LudumData

Deep Jumper by RadzioGadzioPL

[raw]
made by RadzioGadzioPL for Ludum Dare 48 (JAM)

How would you feel suppossing you were falling deeper and deeper into the darkness?

Terrified or excited?

That’s why I gave you flashlight. It’s pretty useful to see more things. However it’s not ussual flashlight as you may expect. It has little microchip which allows you to see traps. Be careful, cause your battery won’t last forever, but fortunately it can recharge over time.

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What about your journey? It’ll be difficult. It can make you angry. It can make you cry trying not to touch shitty platform, but still game may be enjoyable.

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Keep an eye on your health. You have only 5 lifes. Whenever you touch trap you’ll lose 1 life and teleport to last checkpoint. When you are teleported you get invulnerability but you’ll also slower. (Be careful not to lose more lifes when spawning). When your number of lifes decrease to 0, level will restart and you’ll have to do everything again.

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There’re two types of traps: 1. Simple traps that are set on platforms 2. Shooting walls (it sounds weird, but that’s what they do) shoots projectiles. You can barely see bullets, if you don’t use flashlight.

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Just to make some purpose in my game I’ve added time, so you can see your highscore in main menu at bottom left.

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Control:

Left Mouse Button (LMB) - flashlight

Right Mouse Button (RMB) - scanner (for traps)

A/D or Left Arrow / RightArrow - horizontal movement

Space - Jump

Mouse - used to point flashlight

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Hope you’ll like it! Note that that’s my 2nd game I’ve ever published and 1st time I’ve ever taken part in game jam :D

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Update!!!

I've made some changes, fixed bugs and added new things.

Check it out!

Link https://radziogadziopl.itch.io/deep-jumper
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/deep-jumper

Ratings

Overall 1325th 3.278⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Fun 931th 3.333⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 408th 3.667⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Theme 458th 3.972⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 867th 3.722⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Humor 967th 2.594⭐ 18🧑‍⚖️
Mood 746th 3.611⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Given 17🗳️ 5🗨️

Feedback

mrbrainfed
27. Apr 2021 · 13:41 UTC
This was so fun! I couldn't really finish it all though, but I'm bad at platformers, so I can't judge. I'm excited to see where this game goes! :thumbsup:
tomlbarden
27. Apr 2021 · 13:43 UTC
Well, this is certainly much better than my first game jam game was! Before I get into the gameplay, I really want to commend you for the polish; this feels great to play. Menus, SFX, audio options, scene transitions... All this stuff is a real winner in my books. Great work for finding time to include them! The itch link implies you made this in a day and a half? Well done! Hard to believe this is your second game.

I really like how simple the core of the game is. You did well to limit the scope for the game to something achievable and well polished. I'd of course love to see more gameplay variety, as simply descending does get stale without some other motivation.

What I'd love to see in a v1.1 release would be a little tutorial screen which explains both of the flashlight functions. When I first played I completely missed the scanning function and wondered why I kept dying! I did also find that I could take my time pretty well. It'd be awesome if there were like ghosts or something slowly forcing the player to descend...
Foursay
27. Apr 2021 · 13:53 UTC
This is an amazing game to play! The audio is rather good and the exploring experience satisfy me. There are also some points that need to be mentioned: the platforming control is a little cringe, and I could use flashlight and scanner at the same time bu holding RMB first and LMB second. Anyway the overall experience is good for me. Good Job!
MerlinnSound
27. Apr 2021 · 13:56 UTC
It's a good game, but really difficult. I played it together with my son (9), one was jumping, the other using the flashlight. In the end we gave up. This game would really profit of a lower difficulty.
🎤 RadzioGadzioPL
27. Apr 2021 · 14:24 UTC
@merlinnsound I may made it a little bit too difficult. I could do more if I could come up with an idea quicker. Unfortunately my brother only tested it once, but thanks
🎤 RadzioGadzioPL
27. Apr 2021 · 14:25 UTC
@foursay Thanks. I tried to change some things before deadline, but unfortunately I didn't have much time to test my game and my brother tested it once. But thanks for comment :D
🎤 RadzioGadzioPL
27. Apr 2021 · 14:31 UTC
@tomlbarden thanks. I did it in 1.5 day cause I couldn't figure out what to do. For now I've made 3 game and 2 are published, but I've watched a lot of tutorial (e.g. Brackeys or Blackthornprod) and I found it easy. It may be a little bit too hard and there's no tutorial (other than you scroll in main menu and you'll get controls). I've made it that I can make new levels, so I may consider make new levels and improving it. But thanks for your comment
🎤 RadzioGadzioPL
27. Apr 2021 · 14:33 UTC
@mrbrainfed I've finished mine game only once so it's a little bit too hard xd. But thanks :D
theheheo
27. Apr 2021 · 15:41 UTC
Feels really polished and thought out. Nice music! Was a really cool and unique mechanic to have to use the flashlight to spot traps in the darkness. Something that I noticed was that after a while it got pretty easy since you basically learned where all of the traps were. Something that could have greatly benefited this game would be a bit randomness in the level design so that you don't know where all the traps are. Overall really good job!!
🎤 RadzioGadzioPL
27. Apr 2021 · 19:54 UTC
@theheheo thanks for feedback. I can’t get a credit for music cause it’s not mine (I didn’t have time to make my own). I thought about randomness but there wasn’t much time (for me) to do it. Also I didn’t want to start experimenting with procedural generating cause so far I’ve never done it. On the
other hand it’s easier to finish when you know where traps are and you can learn the perfect path.
SIGILL
27. Apr 2021 · 23:43 UTC
This is a difficult game! I don't know how far I got, but those shooting walls definitely are real killers. I think I got to the second or third shooting wall and there I didn't see how I was supposed to progress: all I was were a trapped platform and a platform below that one that was constantly under fire of the shooting wall. I did enjoy playing it though and I might revisit the game later to see if I can finish it!
Also, congratulations on finishing LD48!
🎤 RadzioGadzioPL
28. Apr 2021 · 05:42 UTC
@sigill thanks for feedback. I reckon that it’s a little bit too hard and I may try to change its difficulty. :D
Sheinxy
29. Apr 2021 · 16:32 UTC
Managed to beat the game!

Nice game, I really like the flashlight mechanics! And as a platformer aficionado I can say that it controls quite well!

There was just something that bothered me, when I respawned my character always seemed somewhat slow, I don't know if that's a bug or anything but it was a bit annoying :c

Overall, great game, well done for your first jam!
🎤 RadzioGadzioPL
30. Apr 2021 · 10:58 UTC
@sheinxy thanks. This isn't the bug. My brother tested my game and said that it was super easy to die when you respawn so I've decrease speed when spawned and you're invurnelable for 3 seconds.
JRevel
05. May 2021 · 00:57 UTC
Cool game, a bit hard, but quite well made ! Here are a few ideas that came to my mind that could make it a bit less frustrating for new players :
- I'm not sure the double jump is useful, it made jumps harder to make than necessary, as the camera movement tends to make the flashlight point in the wrong direction. Every time I had to do a double jump, I had to stop relying on the flashlight. But of course, not having double jump would need to rethink the level design...
- The first few jumps already need the player to master all the mechanics (flashlight, double jump, detect traps), maybe adding a bit of "tutorial" level, introducing mechanics one by one, would help the player.
- I don't find it useful to make the basic flashlight consume battery. You cannot see anything when the battery is empty, so you are basically stuck until it recharges. I would have put the battery only for the trap detector.
Leonardo Coyado
08. May 2021 · 16:43 UTC
Amazing work! I had so much fun!
Shimonster
08. May 2021 · 17:54 UTC
This was a cool game. It was super hard and you should have made it more apparent that you have a double jump. There were also some places where I had to make a leap of faith without knowing where anything was because it was too far down. It was also very hard to time your jump with the bullets so maybe make the bullets go slower and less often. Other than that, the music was really nice.
🎤 RadzioGadzioPL
09. May 2021 · 20:10 UTC
@jrevel
I understand you.
1. I didn’t consider that double jump and using flashlight may be a problem.
2. I may’ve made it to hard on start, but I didn’t have time to optimise it
3. Normal flashlight battery isn’t necessary in 1 level, but 2 uses this feature a lot more times. Without it 2nd level wouldn’t exist
Overall thanks for feedback.

@leonardo-coyado
Thanks a lot :D

@shimonster
Thanks for feedback. I made it maybe a little bit too hard. I’ve made a way in main menu screen to scroll and view controls, but it may not be intuitive. (Maybe because I didn’t have much time to think of tutorial).
I’ve updated my game and changed bullet shooting. I didn’t want to make it super easy and I didn’t want to make it too hard either. It’s not that easy to optimise game.
But thanks for feedback.