Sleepy Trouble by Stevi60
Delve into Mary's nightmares.
She needs your help to find her Teddy Bear which is the key to overcome the darkness of her dreams.
But be careful, her soul can't spend to much time out of her body.

CONTROLS:
WASD | Arrow Keys | Left Joystick - Move
Space | A Button - Jump
Z | H | Left or Right Trigger - Dash
X | J | Y Button - Shockwave
C | K | X Button - Recall
V | L | B Button - Interact


| Link | https://stevi60.itch.io/sleepy-trouble |
| Link | https://stevi60.itch.io/sleepy-trouble |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/sleepy-trouble |
Ratings
| Overall | 119th | 4.109⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 306th | 3.797⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 405th | 3.672⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1157th | 3.453⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 45th | 4.609⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 98th | 4.177⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 604th | 3.065⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 114th | 4.258⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 55🗳️ | 39🗨️ |
@sarafilipa Yes, we noticed the levers were pretty hard to spot, because they blended so much with the background. We thought about adding blue light on them, but it was near the end of the jam and we had to solve a few bugs.
Some remarks:
1. Levers are not really visible. Expectation: more colorful levers.
2. Pretty intricate control scheme. Accidental teleportations happen pretty frequently. Expectations:
2.1. Key for teleportation is far enough of jump key.
2.2. Automatic teleportation happens instead of death after time left.
3. "Play again" button doesn't work. Expectation: game continues from the last checkpoint.
Played HTML5 version in Google Chrome using arrows + ZXCV control scheme.
Great job!
The music and audio are nice, the game plays pretty smoothly
Also, perhaps losing all of your "health" shouldn't put you back to the beggining, it feels a bit punishing
It's really impressive anyway!
I found the artwork stunning as well. The sprites and environment were all really well made (and some of the paintings were ...interesting?), and the black and white colour scheme did make it feel more dream-like. The blue glowing when using your abilities was very nice looking too and it made the whole thing feel more ethereal. One complaint I have is that the levers are a little hard to see - though as you've already said, some blue light could've made them stand out more. The effects added that extra bit of visual flavour to the game too. As for the sound design and music, it was wonderful. The music was a great match for the feel of the game, and didn't feel too intrusive. The sound effects were also pleasing to listen to, and the variance in them was great.
Overall, I really loved this game. The gameplay, the graphics, the sound - it all came together to make something really enjoyable. I had a great time playing it, and you did a phenomenal job making it!
Thanks for the feedback ! It's really important for us to understand how we could have made things better and how we can improve ourselves. Since several people told us that levers are complicated to spot, I think that we're going to fix them while ameliorating our game.
Once again, thank you! Thank you all!
Two things I noted however :
- The game need more diverse plateforme, the level design isn't fun enough. I'm sure I rushed one or two "level" without realizing it. (Probably the last two)
- I would have love to play the game with color, like, for example (Just an idea), goign back when you get the teddy bear, with other mechanic, etc...
If your team decide to push the game idea more and more, to maybe a release with more complexe level, and a longer story, I would love to be notified ! <3
As far as complaints go, the penalty for failure(restarting the whole game) is a bit harsh and could be softened, the keyboard controls felt a bit awkward to me, and the lack of color made platforms hard to read against the background.
All that said I think there's a lot more potential in this mechanic than was tapped in the jam and I look forward to seeing where y'all take it!
The game itself is a wonderful and cure short little experience that I loved every moment of. I think this is my favorite submission so far.
I would've loved to have seen a bit more color in the environment, I know the monochrome color scheme was supposed to represent the dream world but I think it would have been a nice effect for the world to be seen in color when you reach the end of the game.
Yeah it wasn't designed as a wasd keyboard at first, we're French so we have zqsd keyboards and made our game based on this. We tried to map it for a wasd keyboard but we had a lot of trouble. :')
As for the environment suggestion, that's actually what we want to do next. We're just waiting for the right time to continue the game's development.
Le feeling des contrôles est excellent à prendre en main. Tout semble fluide et chaque ability est agréable à utiliser. Le seul truc qui pose problème, et qui a déjà été mentionné, c'est le mapping au clavier. Un WASD et peut-être quelque chose comme IJKL pour les compétences aurait été peut-être été plus efficace selon moi. Le fait de mourir sans checkpoint quand on tombe à court d'énergie est très punitif pour une game jam, et tout le monde ne sera peut-être pas assez motivé de tout refaire si il était proche de la fin. Un simple retour au corps aurait été peut-être moins violent pour apprendre, ou au moins un message dès le début qui préviens que plus d'énergie = back to the beginning.
Les graphismes sont splendides, les animations sont belles, l'environnement est meublé et très sympa. Là encore, le seul point négatif selon moi est que toutes les couleurs chaleureuses et vibrantes sont perdues pendant tout le jeu à cause du filtre noir et blanc pour donner l'idée de monde du sommeil. C'est un parti pris, mais ce qui aurait pu être très cool ça aurait été d'avoir une "aura" des vraies couleurs autour des points d'intérêts à visiter pour faciliter la visibilité.
J'ai l'air critique mais ce ne sont que des suggestions pour pousser le projet si c'est dans vos objectifs. Dans l'ensemble c'était très plaisant et polished, surtout en si peu de temps !
Concernant les contrôles, nous sommes d'accord, le jeu est plus agréable à la manette mais finalement pas très opti pour le clavier.
La question du checkpoint s'est également posé et nous aurions du être plus tolérant pour la mort.
Dans tout les cas nous pouvons toujours améliorer le jeu !
Merci pour les retour <3