juxta.LINE by fiaKaiera
:information_source: UPDATE: [APR 20 @ 2pm PST] An accessibility patch has been made to accommodate left-handed people! Please check changelog for any changes.


This game was finished in only 23 hours due only knowing the day after it started. Please consider this if you experience a lack of polish and/or missing sections of the game.
:warning: Audio might not be properly balanced. Please adjust your audio before proceeding.
WE are a research initiative. YOU are a program that keeps failing bots alive, Cursor. Your task is to keep these bots alive. The reason is not important to you.
Sadly, this game would have more that that but I have to compromise. It would have scaling difficulty, (or difficulty in general) more effects, particles and more bugs in this case. Once you get the hang of it and know what to go for, the game's actually quite easy to complete.
:beginner: CONTROLS:
- Movement
- WASD: Move around
- Space: Dash (if moving)
- Interaction
- Left / Right Mouse Button: Clear bug tile
:beginner: MECHANICS:
The Goal: We need the data. Keep it alive.
:speech_balloon: QUESTIONS:
- If you have any questions, feel free to ask from my twitter: @fiaKaiera
- I don't have a license or have access to make other versions other than Windows. If you want to have ports to HTML5/Mac/Ubuntu for others, feel free to compile them yourself and send it off to me. It's very much appreciated!
- You can also contact me or comment if there's bugs found here. I'll fix it as fast as possible.
:ballotboxwith_check: Changelog:
※ All changes during the compo will only be either bug fixes or accessibility patches of some sort to make it more accessible to everyone. No new feature will be added for this game for the rest of the compo.
- APR 20 @ 2pm PST
- Altered movement keys to also work with IJKL for left-handed people
- The tutorial also reflects this change
- Fixed tutorial bug where the player can move before being asked to move
| Youtube | https://fiakaiera.itch.io/juxtaline |
| Youtube | https://fiakaiera.itch.io/juxtaline |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/46/juxta-line |
Ratings
| Overall | 139th | 3.875⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 150th | 3.795⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 115th | 3.925⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 498th | 3.7⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 246th | 3.825⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 204th | 3.588⭐ | 42🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 626th | 2.5⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 268th | 3.538⭐ | 41🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 39🗳️ | 56🗨️ |
Even though you don't really need a license to export to macOS, I don't have access macOS to even export to that sadly. That's why I'm suggesting the export!
It's hard, it's stressful, and it's addicted.
Completed in less than an hour, though.

To most games like this, my feedback is please allow IJKL keys next time for lefties :)
Too hard for me, but others seem to be getting it. Gameplay loop seems nice even if I didn't get it. Good presentation regardless.
One thing you could really use in future for this, if you chose to expand it, would be a colour blind mode.
Very nicely done for 48 hours, and a great little tutorial as well!
* To add to that, the difficulty is programmed by the number of clicks you have to do in a 4-beat measure. It always equates to 7.
* The predicted worst case is a 6/1. If you went to the 6 first, (the red ones) you can mitigate the damage as the 1 is just "chump damage". (same as mis-clicking once) Getting a 6/1 twice is actually quite rare.
* The actual worst case is actually a 4/3 very far from each other.
* I made it 7 cause I thought 6 is too easy already and a 6 appearing will be extremely rare, which is not my intention.
* @seriouslycrunchy - I wish I do had time to add this as a guy who likes accessibility!! Sadly, unlike the button changes, I can't patch this one is cause it's a new function altogether. But yes, should I make a better version of this, I will consider this very much!!
* While I was developing, changing the colors is a very good move. Back then it was just from "not bright at all" white to red, ignoring difficulty. The circles were added cause it was a better indicator of time and the colors are so much better to tell how each one is harder than just simple sprite differences. (Of course the cursor being a circle and the bugs diamonds)
* There's other visual hints too, such as bugs being blue to red and the cursor having its ring always there and beating. The L and R indicators have different contrasts, too!
* Well, based on predictions. You could still tell all of the stuff that's going on at least.
| Vision | Cursor | Bug |
| ------------- | ------------- |
| Normal | Green | Blue > Red |
| Protanopia | Yellow | Blue > Gray |
| Deuteranopia | Yellow | Blue > Yellow |
| Tritanopia | Vibrant Blue | Blue > Red |
One piece of feedback I have is to make the penalty for misclicking harsher. I found that you could trivialize the game by just spamming the left and right mouse buttons, since you gain so much health back from clearing bugs. I'd take off more hp if you make a misclick to make the game a little more balanced.
Overall, amazing job on this!
This is an example of why execution is more important than ideas.
Simple game, perfectly executed. Well done.
What a great concept. It looks nice, it sounds nice and it plays very nice. The controls are spot on. Didn't feel too hard but not to easy either, good balance over all! It could have used a bit more music, nothing to distracting, just a little something in the background, more than the beats.
:star:
As one critique to that end, I would say there is currently too little a penalty for being very reckless with your mouse inputs, as I found being twitchy and inaccurate was far more effective towards the end than making sure to enter the sequences perfectly each time.
The sound design works very well in service to the tactile feel, and the graphics (while simple) are well-suited to a kind of game that requires such immediate visual understanding.
There were some elements that weren't immediately very clear to me - the upper HUD elements for example - but I seemed to complete it fine without paying as much attention to them as maybe I should have... All in all, a very nice submission!
It has a nice atmosphere, and I'm impressed with the tutorialization.
You put a lot of work into grading my game, so I feel bad for leaving you with one and a half paragraph, but this is really all I can make of it at the moment :sweat:
(I like the lefty-flip that you implemented ... I'm not actually left-handed, but I mouse with left most of the time anyway, so the IJKL controls where appreciated at least!)
* @thewinrawr, @drachmor - Trust me, I've really considered about the harsher misclicks. I also considered my abilities and I would have agreed with you... but I always look at the game at large: the people playing, the time that people will be playing, and the fact that this is a compo entry in Ludum Dare, and that a lot of people will have to rate a bunch of games in it. So making the game easier would leave more people satisfied, at least.
* In actual statistics, it's actually equal to missing a 1-click bug. Should I make this harsher, there will be less people completing this game at all, especially when faced with 6-click bugs. Worse actually if the 6-click bug has a very short timer on it.
* Funnily enough, someone did try with an auto-clicker bot. They were not successful. Sadly they're not part of Ludum Dare and was only a mutual.
* @remco - No worries! Having not much to say except good stuff is actually a pretty good thing! That means that your plans went through fruition and was executed wonderfully~! It makes me happy when very few mishaps happen when people try out the game I made. It means I'm doing a very good job taking what I learned in my entries before and what I do now.