RoTable by Vitor Milioni

RoTable is a platformer game created for the Ludum Dare 49. In this funny little project you are a table, and you can only move around rotating your table legs around to flail around the level as best as you can. You can also collect wood oil cans to reduce the timer, how fast can you complete all 10 levels?

Try to avoid all the pitfalls and obstacles of day to day life as you try to roll yourself back to your cozy living room, sorrounded by all your chair friends.

The oil cans look tempting, but if you take too long to take them it might not be worth it! They are in alternate paths a bit above the ground, so going low might be the safe bet.
Credits:
Programmers: Vitor Milioni, Bruno Zisman
Artist: Ian Victor de Souza
Music and sound effects: Vitor Milioni
| Link | https://milionissimo.itch.io/rotable |
| Link | https://milionissimo.itch.io/rotable |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/rotable |
Ratings
| Overall | 553th | 3.66⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 392th | 3.73⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 391th | 3.64⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 508th | 3.8⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 876th | 3.47⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 823th | 2.98⭐ | 52🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 167th | 3.908⭐ | 51🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 640th | 3.5⭐ | 50🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 49🗳️ | 82🗨️ |
Good job overall!! The graphics look good and the table looks really polished :3
@sarah glad you enjoyed it! our artist really worked a lot for all the project being the solo artist, so that comment is really nice :p thanks a lot
@nathant i personally had a lot of fun testing it out and getting lost in the controls, so it makes me really happy you think so too! thanks for trying it out and for the nice words c:
RIP Erad Mudul, 1949
On the other hand I think the game concept is good, it gave me "getting over it" vibes. I think that exploring this gameplay on a more vertical and connected way on level design would be nice.
@jpcard thanks for the feedback, the retry button is there, it's just labeled as "restart level" but now that you said that i realize i didn't make it clear that ESC pauses the game, i'll do that on itch, regarding the music i could only get 16 bars in, in a future project i'll try for more so it hopefully isn't as repetitive. And the connected level and vertical gameplay is a great idea, but i think for a gamejam i'd still leave it like that because the loss of progress and frustration might be a bit of a mood killer xD but it's something i'll keep in mind if i work further on this, so thanks a lot for the suggestions!
@darsa thanks for the song mention, it was my first time doing anything related to music so i'm happy to hear that c: it's indeed very difficult towards the end xD sorry for the annoying bits and thanks for playing regardless, means a lot to us!
Falando um pouco sobre o jogo de vocês, eu achei que foi uma ideia genial e bastante divertida! Passei quase meia hora jogando, sem nem perceber kkkk. Tudo funciona muito bem, os gráficos, musica e principalmente a jogabilidade. A interpretação do tema que vocês tiveram, se encaixa perfeitamente com a ideia de movimentar as pernas da mesa. Tudo é simples, prático, funcional e divertido. Em geral, eu achei o jogo de vocês muito bem produzido. Vocês estão de parabéns!
Por fim, gostaria de dizer que eu estarei seguindo vocês aqui na Ludum Dare, para poder acompanhar o trabalho de vocês de perto e também faço um convite para nós seguirem (eu e minha equipe), caso vocês queiram nos observar de perto também. Quem sabe numa futura gamejam não possamos trabalhar juntos? :)
Abraços e tudo de bom para vocês!
@vphyre Po muito obrigado irmão, espero que vc tenha se divertido! Com certeza vou seguir voces, fico inclusive lisonjeado pelo convite, ao longo dessas jams ja pode me considerar um fã gehwruibgheuw sucesso pra todos nós!
Really impressed by how innovative this game was. Never seen anything like it.

I was definitely having a lot of fun and cursing you devs at the same time while playing this. Such intentionally bad controls that it was hilarious to see how clumsy the table was.

In any case, it's a really original idea, and I love it! Great work.
@100th-coin Glad you liked it! You can restart the level on the pause menu, just press esc and select "restart level". I just recently updated that on the description to make it clearer, apparently a lot of people missed that cause it's kinda hidden so i tried to make it a bit more easy to find at least. Thanks a lot for the feedback c:
Everyone else thanks a lot for the kind words, as much as feedback is important i do also love just hearing if you had fun with the game and where you were stuck as well, hope you had at least a bit of fun xD
Really fun and frustrating at the same time, reminds me a lot of QWOP in that regard. Nice art and gameplay, everything felt varied and gave a new challenge on each screen. Not that I was good enough to get to all the screens. Great work!
The main issue I have with the game is how it's really difficult to pinpoint which leg you're spinning with which control. I think you've already mentioned updating leg visuals so kudos on that.
p.s. Why is the table already assembled when you escape the box
@alexthehuman2 thanks a lot for the comment, specially thanks for the mention on the soundtrack, it was my first time doing sound for a game so i wasn't so sure of myself there :p also the table assembled itself so it could escape, talk about willpower huh? but as you can see, it didn't assemble itself very well xD
In particular, they are both based on the core concept of managing finicky physics in order to progress through a level. But there is one important difference, which is that Getting Over It has extremely intuitive controls, and all the difficulty comes from the physics. But this game has both unintuitive controls and finicky physics.
That is to say--almost every time I tried to do something, I would end up rotating the legs the wrong way. I would also often rotate the wrong leg. This isn't a case of me failing to master the physics--it's a case of me failing to master the controls. The buttons I pushed very rarely corresponded to what I thought they would do. I would think I was rotating a particular leg clockwise, and I ended up actually pushing the button that rotated the other leg counterclockwise. I am mostly interested in pointing out that this kind of control-based difficulty is distinct from the purely physics-based difficult in Getting Over It. (Although, I think it may be a lot more similar to e.g. QWOP).
Now, I think this is actually probably a good thing. The Getting Over It formula works for Getting Over It, but exploring different kinds of frustrating gameplay--such as gameplay where the controls themselves are difficult to perform--is a lot more novel then just making a game with the exact same frustrations as Getting Over It. I just think it is worth making sure that you're aware that your game uses a different kind of frustration mechanic, and making sure that your level design and game design accomplishes what you want.
It is interesting, for example, that a lot of the gameplay in this game is easier to do by simply holding two buttons down then by trying to do it with any strategy or precision. This is a fine thing to have in your game design. But if your goal was for the first few levels to require any real mastery of the controls, that goal was not quite met, I think.
One other comment: I find that I really like the graphics and the level design in this game. When I reach a screen, I never know exactly what the obstacles are going to be, because the scene looks like just a normal drawing. But then the obstacles end up being pretty easy to understand as soon as I run into them, and the cleverness of the level design starts to become more obvious as I try to navigate around the obstacles.
The flying around at the begining is intentional! I tought it was super fun to just spin legs and see where the table goes, and i think not demanding anything from a regular player would make it a more fun experience overall for everybody, because if you just wanna flail about you can still enjoy the game for what it is and get past several scenes, but later in the game we limit this by putting obstacles above as well, such as shelves and lamps.
We still wanted to make sure to reward players who took the time to learn the controls, because as you said they are not as intuitive xD so the idea of a timer came about, but that would punish people and would not be cool, so instead we decided that the timer should go up, and not down. That way you can play in your own pace, but for people who, much like me, love speedrunning, the game itself encourages you to do so!
Thanks a lot for the comment and taking the time to play, i hope you had fun! Any feedback means a lot to me, but one as detailed as that and from someone who made a game i liked so much even more so c: