très joli et grâce à ses mouvements de tête.

J'ai eu très peur en lançant le jeu. J'ai cru à des puzzles avec des interrupteurs qu'il faut actionner dans un sens ou dans l'autre, chose dont j'ai horreur... Bon c'était effectivement un peu ça, mais les énigmes sont fichues pour être à la fois pas faciles, mais pas frustrantes à étudier. Très joli boulot de ce côté-là aussi.

Surtout qu'au niveau du thème, le côté "On aurait assez d'eau pour finir mais il faut le garder en vie" marche vraiment bien. Quand on y réfléchit, ça aurait été exactement le même gameplay avec une charge d'eau en moins, mais c'est là que l'astuce est élégante parce que ça fonctionne super bien. Avec mention spéciale pour le premier niveau qui fait vraiment ressentir ça.
Thorqueor
22. Apr 2020 · 11:15 UTC
Very good little puzzle game. Puzzles are well designed and not so frustrating, DA is great, I miss a little the lack of variations in the main musical theme. Be proud of your work !
grizeldi
22. Apr 2020 · 12:24 UTC
After the intro cutscene, all I can see is a pink triangle (WebGL, firefox, linux). Liked the art style of the intro cutscene though.
fishbrain
22. Apr 2020 · 12:29 UTC
Really nice style! found the game a little confusing though.
Khud0
22. Apr 2020 · 12:31 UTC
Awesome art style, very innovative and interesting idea to explore! I also love the SFX you made with your voice and the "no-no" sound when you try take water back reminded me of Machinarium. Thank you for a pleasant entry, I had a lot of fun! :)
Rusty Jim
22. Apr 2020 · 12:31 UTC
Really enjoyed this one: I love a puzzle platformer. The art direction is beautiful and the sound effects are cute :)
Feingehacktes
22. Apr 2020 · 12:38 UTC
- The game was a bit slow paced. Especially for puzzles that i had to retry a bunch of times it felt unnecessarily slow
- on the last screen the main character kept walking to the left fill object instead of the one i was standing right in front of
- overall a solid game, made it through every level and had fun doing it
Raphaeltan
22. Apr 2020 · 12:49 UTC
les puzzles sont tres bien faits compte tenu du temps imparti. les musiques font tres "puzzle game" elles plongent bien le joueur dans l'atmosphere, les graphismes sont aussi tres reussis! bravo :)
Snowirbis
22. Apr 2020 · 13:04 UTC
That was a good game, good graphics, good mechanics but the mechanics were poorly introduced, I quitted the game because I was blocked, just to realise thanks to the first comment that you could fill water multiple times

So I went back and finished the game
lt-farfetchd
22. Apr 2020 · 14:13 UTC
A beautiful game for sure. I really liked the visuals here. The audio was quite simple, but also matched quite well in its simplicity even so. I'm a sucker for voiced sound effects, so I really loved that.
I think the biggest fault is that the mechanics are somewhat unclear, so that might stand in the way of the game being fun. For me personally, the other big thing was just the control scheme. I'm so used to WASD at this point that QD for movement just killed me. :joy:
Great job, it's lovely to see some classic puzzle-platformers. They always make a reasonable appearance in jams, but one of my favourite genres nonetheless. :slight_smile:
ankou
22. Apr 2020 · 14:19 UTC
I love the artstyle of this game, it's really cute! The puzzles were really well-designed, although the character's occasionally activate the wrong object felt a bit frustrating at points, hah. Outside of that issue though, the levels were pretty fun.
radow
22. Apr 2020 · 15:50 UTC
The graphics are stunning and the puzzles actually really nice. I especially liked the added incentive of getting the crystal in every level. There were a few issues with softlocking, but most of that was helped by the restart level option. The one thing that ended up being a bit frustrating was that trying to interact with the right "reusable" statue in the third game sometimes actually made me interact with the left one and there was no way to cancel that action.
I had a blast with this, as I'm always partial to a puzzle platformer =)
png
22. Apr 2020 · 15:51 UTC
Awesome graphics! The puzzledesign is really great, it took me a moment to complete the game with diamonds. :D
The only thing to complain about are the activation zones for the interactables. and the key-binding for the keyboard seems a bit odd (interact with 'a' and walk left with 'q')
🎤 Heelio157
22. Apr 2020 · 16:40 UTC
@grizeldi Thank you for your feedback, we just updated the page with a Linux build if you wish to try :slight_smile: Have you tried the WebGL version using Chromium instead of Firefox? It seems to work with this browser. Sorry for the inconvenience!
SergeantBiggs
22. Apr 2020 · 17:24 UTC
I like the atmosphere of the game very much, great graphics and sound. It has a very nice eery/weird quality to it that I really love. I normally don't like puzzle platformers, but I really enjoyed playing this one. One thing I really didn't like, was the control scheme for keyboard. Walking with q and d, and interacting with a? This makes no sense at all, and makes controlling the game frustrating, which you don't want in a puzzle platformer. Other than that, I really enjoyed it :) Great Job!
🎤 Heelio157
22. Apr 2020 · 17:26 UTC
@feingehacktes @snowirbis @lt-farfetchd @ankou @radow @png @sergeantBiggs

In the name of the team, thank you all for your lovely comments and useful feedback, we're happy you liked the game :smile:

Sorry about the strange key binding, we're a french team and it's the first time we publish a game for an international audience, so we kept our default "azerty" layout. It should be more convenient for you to move using the arrow keys, or even play with a gamepad.

We understand the frustration for the lack of tutorial too, we planned to do it ingame but ended up puting it in the description because we were a bit late at the end :sweat_smile:

As for the bugs you mentionned, we just updated the game with some bugfixes (see "changelog" in the description).
Thanks!
rob1221dev
22. Apr 2020 · 17:40 UTC
I figured out the mechanics eventually, but they could have been introduced in a better way. It wasn't obvious that the second object could be filled multiple times, and even the image in the description doesn't mention it.
pillitoka
22. Apr 2020 · 20:51 UTC
well thought out puzzles. took me a while to figure them out.
xarona
23. Apr 2020 · 18:13 UTC
I love it, it's just sooo cute and the puzzles are cool!
Paul Giovannini
24. Apr 2020 · 08:58 UTC
Love the mood and the graphics ! Cinematics are really cool !
Puzzle are really interesting, great job !
Linky439
24. Apr 2020 · 21:13 UTC
Ah, super jeu !

J'ai eu du mal au début mais j'ai réussi à passer le premier tableau et le reste s'est bien passé ^^
J'ai eu un petit bug sur le premier tableau (il m'arrivait de ne pas me déplacer lorsque j'étais sur une plateforme mobile, fin je devais moi-même avancer quand j'étais dessus)

Concept sympa, super graphismes, l'audio (à la bouche ?) est rigolo... Franchement très cool ce jeu !

Bravo à toute l'équipe :D
mehrdadsh
25. Apr 2020 · 14:22 UTC
Hello, i like your game,really nice graphics. I'm a programmer looking for a graphic designer or a team to join and maybe work on new games, are you interested?​
email:m.shahiri.m@gmail.com
my LudumDare Game:
Social Distancing For Ladybugs
SAVVU
25. Apr 2020 · 18:37 UTC
Sooo nice looking animations and design!I found a bug where a platfprm can push me out of the scene haha! Overall a very clean and good looking game! Congratuations!
Bredian
25. Apr 2020 · 22:03 UTC
I love your work! Very atmospheric, great visuals, calm soundtrack, challenging puzzles, all is great! Sometimes horizontally moving platforms just go without you. But beyond that - awesome job!
HuvaaKoodia
26. Apr 2020 · 10:53 UTC
I like puzzles. I don't like *slowly* walking around and *slowly* activating *slow* mechanisms multiple times.

Animations can be made quicker most of the time. Some slow actions (such as the otherwise cool rotating walls in the second level) can be queued so that the player can input all the water they want in a row without having to wait for the current rotation to finish first. Of course the rotation could be faster too, especially if the player did input, say, three portions of water at once.

A bigger issue is not being able to see at a glace which object activates which platform/door/etc. This means that on the first go I always had to get to every object once (potentially permanently spending water) and then restarting the level and actually figuring out how to solve it with all of the required information now at my disposal. This is a waste of time and redoing the same things is not enjoyable. Some kind of visible connections between the objects, for instance lines, matching symbols, or even just colors, would solve this issue.

Generally speaking, puzzles with a movable player avatar always have this problem, but it can be mitigated to the point where it is hardly an issue. I seem to recall that [Tetrobot](http://www.swingswingsubmarine.com/games/tetrobot-and-co/) did a pretty good job at this (despite the bugs).

Solid work apart from the design issues.
JMad
26. Apr 2020 · 18:14 UTC
The atmosphere of the game is really nice, and the art feels very polished. But like other mentionned, the game feels very slow, and the fact that we have to try a couple times, and that there are no easy way of restarting the level makes it tedious. I totally agree with the comment before me. The jump had to be a little too perfect to my taste, at times, too. There were some nice design ideas though, like the box that can be moved with the doors. Still, a solid entry. Good job.

PS : the keyboard controls are 100% thought for AZERTY keyboards & left hand only, and that also made it very difficult to adapt. Would have been nice to move with arrows and fill/empty with other two keys, for example
Julian Hartinger
28. Apr 2020 · 15:52 UTC
I am impressed by the art and the character Design. Really cool. Unfortunatly the controls with the "Q" to move left are pretty weird.
🎤 Heelio157
29. Apr 2020 · 14:00 UTC
To everybody having difficulty with the key bindings or finding it weird, well, now you know how it feels for non qwerty users to play almost any game haha

Joking aside, sorry for that, in the rush we didn't thought about it. We just updated the game with key bindings that should be ok for anyone. You can now use the up/down arrow keys to fill/empty tanks, thank you @jmad for the suggestion. And you can still move using left and right.

Again thank you all for the feedback!
Togimaro
01. May 2020 · 18:17 UTC
Hey!
Je fais le retour en français car il va etre un peu dense ahah
J'ai vraiment beaucoup aimé les puzzles et l'ambiance global, voici quelques retours sur les trucs qui m'ont perturbé dans ma partie:
- J'ai eu beaucoup de mal a comprendre les touches au début ahah, quelques très simple niveau tuto ou les mécaniques sont introduite en premier lieux de maniere isolé aurait surement aidé, scroll pour voir le binding sur la page itch c'est pas très pratique ahah
- D'ailleurs je n'avais pas du tout saisi les graduation sur le recipient en premier lieu (pareil il a fallu que je relise sur la page itch pour comprendre) étant donné que ça n'a pas été vraiment introduit, ca a rendu le niveau 2 bien plus difficile au début x)
- Le jeu laisse peu de place a l’expérimentation, il n'y a qu'une seule réel solution et comme la plupart des puzzles se base sur des mécanismes activable qu'une seule fois si on fait une erreur c'est un peu fichu la plupart du temps la ou les récipient permettent beaucoup plus de tester les possibilités, un bouton reset (voir undo) m'a beaucoup manqué
- Les partie plus plateforme était vraiment très rigide et c'est un peu dommage car ça entache l'aspect puzzle un peu qui est chouette

La c'est vraiment les trucs qui ont entaché mon expérience mais sinon c’était vraiment cool!
La cinématique au début est cool, les mécaniques sont plutôt intelligente, j'ai aimé les challenges de récupérer les collectables, et les sprites sont chouette! Et j'ai passé un bon moment

Bien joué! :D