love the game art but the instructions while playing is a bit confusing, i couldn't do both at the same time

The graphics sound and music are beautiful the gameplay is interesting and engaging although i found drawing a bit tiring after a while but thats just cause i have the attention span of a gold fish. Overall i say this is one of the best games during this Ludum Dare for its presentation alone.

I did not manage to complete it. Even though I was spamming the power generator a spike spawning at the bottom killed me (is there a way to duck? Otherwise that's an unavoidable insta kill).

I like the graphics, sounds, gameplay, everything.

wow, great art and music. very innovative concept too. the gameplay is good and all but it's a little exhausting and uneasy to finish the game. nice job though :)

@chriiis88 Thanks for playing the game, the spikes under the ground you have to dodge to the side (use A and D to move). They are boss fight so you have to cast at least 2 spells in order to kill it. You can skip the intro by powering the generator down. At the certain depth it will remove the intro.

I love this, the spell drawing is SO SICK. Extremely fun to play with one hand on a wacom tablet and one hand on the keyboard frantically mashing spacebar. Its quite hard, you really have to split your focus between tracking the exclamation mark and paying attention to your drawing. Nice game!!

Love the blood dripping down mechanic!

@jim-jagers
Wow, thank you so much. Really appreciate. I know it can be a little bit fatig when draw but it fun and bring new experience, ain't it?

@cheese-man, thanks for playing the game. You can read the instruction by text under the itch.io page if you can not catch up. To skip the intro you can power the generator for the elevator to go down and it will automatically skip

The drawing was great. Im interested in how you detect when a spell is drawn correctly from a technical perspective.

@valid thanks man. I compare the fit score of the drawing points to the template points (I have to adjust the offset between points so they don't have to compare too much and too precise)
@martynas appreciated! The mechanic does not cost much time but it worth it. It gives the players the devil's mood
@iuunno Love! Drawing on the mouse easy too. You will get used to it if you play the games 2-3 times.

It's pretty hard but I like it. Nice work dude)

Very innovative! The controls are point and the idea of keeping yourself safe until reaching hell is amazing. Well done!! One of the best I played so far.

nice dick bro

Very cool. And an awesome take on the theme! Also Hellavator is a pretty kickass title.

Nice. Love the graphics. I remember lots of games with tracing elements on the DS, this game reminds me of that, but in a modern horror vibe of course. Penis reference broke the mood, though :( I hope to see you again in LD 49, cheers.

Love the design, very stressful and horrifying! Especially love having to focus on multiple things at once to increase tension, The animations were simple but very effective, the music really ramped up nicely, and the effects really sold the mood

Really nice well polished game, I like the details like the blood effects, the audio cues for the enemies etc. Great graphics and audio too.

@celtico Love your feedback, the D thing is trying to break the tension between you and the game a bit. It just a fun doodle or easter egg.

@manlymanton nice effort on stream tho. Great feed back

@pandepic love your feedback. Thankyou

@jackofcups Thanks! Great naming skill I think. Haha

thanks for sharing this awesome entry into the game jam. I felt like I was rubbing my head and chewing gum at the same time. It took a moment to adjust, but I started to get into the groove. nice work! Good luck with the jam! :)

Super tough game, but incredibly well done!

This was a cool game. It took me a bit to figure out what to do. I think I might even try again to beat it later. I really felt like an exorcist for a moment there. The challenge curve through the level felt difficult but the controls were so tight that I always felt in control. The art style was functional, unique, and interesting. I wish it was a bit better telegraphed that the generator pushes the elevator down - in general - don't explain the game, make the game explain itself better. Twas a great experience. Thank you for the game!

[Disclaimer](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/so-so-phia/done-with-compo-i-might-yet-move-to-jam-if-i-feel-like-it)

**Fun**

It took me a while to understand what was going on, but it's quite obvious after a few drawn symbols.

The character controls are a bit stiff. I'd make the movement discreet, but I understand it might cause trouble with collisions later on, when there's those spikes coming from the floor. It isn't very clear how far can the hands reach - I died a few times when I thought I was safe. I do appreciate the hazard variability that gradually builds up. The symbol drawing, though original, felt tedious to me. It was a struggle to execute the drawings properly.

**Innovation**

As I mentioned before, the symbol drawing didn't sit too well with me, but I can't say the mechanics weren't original. You had your plates to spin, and "draw stuff" and "use the generator" was a nice addition to "avoid stuff" game mechanics.

**Theme**

Elevator to hell is an interesting concept. Nothing too wild, but it's a cool idea that's creatively mixed with the game mechanics.

**Graphics**

Visuals are okay. My personal opinion is that if you use pixel art, it would be better to keep things really low res. Your style seems to me like it can't decide if it's a drawing or a pixel art, but it grew on me I guess. One thing I'd definitely do is add some hilights to as many objects as possible (it really adds dimension)
And some texture for the elevator background. I'd add another layer or two for the red dots in the background, and make them go different speed (thinking parallax). The blood dripping from the drawings is a really nice touch :ok_hand:

**Audio**

The in-game music is pretty cool. Sounds like it has two tracks? The menu music on the other hand lacks 'volume' for the lack of better term. One more track as a background could do wonders to it. A simple percussion or a bass line would IMO raise the quality tenfold. (I do understand the struggle. I made music for my game in 5-10 minutes since there was no more time for that.) The sound effects fit the game nicely.

**Mood**

The mood is a combination of graphics and audio in my view. Your graphics and audio work nicely together, creating a 8 bittish feeling, but I mentioned before what I found lacking in both categories.

**Overall**

The parts of the game work well together, as I mentioned in theme and graphics.

---

Good job on (and thank you for) finishing.

If you want to see my star ratings, you need to tell me explicitly. I can send it to you on twitter, discord, or leave it in the comments. I have no idea how this would affect the ratings from other people, so you decide if and where you want to receive them. If you want them on twitter, tweet a link to your game and tag me, or send me a PM. If you want them on discord, send me a link to your game on discord.

[@dizztalgamedev](https://twitter.com/dizztalgamedev)

Discord: kuro#4651

ty for the ggame!

very good mood, made it halfway the second tier. becomes quite challenging

I've seen the game yestarday on stream and only now after some sleep had time to actually play it. I spent about 30 minutes or so and din't manage to finish the game, but I had a LOT of fun and really liked all aspects of the game! I don't really find any major flaws, the only one might be is that the game is quite hard to master when it comes to collision and moving your character, but it doesn't affect the experience that much, so I was fine with that. You did an awesome job and I hope you'll participate in next Ludum Dare events! :)

Btw. this game really reminded me of the movie "Devil"... Combined with "The Exorcist", of course :D

Best game so far. Great mechanics, audio, grapics. Also you nailed humour part with pepe :P Gratz!

this was a very solid game, the fact it was made from scratch is great, unfortunatly im not very good at it! great concept but even after going back to it i couldnt get to the red area!

Music was not annoying and matches the stressful atmosphere.

The graphic style is minimal , but nice, having lots of demon hands grabbing for your live looks pretyt cool. I like the "death" animation of all dangerous thingies.

We have a neat tutorial explaining the basic concepts of the game AAND we can skip the tutorial, which is really nice.

Having 2 main tasks being fulfilled at the same time is fun, as we take care of incoming demons, while we have to power the elevator to not get spiked by the spiky spikes. Also we have to draw the signs on the wall, to beat the demons.

I did not understand blue/greenish eye thingies, i just tried to keep the engine going, while mostly ignoring that these eye thingies exist - but they still scared me.


The endboss suprised me in a way it killed me.

I have not yet defeted the endboss, but i'll have another try later on!
Nicely done!

Lovely game! One of those games I'll gladly open up during a break to see how far I get. Straight forward, slightly challenging and fit the theme. Well done!

Nice game! I had a lot of fun!

Fantastic game with a creative concept. The idea of having to juggle multiple different attacks and generator adds a lot to the excitement. My only suggestion is the game be a little faster, especially when it comes to resetting and wanting to skip the tutorial. The game is most fun when a lot is happening, but it takes a moment to get there and since it resets entirely on death it's a bit hard to ramp up to try again. This would be a great game on mobile/tablet!

Incredible game. It was really fun playing on my pen tablet. I had a great time. Great work!

Very fun concept with the drawing and some unexpected twists in the sigils to draw haha. Sorry I didn't get to your game while you were still watching. I wasn't sure what to do about some of the attacks, so I mostly just kept drawing and operating the generator but I still had a lot of fun with it. The audio and the graphics were top notch, and the gameplay is pretty fun.

Wow this was a really cool idea! I really appreciated that you could skip the tutorial. I think the game just took a bit too long to get to the boss, made retrying the boss fight kinda tedious. But that's my main nitpick.

Here's our timestamped video: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1003143985?t=5h27m20s

Excellent game! had a blast

Just the fact that you can play the game with a drawing tablet and it makes sense to play it this way, is just brilliant! The take on the theme is very original and overall idea is really nice! I did not beat the boss yet (as you could see on my stream) but I will try to get back to it! Great job!

Pretty cool concept! I really enjoyed it. The mood is very cool and the gameplay is fun. I really enjoyed drawing those pictures. Controls were super cool and responsive

Nice game ! The only problem to me is that it is a bit too hard and long to skip the intro after each try.

The completion-ist in me wanted to keep the generator going and push my limits to keep it on even though demons were spawning. The mix of generator mechanic, spawning demons and the drawings kept me busy. Very fun! SUPER AMAZING concept!

Presentation was excellent. Dripping effect on blood/paint was nice touch. A checkpoint system would had been nice to have, I don't think I'll be finishing this. :D Good job for a compo entry!

Heyo, thanks for submitting your game to the stream the other day! Here's the vod if ya wanna rewatch, I hope my feedback was helpful!

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1002310964

Lovely animation!

The concept is really fun ! the pixel art work very well, nice job !

Nice Game, the drawing was a little tiresome after some time. Some of the Images did exite me a little bit ;-)
love the idea

What an awesome game! I liked the whole gameplay. It was very challenging, so I guess you could spend a lot of time trying to finish the game. I almost managed to complete the game, but failed in the end... :(

Well done !

Really cool idea, thought hands on the left side were pretty much harmless. On the other hand I had hard time predicting whether hands on the right wall would actually hit me or not. I really liked it regardless

This game is *very* addicting, congratulations on that. I kept dying and I kept playing... I'll probably play some more later. I want to see Lucifer. lol. The art and audio jive together well to create a creepy atmosphere. I'm not sure why but pixel art has such a great capacity to be creepy and claustrophobic to me.

I'm not sure I have any major complaints, except perhaps there should be a health bar so that one mistake doesn't kill you instantly. That's more of a design decision though, so it could go either way. The game does seem pretty difficult, but maybe I'm just bad haha. Superb entry, seriously well done.

Amazing game! Really original idea and fits the theme really well. Gameplay is smooth and easy to grasp. Art and sounds are great and create some good mood. I'm really impressed that you made it alone in just 48 hours. Awesome job!

Where does all the blood come from?

Loved the graphics, but was a bit confused at first. Would have liked to be able to choose when to continue text, instead of having it progress automatically. Good submission!

That was a very fun game. My only issue was having to mash space bar for so long. I have weak little fingers so they get tired. I wonder if there's another mechanic that would be less tiring

Loved the whole vibe, and the core mechanic was really fun to play. Great graphics too.

Good game Mechanics. Great job with this entry.

It was a somehow difficult, but good as a challenge.

This was such perfect game, it was so much fun to play. I laughed out loud after penis drawing. For everything, perfect score!

Great concept, the drawing worked really well.
Made it to the boss on the first run, kept dying to demons that I didn't think would reach me after that.

Great work.

Amazing concept! I could have played for hours but unfortunately there were other games in the queue. I had some difficulty drawing with my mouse and the pentagram was the hardest. I kept getting ambushed with no warning from demon hands on the bottom right. Not all the time though. Great work and thanks for sharing! :clap: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1003785681?t=2h46m9s

The drawing mechanic feels so good, love the lil blood polish! Would love to see another mechanic on the left of the elevator to make demons on that side an actual issue! :D

Very cool game, love the graphics! A bit hard to write the symbols at times but really fun concept and well executed!

Great work!

This is a Really Solid Entry. Simple to understand difficult to master. Flawlessly executed. The art is fun, and reads easily for the game play. The difficulty progression is fair (unless you’re as uncoordinated as I am). All around great game.
Thank you for bringing it by my stream. Here's a link to the VOD:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1003360373?t=3h49m43s

> (guitar playing) Tadada. Tadoda... Todoa tododa taa taaa daaa!
>
> (Drums starts)
>
> Dodgin' Monster
> Castin' Speel
> Paintin blood rune on the wall
> Askin' power'
> Turnin' the wheel
> Takin' everythin' in my stride
> Don't need dyin'
> Don't need warnin'
> Ain't nothin' that I'd rather do
>
> Goin' down
> Party time
>
> My friends are gonna be there too
> I'm on the Hellvator
> On the Hellvator to hell
> Hellvator to hell
> I'm on the Hellvatorto hell

---- hem, back to regular review -----

I uploaded our gameplay of your game on youtube, you can find it here: https://www.youtube.be/watch?v=1F0Ywiy2Mt8&t=3078s

Thanks for being part of the stream, it was amazing! :smile:

This game is really fun. The graphics are very nice, I love your character. I think the game is fair but require more skills than I have. (I would need to train to reach deeper)

Overall, a very good entry!

@togis you made a song about my game? Wow, impressive! I love your playthrough and feedback. You've done a great job on playing my game. Thankyou!

@okamit Just trying out different stuff, you can give 2, 3 tries and you will used to the drawing. I love your feedback, thankyou.

@ramble-house-games love your playthrough, thanks for your feedback though!

@lenophie you have to make it to the bottom to know the left part of the elevator will be useful sometimes.

@xeke-death thanks for your feedback.

@baconn00 ooooh neat, i have to retry now!

Played the game on stream. Had to check it out because of symbol drawing mechanics! Loved it! Finished from the 3d try as soon as i realized that i needed to power the generator, lol! Really unique combination of mechanics, loved the look and the music! Can't imagine you did this alone in 48 hours! A bit disappointed that i can't rate it in humor, cause of that one symbol that shall not be named, that's 5 star humor right there :D

Oh and i think i didn't have any trouble finishing it cause i read this in the description: "The X marks indicates the horizontal spikes. You can’t dodge that by simply moving around so keep the elevator running down to dodge instead." That probably should be in the tutorial too. Also i just drew 90% of the shape and waited for demons to appear to kill them with it.

FUCK YOU SATAN!

That was fantastic! I got to the boss fight a few times, but kept forgetting about the floor :rage:

I really liked how the relative simplicity of the different mechanics came together to make an engaging and challenging experience. The whole thing was really well done.

Excellent job!

Addictive! :-)
I love the games that are simple to grasp (easy controls, simple mechanics to understand), yet are engaging and addictive. This is an awesome entry. I suck at the drawing but I guess it's pretty forgiving. I had a hard time getting far lol. But seeing streamers play it I wonder if you could add some difficulty setting... perhaps if you cover too many pixels outside of the drawing it doesn't count or something? :-)
I was going to comment the left side seemed very favored by the demons but I guess you've already answered that I have to be able to get further down?
Anyway, love it pretty much in all categories.

the drawing mechanic is amazing and intresting, the one bad thing for me it just keep hitting the space to go down it should just be keep holding it down.

Feedback
- Loved it
- the symbol system is so good
- What were the eyes for

The game itself is good, I like the mechanics, it remembered me of Lost Magic, a very cool NDS game.

But please, if you ask a streamer to play your game at Twitch, remove the dicks from it. It's a good joke, but I don't want to explain it to Twitch.

Wow this game is impressive, wouldn't believe at first that it was a compo game! Everything works really fine and it's a pleasure to play it. The sole improvement that I could see is to nerf the possibility to just paint the whole wall to activate the spell, but except that minor thing, I couldn't find anything else to add. The game looks awesame, great art direction. I'm a bit admirative, exceptionnal job, well done :D

The game is really cool!
I've seen this type of drawing mechanic before but it's very well included in the design and theme. I also love the detail of the blood drops on the wall (by the way a priest drawing pentacles with blood?). The game is quite hard but I finished it!
I just found it weird that the hands coming out of the top of the elevator are indicated in the same way as the one at the bottom, even though they can't catch us.
Very solid compo participation!

Hey So I ended up finishing the game! The art style was really nice. Now I think that when you are on the generator it should automatically make progress without pressing space. It was hart to press a button constantly and draw and move to avoid the hands/spikes. Other then that change the game is fun!

Thanks for bringing your game by my stream for playtesting! If you’d like to revisit the play and commentary you can view the highlight at https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1007523286

I wanted, for a little while, to be in the priest's place. It must be very exciting to be in that situation. But it is obvious that I would like to reach the end alive. : D
I thought the idea was very original. The mechanics were well thought out and some drawings, in addition to laughter, gave me a little work to draw. Simple art and engaging music.
Great job.

Congratulations to the team.

[Thanks for submitting your game to our stream!](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1006873415?t=04h40m44s)

What a great one to end the night on! This was a super polished experience with such a neat concept to boot. I think my only criticism is that I only ever really cared about demons that were spawning on the bottom-right portion of the screen. Since very few things ever spawned in the middle (except near the end), I could stay there safely almost all of the time, which meant that the demons that spawned on the left wall were rarely, if ever, a concern for me.

Still, all of that being said, I had a blast with this one. Stellar job here! :ok_hand:

I liked the idea and I enjoyed the increase in difficulty. The art effects and strategy you had to use were all fun.

Very cool idea! It's really polished, the mechanics are very solid and the goal is clear. Drawing with a mouse is a little bit hard and frustrating. A mobile version would be perfect. Great job!

Interesting idea. Nice graphics and audios! Great combo.

Hey! Thanks for submitting your game for us to play on stream!

Its a really nice game, which greatly fits the theme! I like the mechanic where you have to draw signs to kill demons (though considering the D-one, I would prefer to have SFW mode). I also like that there is a boss fight.

It was definitely fun to play, though a bit difficult for me. Great game!

Here is a timed link for the stream:
https://youtu.be/vC17EaL3CcI?t=5142

I liked mechanics in the game :) It is too difficult for me, but I like how it fits the theme

love the drawing spells in this game, so much fun. Great work building a lot of chaos within this small elevator boundry! It makes you pay attention and rewards you with drawing genitals on the elevator wall lol. Good work team, solid entry!

@coleslaughter thank you so much, your playthrough is the best! Keep doing game review!

@juliestrator love your playthrough and comment on the game!

@nikolay-zapolnov it's okay, I hope you love the game! Thankyou

@evgeniya-zapolnova thankyou, at least you tried!

@ruddiculous hahaha I'm glad you love that little easter egg

@marcmagus Thankyou, I love your reaction and playthrough!

[Thank you for the submitting the game to the stream. If you want to rewatch the feedback, you can do so here.](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1008357028?t=01h04m36s)

Such a cool game! The drawing mechanic was a really awesome idea and the game gets hectic REAL fast.

The sounds are simple but so effective here, combined with the subtle screen shake it adds a lot of feedback to the player (and with it messing up your drawing sometimes, it becomes part of the mechanics too!). The music ehhhhhonestly 10/10 haha. I thought at first it was going to just keep looping the intro/tutorial music, but then it ramps up and immediately tells the player "you better be ready, because you aren't in kansas anymore guy" then towards the end it gets WAY dramatic and I loved it!

This kind of stressful games trying to manage a lot of things at once under a time pressure usually isn't my kind of game, but I REALLY want to finish it (I tried like 10 more times today and got so close a few times). There was one run where they kept popping up at the bottom right consecutively, and a couple times where I thought I was safe but he still got me, but for the most part it feels fair/balanced, just really hard! xD

If you catch me streaming again, stop by and I'll keep giving it a shot! Really solid entry especially for compo!

ah why is humor not a rating category here? this by far game me one of the best laughs of the jam and rightly so! i had a good time playing it and i am definitely on the lookout for more games from you.

Pretty innovative concept, though you could cheese it a bit by just scribbling. I like the concept of doing 2 different things with each hand. Kind of reminds me of that thing where you try to tap your head while rubbing your belly.

This was incredible; I usually make my games with puzzley mechanics first and add polish/mood/etc later, so I can't possibly imagine coming up with this idea; I would have thrown it out because the mechanics don't sound interesting. But WOW it's 100% mood and it is GOOD.

I really like the decision to not draw a line between the current and previous mouse positions, forcing you to etch the sigils slowly and deliberately. Forcing me to mash space must have been a similarly deliberate choice, but I wish that one was less hand-hurting somehow... maybe by making it more clear to the player when they were going max speed and didn't need to power the generator anymore? anyway, amazing work!

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1008218448?t=02h27m37s

I really like the drawing mechanics, and the whole concept is quite innovative. Plus the name of the game sounds like a title of a movie Nicholas Cage would be in! :D

The Mood was gorgeous and the mechanics are pretty nice.

I had one or two small critic points like, when the X appears to far to the Bottom you can't do anything against dying.

But Overall I liked the GAme very much, even I couldn't beat it. It was a lot of Fun experience this game with its great drawing mechaing which especially was awesome.

Well Done, Great Job

Tha game has a nice atmosphere to it. I liked how the graphics look, especially the power generator. The detection of the marks is sometimes seems a little unfair, I felt like the margin should be a little bigger. It'd also be nice to start from after-the-tutorial point, not to watch the texts again. OVerall, this is a really nice entry, interesting concept.

I love the drawing mechanics implements in this game, it makes for a very interesting dynamic where I have to choose between drawing or dodging the enemies. I do think it would make for some more interesting decision making for the player if the generator would move around. Otherwise the splattering of the blood and all of the different demon attacks are very cool, congrats on making something so intriguing during just 48 hrs of development! <3

Nice job! If you change anything about https://www.mumsports.com/ the game in the future, I would say a dash indicator is the way to go, I wasn’t sure whether I was about to blast off into space or just do a little hope. Best of luck getting all the ratings you need!