Shapes by Finn_Tr
This is my first Ludum Dare, it has been a really cool experience and I had a lot of fun! My game is absolutely not perfect but I'm really proud of it. Thank you for checking my game out!!

You found yourself lost in a world of shape curse with an odd sphere that are slowly killing you. You could not destroy it as it need you to live and if it died, you would too.
If you have the sphere you will take cursed damage, shoot it out to restore to full health. If the sphere leave you it will take curse damage, pick it up/warp to it to restore it's full health. If either health bar is emptied, you'll lose.
Control:
WASD : Move
Left Mouse Drag And Release: Shoot
Right Mouse Click: Warp
Spacebar: Jump/Double Jump
How to play:
Combine the shoot and warp ability to traverse the game.
. . . . . .
Change Log: 25/04/2020: Post-jam build
Out of bound bug fix
Tweak damage taken rate
Change enemy color
(If you rate me, please play the previous version! Thank you!)
Ratings
| Overall | 1075th | 3.557⭐ | 55🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1186th | 3.34⭐ | 55🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 343th | 3.774⭐ | 55🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 2045th | 3.192⭐ | 54🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 816th | 3.906⭐ | 55🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 426th | 3.837⭐ | 54🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 62🗳️ | 54🗨️ |
But it's difficult to figure out what to do, and the game doesn't give you much time to figure things out.
Really nice sound and aesthetic, though. Great job!
If you happened to miss me playing the game, you can go to this spreadsheet to find what timestamp I played your game
https://tinyurl.com/yau8hjzn
And then look in my latest videos and find your game being play (after the current stream ends)
https://www.twitch.tv/ursagames/videos
I would love it if maybe instead of dying and starting all the way over you can keep in the game nearer to where you died. Maybe checkpoints? Very good game though! It was very fun
On to the parts that could be improved. It was very frustrating when you die at the start without doing anything (you don't even know how or why though it could be a timer or something chasing you, however, it does take away from the mood of the game). The purpose of the red line is also confusing; I thought it would kill me or do something but not really. Sometimes, the ball also goes through it or perhaps only a part of it. Despite all that, it was largely enjoyable and I would actually like to see a full version of this. Good job! Kudos.
Played on stream: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/601008132
I couldn't see either of my own health bars for any of the game, which made it really hard to play as I would die seemingly randomly and without warning. I'm not sure I agree with including that mechanic in the game at all, it doesn't really complement any of the rest of the game mechanics and only really served as a source of frustration (at least for me).
The teleporter throwing physics were a bit tough to get the hang of, but they were smooth and consistent, and helped add to the aesthetic. I think it would've been interesting to see a few extra applications of teleportation outside of just platforming, like avoiding moving hazards or solving puzzles or something.
I disagree with the idea of "winding up" your throw with the mouse instead of just pointing in the direction that you want to throw in. It was frustrating not being able to throw with full strength because my mouse would hit the edge of the screen, this would've been resolved by simply removing the inversion on throw direction (and would've felt more intuitive IMO).
The graphics are a master class in creating a minimalist theme that still clearly communicates what's solid and what's not (which is usually a problem for other designers). All audio sounded nice and fit in with the graphics.
This game desperately needs a tutorial, some form of UI or way of telling the player how close to a game over they are at, and clearer objectives.
I love the simplicity of the design. Music is nice too.
The controls are hard, though. I couldn't even get to the second platform: because I had to drag the mouse down outside of the game window, every time I clicked "right button" it opened a context-menu and lost focus from the window =( So, any in-the-air jumps are barely possible.
I played HTML version, though. Maybe a full-screen version doesn't suffer from that behavior.
The main mechanic is really cool, but its very difficult to get the hang of it. I think some tutorial area where you ould slowly learn it over time, instead of having to both jump and shoot at the same time from the start.
A health bar would probably ruin the minimalist aesthetic, but I'm guessing there's some sort of graphic you could add that would indicate your health situation without looking too much like UI.
The art style was cool and looked beautiful, however it was also somewhat hard to know what was part of the level and what was just the background.
All in all a nice entry which could be further worked on to make it even cooler.
Overall, it was a bit difficult for me to progress, primarily because of the inverted angle controls. Some people might find it quite intuitive, but the fact that so many games have an inverted y-axis option makes me thing that it might not just be me - adding an option to make the arrow face the mouse's position and not 180 degrees away from it could help a lot.
That way, I could more easily enjoy the awesome mechanic you've got going here. The collisions were problem-free (which isn't a given in a game involving teleportation and non-rectangular platforms), the art was super clean and served the gameplay, the environment simple and elegant to match. I'd really love to see more of this concept and world, with some quality of life improvements. Keep it up!
The throwing and teleportation concept worked ok, I guess, but there's room for improvement. It got very stressful getting up some of the pillars where you needed two to three throw/teleportation combos. The gravitational pull on the ball was kinda off. Didn't feel like actual gravity but more like it was sentient and pulling itself down all of a sudden. I like slingshooting mechanics like you implemented them, but there was the issue with screen limits. It also kinda felt a little too fast for my taste. Basically everything. Maybe that's due to my monitor running at 144hz. Already played some games, that didn't have frame rate independent physics and the games were almost unplayable on my setup. Maybe this is the case here too.
That brings me to the boss design. I guess it was a boss? I wasn't able to beat him because it was just too hectic and fast and death came very quickly. I had two goes at him, but there didn't seem to be a health bar or something to indicate my progress so I stopped. I didn't even know if tackling him with the ball was the right thing to do or not. He had a crumbling animation when hit, so I guess that it was correct after all. Just didn't know how much more abuse he would take. As I said, death came abruptly and even though I really tried to keep the guy moving and teleporting to reset the time bars on him.
Still, a great entry with a fresh game play concept. Good work!