SideKick by Paul Nadan
Fight crime while keeping your sidekick out of trouble!

Play as the powerful Red Ranger, a superhero who can leap tall buildings and subdue hardened criminals with a single punch, as he seeks to defeat his arch-nemesis Professor Purple. However, accompanying you is your clumsy sidekick Blue Boy, an inexperienced trainee out on his first superhero mission. Can you catch the nefarious Professor Purple while still keeping your sidekick alive?
Leap around a procedurally generated cityscape!

Bring Professor Purple to justice!

Keep your sidekick alive at all costs!

Note: a small adjustment to the difficulty scaling was made after submission to allow more players to reach the final boss.
Programmed within 48 hours in python using the pygame library. Art created using paint.net. Music created using MuseScore 2. Sound effects generated using sfxr.
| Youtube | https://superduperpacman42.itch.io/sidekick |
| Youtube | https://github.com/superduperpacman42/SideKick |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/sidekick |
Ratings
| Overall | 588th | 3.37⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 372th | 3.478⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 611th | 3.182⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 172th | 4.043⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 699th | 3.152⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 506th | 3.065⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 372th | 3.065⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 681th | 3⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 22🗳️ | 19🗨️ |
The sound effects were appropriate (especially the nefarious "nyehehe"), but I think could be a good area to work to push games the next level. I think this game could have benefited a lot with exaggerated cartoon sounds, and by the end where there were a lot of enemies, it would get increasingly hectic. With mostly beeps and boops, it sounded a little bit empty even when there was a lot happening on screen.
It was really nice to have random levels! It kept each run fresh where it otherwise might have grown stale with a single hand-designed level.
Well done for 48 hours!
Besides that, the game was fun to play!
A couple things I would've liked to see: I think some exploration on making it really feel good to destroy each individual enemy would be good. There didn't feel like there was a lot of weight to hitting an enemy. Moreover, The music was really great but I think a little too involved for being the background for the game. It kinda distracted me at times.
Well made. Had a great time.
You did a lot of things in just two days. It's challenging and fun.
Congrats!
The enemies area all different. Super fast but predicable taxis. Completely static bombs, but right where Blue-boy will jump up. Sneaky Professor Purple. Aliens that make you watchful of the vertical spaces.
Then there's a boss battle?! what? That was great. A little unintuitive, and if I'm totally honest, I'm not sure how I won. I just kept trying to eat the bombs as they were tossed and eventually I won.
Still, the game was great. My favorite of the jam so far
The art is a bit rough but works to convey the visuals for you game. Same games for music and sfx. Still a lot to improve, but works as it is!
Had fun playing trying to save him, great job !
@duke Double jump is an interesting idea - I'm a little concerned it would make the platforming aspect less relevant, but I can also see how it could feel frustrating right now if you miss a key jump. Thanks for the suggestion!
@ludumdaredevil I'm sorry about that, I didn't get a chance to test on other screen resolutions. If you'd like to try it again you might be able to open windows display settings and temporarily set the "Change the size of text, apps, and other items" option to be 25% lower, but I understand that's quite a hassle.
######## WARNING: Spoilers below - do not read unless you've beaten Professor Purple #########
@nick-rafalski Thanks, I'm glad you had fun! The idea with the boss battle is that the professor designed a special shield to block your attacks, but didn't consider your sidekick to be a threat. When hope seems lost because nothing you do can get through the shield, your sidekick discovers his powers and deals the decisive blow. I realize it's kind of hard to pick up on because the player might be distracted and not watching the sidekick, and if I had more time it would probably help to slow down time and/or zoom in on the sidekick when he defeats the boss. Hope that clears things up!
To improve, for the boss fight I just ran face-first into the boss until it exploded and hoped the sidekick didn't get killed, so some more challenge and complexity there would be good. And maybe some extra skill mechanics like a side-dash could give more room to do well mechanically.
Liked: The theme interpretation. The art style was colorful and fun. The soundtrack was catchy. I liked all the different risks coming at my sidekick. I liked that you had different art for whether I stopped a taxi from the side or from above (crush the taxicabs!!)
I liked your programmer art. It's very legible and quite charming!