Leaf the Ghost behind by BiOs3008

You are beeing chased by a blue ghost. "Why?" i hear you ask. Well, you stole the leaf green soap bubble extract only found in the blue ghost mountains. Try to escape the blue ghost who was in charge of guarding the soap bubble extract. Gain additional time by picking up clocks you find all over thr trail.

Controls
W A S D or Arrow keys to move. Space to jump.
Credits
- @Singular (Stefan Knetsch): Code / Art / Design / Animation / Particle effects
- @BiOs3008 (Grigorios Gkisios): Art / Design / Animation / SFX & Music
- @Cedric86 (Cedric Brupbacher): Code / Art / Design / Animation / SFX
Tools used
- Unity
- Blender
- PhotoShop
- Music Maker
- Visual Studio
- Affinity Designer
- Audacity
Known issues
- No score board available yet.
- Design only done for 2/3 of the game.
Post Jam Change Log
- Front an Back colliders don't kill momentum anymore.
- There was a significant slow down of the players momentum when landing after a jump. Removed it for jumps where the landing point is the same hight or higher than the jumping point. (Game is now a bit easier)
- Design improved. (Still not done)
| Link | https://epicstuffforyou.itch.io/leaf-the-ghost-behind |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/leaf-the-ghost-behind |
Ratings
| Overall | 959th | 3.321⭐ | 72🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 857th | 3.229⭐ | 72🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1157th | 2.746⭐ | 71🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 909th | 3.471⭐ | 71🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 660th | 3.684⭐ | 70🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 553th | 3.406⭐ | 71🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 689th | 2.933⭐ | 62🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 922th | 3.266⭐ | 64🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 91🗳️ | 136🗨️ |
The front and background invisible walls are absolute momentum killers. Touch one mid air and you will fall completely down, this mixed with the little use of the actual 3D space makes is best played like a 2D platformer with very few places where changing depth is actually required.
@chusmimax oh man you're right i completely forgot to code that out with the front an back wall killing the momentum. Well, gonna add that to list of known issues. Thank you for playing and commenting.
I am pretty bad at these types of games, so I failed a lot.
Nice music, and neat graphics, well done!
Thank you all for playing and your kind words. :-)
@chingle yes those grunts were voiced by @bios3008 XD
I gave you guys an almost perfect art score. Each piece on its own is really well made and would have gotten a 5, but combining the different art styles felt to me like it lost a little bit of value. I know paper style 2D characters have been done in 3D environments before and looked good. I think the difference for me was low poly/pixel style art mixed with really clean vector art. Even on the main menu, pixelated font on top of the super sharp bubbles just clashed a little bit.
But that is literally the only critique I have, the rest of it was awesome, nice job and congrats on the impressive entry!
Regardless this is a solid effort. It's been a while since I've played this type of games and after playing yours I want to play more games in this genre!
The sound effects are very nice, especially the satisfying bubble pops.
The gameplay is also fun, but only for a while. Eventually jumping over the same platforming sections multiple times gets boring. I think it would have been cool if you added some sort of soap related platform mechanics like being able to build up speed by sliding on soapy platforms and ramps.
However, after a while the blue ghost suddenly caught up with me and killed me, while I felt like I was doing great.
By the way the ghost catches up to you, once the remaining time counter in the top right becomes 0.
The controls could need a bit polishing, but that's the case for every game in a gamejam ^^
Good job!
I LOVE the artstyle. I am pretty sure this is inspired by the Paper Mario artstyle and the ghosts are from Luigi's Mansion 3? You managed to create your own spin on the look though.
I do not dislike the music, but I don't think it fits the game at all.
I wish there would have been more to it after a while, but nothing new happened after 2-3 minutes so I just died due to not paying enough attention to the controls anymore.
Music is nice. Still listening while I write this.
Not sure if this was intentional, but there were some surfaces where I was halfway in the ground.
Also, coyote time on the jump would be a nice "quality of life" improvement.
Good entry. Keep it up!
My other critique doesn't have so much to do with the gameplay itself as it does with the player- the game is *very* laggy on WebGL, and this is with hardware acceleration on. I feel like half the challenge came solely from the heavy input delay alone!
The graphics on the other hand were quite good! Although the artstyle was inconsistent at times (the 2D cut-out look should have been given to everything or nothing at all IMO) I really liked it overall! The sound design was also done well.
When the game worked as intended, it was enjoyable, so I really think that, with a bit of polishing and reworking of the levels, this can be a really fun and addictive mobile type game (owing to the limited controls)! Good job :D
A few notes though
Given my experience in making 2.5D platformers (around 2 years), I can say there are some problems:
- You should not slow down the character on landing - this breaks the flow (especially when someone is chasing you). Think of Sonic or Ori or any other successful platformer out there
- You should spend a lot of time working on collisions - extend a bit the collision of each platform so the player can jump even after leaving the platform by a few pixels. This helps the player feel more skilled/accomplished
The thing that chases you should have a well-defined shape to know when exactly it will get you. Your big sprite was a bit misleading. Afterwards, I found out that it does not matter - the only thing that matters was the time, which made it quite okay.
Nevertheless, I think your game is finished, well polishe, and has good art. I enjoyed playing it :)