iLoop - the 2D endless runner game of a robot stuck in a loop :) by melvinng
iLoop, a robot, has been sent on a mission to continuously look for food supplies to replenish the combat ration stocks in the army warehouse.
Work your way up through the ranks by helping iLoop collect more food! Avoid enemies running into you either by pressing SPACE or by tapping your touchscreen.
Enjoy this endless 2D runner game of a robot stuck in a loop :D!!
Submission for Ludum Dare 47 - Oct 2020 (my very first game jam) :D
Link to game: https://melvinng.itch.io/iloop
Download from Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.godotengine.iloop
v1.0 - release > v1.1 - audio & hitbox bug fixes
Artwork & Audio: Utilized artwork and audio from various free/public domain/cc0 asset packs.

Ratings
| Overall | 1444th | 2.957⭐ | 212🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1388th | 2.768⭐ | 211🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1660th | 1.935⭐ | 209🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1445th | 2.816⭐ | 209🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 971th | 2.445⭐ | 194🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1094th | 3.119⭐ | 200🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 175🗳️ | 186🗨️ |
Having the game progressing by adding more enemies and making them faster is good, but having some extra layers of complexity would be nice.
Congratulations on publishing your first jam game, by the way! :smile:
Congrats on your first GameJam!
The overall art is very cool and making a health loss animation or indicator might make the game more attentive and fun <3
Overall great game
On thing that doesnt feel jucy at all though, is that when you hit an enemy, the sound and damage are not applied immediately for some reason and is delayed a bit giving a feeling of lagginess. You think, ho I went through, then ah no as I thought I missed...
Keep it up
The art looked cool and the game concept was clear.
There were a couple of issues with the hit box for enemies being a bit unforgiving and the audio being panned hard left (not stereo), but I think you should be proud of what you achieved.
Good work!
:purple_heart: :dart: :frog:
But it sometimes hurt to have to let some food go to waste ;-)
The character is cute hehe
Oh and thanks for the review on our game!
I suggest:
1. add blink animation on hit
2. place some kinds of food in midair
Maybe:
1) Allow horisontal movement
2) Make enemies move speed dependant on enemy type
Anyway, great work!
I really liked the animation on the little robot.
Congrats on your first jam game!
Having animations and music for each menu is a great idea !
You have audio feedback when you get hit but i would have liked to have visual feedback too.
The hitboxes seem to be a bit large and square shaped which is a bit unpredictable at first on some ennemies.
Great work !
The mood of the game was nice, and the only thing I have to say is about the getting hit part: I found the hitbox to be a bit large (might be wrong though) and would have liked the sound to occur immediately; there are a few 10th of seconds that make the sound happen too late - that and a small visual animation could help
On the other end it felt polished and no bug whatsoever, well done
Maybe some future improvements:
- A little variations, right now it seems like the same jump and same speed and the difficulty doesn't really change. So it would be cool to see some different enemies like flying enemies (jetpacks?) and some flying points!
- Seeing your rank change during game! Maybe you little notification on the side saying your new rank
I have fixed the audio to stereo now, hence it's playing much better than before! I have also updated the hit-boxes of some of the enemies as suggested by many of the players here.
New version (with updated sounds & hitboxes): https://melvinng.itch.io/iloop
Whew! This is an amazing entry for your first jamgame! Your game knows EXACTLY what it wants to achieve and is fully content of itself. I do also disagree with the former posters: Isn't the whole point of an endless runner a repetitive zen-like game that just runs increasingly faster with time? You totally sold that idea. Great job, thank you for joining and welcome to Ludum Dare :3
Also, great work on achieving Master Sergeant rank! Keep it up! And thank you for playing!
It reminds me of is Google's Dinosaur Runner

That said, I wish the visuals were just as simple. Maybe it's my age, but it's kind of hard to see things coming at me so quickly with how the foreground appears against the background.
I noticed you opted out of graphics and music/sound, did you not create those yourself?
Anyway, I like that it's simple and casual. That's exactly what jams need, something that can be enjoyed in a few minutes. It was a bit simple with only the jump button, there were times where I HAD to skip food because I would have hit an enemy at the same time, maybe some horizontal movment could add some strategy to the timing challenge.
The sound when you end run can hurt ears a little ^^.
Congratulations for the game.
Standard runner loop, I felt a lack of visual feedback when you get hit, just the sound doesn't feel like it's enough.
Nicely executed idea that fits the theme.
I only felt like the colliders are a bit too big - when I jump a bit to early it looks like there was no contact with the enemy, however I was loosing a life.
Loved the music as well. Could play for hours
The only thing I can see to improve it is a visual indication that you've been hit, as I feel that the hit sound is not important enough.
Thanks for the game.

So yeah, the difficulty curve was pretty much nonexistent. The enemy speed increased so damn slow and it even didn't matter really. The only points where you can take damage was either when completely misestimating the huge unfair enemy hitbox or when two of them came so close together that is was impossible to land between and do a new jump.
It was also quite unfun that the foods and enemies liked to sync up so that you couldn't get the foods. There was no point on going for a risky food grab (especially with the hard to read enemy hitboxes) because there was no way to recover from a mistake and zero consequence of not going for them unless completely safe. Some kind of mechanic for needing food would maybe enhance the game by giving the player some decisions to make. And the food placement could spice things up too by variating their distance from each other (now it seemed very close to fixed at least) and by having some of them be in air. And of course flying enemies would make it more varied too! Classic endless runner stuff.
Didn't the intro text say something about the robot growing? :thinking: Didn't happen to me at least. Oh now checking the screenshots on the description, it was just about the rank growing.
Every piece of art looked fine on their own. I especially loved the background(s). There was a big lack of consistency on them though. Every piece had their own color palettes and styles. Like they were done by different artists altogether. And now that I actually look at the rating category options, I'm guessing that you didn't do them and they actually were different artists.
Looks like the bot had other animations too besides the walk but you didn't use them for the jumping at all. That's actually something I just had to go back and check, I recalled seeing some kind of jump on the intro/stats screen. So yeah, no own animation for jump. Obviously not a too big of a deal since I barely even noticed it but on the other hand, a cool jump animation I would have definitely noticed. And it would have made the game "feel" better.
The parallax on the background felt a bit too strong (i.e. too slow background movement speed). Maybe it's just me but I quite often started admiring the pixel art there and when I snapped back to focusing on game it was very disorientating.
The sound effects seemed to be too late. You were already at like the peak of the jump when the sound effect happened. And the same goes for all other effects too. The sound effects weren't bad but some variety would have been nice. And overall they were kinda lackluster, would have wanted to hear more oomph on them to give the actions they were enforcing some more weight. And the same goes for visual effects too, some particle effects, screen shake and so on give the actions some nice and meaningful feedback.
Anyways, job well done and congrats on your first jam! :thumbsup:
Well done though and congrats on your first jam!
Art is so beautiful!!! And you have a nice audio there!
Keep doing Jam !
The thing about it though is it would be better with a bit more to the game it got stale after just a little bit, maybe something where you aren't supposed to jump so you will have to keep in mind what enemy it is, instead of just see enemy that's close enough jump. The point system makes it so you can go back for a higher score, but as long as you dodge the enemies you don't need to worry about the points you just need to keep dodging and you will get points, maybe if there was something that you need to do to get points like some sort of risk/reward to get points, not 100% sure maybe having to make a precision jump to get a point or something like that, overall good entry
To increase retention you can try to add a dynamic difficulty curve, where the game becomes easy, medium and hard dynamically based on how well the player is playing, how far they went and dead ratio etc. by increasing or decreasing the intervals between enemies, obstacles etc.
All the best for your future projects!
Making an endless runner is a good starting point for a first entry. Fit's the theme somewhat (not very innovative though, of course :P) and can be implemented by a single person without much problems. The controls worked fine, I woudl've loved to see a short jump mechanic though (the longer you press the jump button while jumping, the higher it will go until the maximum jump height is reached) That makes for more possible variations and challanges on the obstacle front. The musical picks were also very nice. Loved the tunes and they fit the general mood very well (kinda reminded me of undertale in some way)
All in all, a good first entry. I hope to see you next time around as well :) Keep it up!
In case, anyone's interested in downloading my game from Google Play Store:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.godotengine.iloop
I didn't really see how it fits in with the theme though, and not super innovative IMO, but that's ok.
Music and graphics both beautiful and so nostalgic <3 And the sound effects are so cute :grin:
My fave is definitely the background :purple_heart: It's a shame you didn't include voting for the graphics.
There's some glitch where everything slows down for a second or two, except the enemies, making them attack you unfairly. It would probably be worth fixing somehow.
Good job!
One last note: I always write down honest review, because everybody need that, not just nice craps with some bullshit, but sometime I will aperceite very good games. So if this review insult you, but use it well :) Anyway every game is counting so :)
Noticed there's a bit of "shimmering" around pixel edges. I wonder if enabling pixel snap in project settings could help with that.
But pushing that part away, the game is pretty neat.
The Sounds are really good, the Hit sound is a bit loud but in total good mixed up with the music.
The Graphics are really nice even if they are sometimes feel a bit roughly collcted from different games or styles.
In total it was a nice Game and great work. Well Done.
The game is a bit repetitive and it takes very long for it to get more difficult. Some variety, maybe some skills for the robot could've raised this to the next level :)
Good work in any case, hope to see your stuff in the next Ludum Dare as well :smile: