CATACLYSM by his-games
CATACLYSM is a tight platformer with emphasis on nice player control and game feel. Advance down a crumbling cave, before it overcomes you.

Battle through 3 distinct levels, dodging saws, spikes, minigun-toting robots, and spikes. There are a lot of spikes.

Don't forget to rate and comment if you enjoyed: tell me what you thought of it!
CONTROLS: Arrows to move, Z to jump, X to attack
| Link | https://his-games.itch.io/cataclysm |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/cataclysm |
Ratings
| Overall | 1177th | 3.182⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1198th | 2.977⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1344th | 2.643⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 957th | 3.318⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 328th | 4.068⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 455th | 3.55⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 640th | 3.5⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 9🗳️ | 12🗨️ |
1) Was it at all laggy for you, did the jump feel slow and floaty?
2) Was alot of the things zoomed in? (I know you said this but I want to see if it is a resolution thing)
Got stuck passing from screen 3 to 4 because i died in the middle of the transition and got out of bound unable to reset my character.
There was a level where i kept spawning on top of some spikes, not sure if it was intentional but i sort of spammed jump and got out eventually.
Great job though, well done mate! 👏
It's very polished and in the theme.
But the hitbox is not really done, it's a bit frustrating xD
I don't know if it comes from the picks or the character
Also I agree the hitbox felt a little big, it felt accurate, but I always find it feels more fun when the collider is a little smaller than the character sprite.
Platforming physics felt weird:
* The horizontal movement is floaty, but you get used to it (faster acceleration/deceleration with the same top speed would help).
* You don't zero the vertical speed when player touches ceiling/floor, causing them to stick to the ceiling when jumping, and to immediately gain downwards velocity when walking off of platforms respectively.
* The character tends to randomly get stuck when gliding on the ceiling, and when jumping right next to obstacles.
* Min jump height is too high for my taste, it barely differs from max height.
The random sawblades felt unfair. D:< They fit the theme, but some indication of where they are going to fall would help a lot. They make some screens nearly impossible, e.g. that one screen near the beginning where you start in a long corridor in the upper part of the screen.
There were some minor problems with level design. Some screens had off-screen walls/spikes, and one screen respawned me right above some spikes.
However, there are some issues that made the game extremely difficult in Level 1, and impossible in levels 2 and Boss. The falling rocks feel rushed and not fully thought out, I had to try and speedrun through a level before the 4:40 mark because there was no indication of where the falling rocks would be, and they would kill me the instant I respawned (sometimes before I had even finished respawning). In the first area where you see the robot with the laser blaster in Level 2, the game respawns you directly above the spikes so unless you hold right you get killed immediately. I also couldn't finish Level 2 after that point or do the Boss Level at all because the camera kept moving on its own and I couldn't see where I was going, and was apparently also unable to die to reset the camera.
The player's movement also felt weird, not only was it *extremely* floaty for a precision platformer and seemed to constantly randomize the speed, the jump strength also randomly cut out, the player would randomly get caught on walls and ceilings when jumping (it felt like the level was made out of Velcro), and sometimes when trying to jump against a wall it would either refuse to jump and make the player stuck in its jumping animation, or do a half-strength jump with no jump animation. The hitboxes also need work, the bats and spikes apparently had telekinetic abilities and would kill the player a full tilemap block away from them. I also noticed that upon beating Level 1, the game didn't say I beat Level 1 and immediately forced me to do Level 2 with the almost-expired timer of Level 1. It would be nice to have a "Level Complete!" screen and then transition to the next level and reset the timer, because I didn't realize I had beaten the level and starting a level with only a minute-long timer is a bit unfair. The cave also seemed to have collapsed after that with 10 seconds left on the timer still?
Overall, with improvements and bug fixes I can see this becoming quite the polished post-Jam game! The beautiful shading really brings depth and mood to the 1-bit art, a full version of this would be visually breathtaking!
The graphics were kinda cute, and the music was nice.
Other than that, great game!
I had high hopes for the focus on game feel, but after I got stuck in the first deep hole with no (obvious) way to get out .. I just reloaded. I'd echo comments from others like Alexofp and Peace of Cake. I struggled to get very far before the rocks started falling, and then I was toast :( I've never really focused on controls in a jam, so I have to imagine that it is really tough to polish.
I'd be really excited to play another version, because the over style was very tight! The camera movement especially had good thought put into it.