Lab Slime by Cheville

[raw]
made by Cheville for Ludum Dare 51 (JAM)

Lab Slime is a game where you are meant to navigate a maze, designed to test the player's reaction and input speed. Scientists orchestrated an ever increasing maze that you're meant to accomplish within 10 seconds. For every successful completion of the maze, the maze will increase by one tile, increasing until you slip up or fail to reach the end within the time limit. As you progress the game, the variety of tiles shall increase. There are 3 gamemodes, one being the previously styled gamemode, another that is without the tile variety and one more where the tiles increase instead of reaching a goal. Recorded Highscores are only temporary due to LD limitations, should you want to have saved high scores, then I recommend playing the downloadable version.

Credits:

Art and Sound: Vatx

Programming, QA and Project Lead: Cheville

Controls:

WASD - Navigate/Move

Enter - Confirm

Escape - Pause/Cancel

ezgif-4-b216b27737.gif

Ratings

Overall 342th 3.732⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Fun 248th 3.768⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 775th 3.107⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Theme 493th 3.75⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 603th 3.607⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Audio 454th 3.37⭐ 29🧑‍⚖️
Mood 750th 3.268⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Given 23🗳️ 36🗨️

Feedback

Kregap
04. Oct 2022 · 10:14 UTC
Very nice. Interesting concept, very polished. Impressive.
01edward01
04. Oct 2022 · 10:16 UTC
Game is so fun to play! check out my game too!
BenTheTwoOfUs
04. Oct 2022 · 10:16 UTC
Simple, intuitive, and fun.

Hey, bro. Although the genres are different, we both made games with slimes.
Vetche Studio
04. Oct 2022 · 10:17 UTC
Very nice game! The difficulty is really nice, and it's really satisfying when you manage to reach the goal! Would love to see a speedrun of this kind of game! Nice job :D
Georgy
04. Oct 2022 · 10:19 UTC
Very fast for me. But the game is very beautiful and the slime animation is awesome. I like it.
Jeremia
04. Oct 2022 · 10:21 UTC
I could click buttons with my mouse in the main menu of the embedded game, in the ludum dare page.
But I managed to navigate with WASD and Enter.

I made it to level 13 on my 5th try:

![highscore](///raw/9cf/12/z/51ea5.png)
Javid Ladhani
04. Oct 2022 · 10:22 UTC
Super fun and frustrating at the same time! I did get a little dizzy from the camera movements, maybe it would be better to smoothly follow the player. It is nice to change gamemode to get away from frustration by my low skill, to find my skill has not improved by choosing another gamemode. Great job!
🎤 Cheville
04. Oct 2022 · 10:30 UTC
@javid-ladhani Apologies about the camera movement. I know there's some persistent issues with the camera and jumping. It was a real struggle considering keeping the animation consistency and making sure the player can always see where they're meant to be. I do believe I could've improved on it though! Thank you for the positivity and criticisms all the same.
LDJam user 298496
04. Oct 2022 · 10:30 UTC
Really solid game this, looks and plays really nicely.
keip
04. Oct 2022 · 13:15 UTC
I think the idea behind the game is great. it would have been nice to have an online highscore so that you can compare yourself with others. The ever-changing structure of the levels is really good. Keep it up. well done
🎤 Cheville
04. Oct 2022 · 13:26 UTC
I would love to have researched on how to record online highscores, though with all that it entailed I sadly didn't have time for it. It was on my mind but I didn't spare a second putting the game together and sadly it didn't quite fit.
SLEEPYMENACE
04. Oct 2022 · 14:24 UTC
Simple, brutal, and unforgiving, I love it. Made it to level 15 before I had to go get my laundry, will definitely give it more attempts. Those arrow-to-circle teleport tiles are devilish.

As others have already mentioned, the camera movement is really abrupt. I can feel my eyes straining if I move too quickly. Just a very slight smoothing would make it feel a lot better, I think.

Great game, guys, really fun!
Miklo
04. Oct 2022 · 15:11 UTC
slime
OtterFaeLure
04. Oct 2022 · 19:08 UTC
I kept dying on/before level 9 and eventually had to quit because the game was giving me a headache and nausea.
I know it was mentioned by somebody else but I'm just gonna quickly echo - that camera jump is really intense.
It can really mess up the day of people with various health issues.
(No worries on my end though - I'll be fine within 3 minutes =) )

Other than that it seemed fine.
When I first fell off the edge I was SHOCKED, and then it was like oh so that's how we're playing... and I was hooked.
I loved how it kinda looked like Chip's Challenge. And I also love slimes.

All around this is a great entry, accessibility issues aside. =)
Decipator
05. Oct 2022 · 16:16 UTC
The game plays nicely! Altho I fell several times haha.

One thing that was not clear at first was the scene depth the color of the outside floor tiles is on the same tone of the level itself, making it hard to understand the depth, making it a bit darker and increasing a bit the gradient on the level walls would make it clearer that you can potentially fall.

Also the fall animation could be done respecting the world perspective.

Other than that, great game, very addictive.
benskca
05. Oct 2022 · 17:38 UTC
I loved this! Super satisfiying movement and the sounds effects add a lot to how responsive it feels. I got sucked into "one more run" for quite a while, my high score was ~200 in normal mode. I really liked the visuals as well, very clear which helps a lot for a game where you're taking in so much info as fast as you can. Great job!
CookieRA
05. Oct 2022 · 20:16 UTC
Good game, but I don't like losing all my progress bc of a miss-input, but that just me.
Very nice!
Mikushi
06. Oct 2022 · 16:02 UTC
Fun game, the music gets you in the right mood! I'll echo the sentiments on the camera movements, I got dizzy really quick, would play it more if that was fixed.
LDJam user 202408
06. Oct 2022 · 18:03 UTC
Had a lot of fun playing this game! it's really brain melting especialy on endless mode, really love the art style as well and the cute looking creature (poor thing didn't have to suffer :smile:)

the level generation is trully impressive, I'm guessing it's procedural which is something to be proud of as you really nailed that aspect! I wish the text in the menu buttons wasn't green, it makes it really hard to see with the green background, I had to look really close to understand lol, other than that I think the game is pretty well made, great work!
🎤 Cheville
06. Oct 2022 · 20:21 UTC
Thanks you, I was mighty impressed with how the procedural generation turned out, it was one of the first things I got working alongside the basic movement.

And for all those who are wanting to enjoy the game as is, we will be making some small tweaks (particularly on some sprites and camera) in case anyone wants to enjoy it. We'll be making Linux and Mac builds too (though I can't guarantee they shall work as I have no device to test them no). The Linux/Mac version will be on the new build and I DISCOURAGE that you rate the game based on the patches as they are not within the gamejam limit. They will most likely all be posted on the itch.io page too!
asbjorn
06. Oct 2022 · 20:44 UTC
This game is excellent. Fun tight gameplay loop, that gets sort of addictive. I like the addition of endless mode. That's a good challenge, and fun to play.
The art is consistent, and pleasant to look at.

The camera moving sharply on each move is a bit annoying and disorienting. I think it would benefit your game a lot to improve the camera.

Thanks for sharing! I enjoyed this.
LDJam user 156819
07. Oct 2022 · 03:09 UTC
I like the simple idea and clear visuals. I instantly knew what was going on and what I needed to do, at least in the early levels. Quite fun, though I personally feel it would be a lot more fun if the slime animation ran faster, providing snappier feedback, so I could better judge if I'm about to overshoot a tile (and fall) or not. I played at a somewhat fast pace, so I felt the slime was visually lagging behind a bit. Also, text in the menu was a little bit hard to read due to low contrast and cut-off font glyphs. Nicely done overall tho!

[Stream vod here!](https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1611166734?t=00h20m20s)
figadei
09. Oct 2022 · 09:55 UTC
Fun game! The "are you sure?" part of the restart menu was a bit frustrating. The gameplay itself was fun with an impressive level genrator! The artstyle itself worked well but I didn't love the color choices for the enviroment art. The slime animation and sfx are the best part of the presentation, in my opinion: they were really belivable, fun and satisfying! Good Work!:)
croze
09. Oct 2022 · 23:23 UTC
Really well done! Could see this being a game I would have spent way too many hours on in school on one of those OG flash sites. Graphics are well done, though something about the way the screen pans so aggressively each move is a little jarring to my eyes. Sound effects were fitting, and the different types of tiles really helped with a smooth ramp up in difficulty.
Occasionally found my movement doubling on some levels that have no arrow tiles which got frustrating, though I was playing in the web player and most games have been performing poorly for me there, so I wonder if it had to do with my inconsistent framerate.
🎤 Cheville
10. Oct 2022 · 18:57 UTC
@croze in regards to the double movement inputs, there is no delay between movements as I didn't want to hold back the player's movement, so double inputs are probably caused by a fault on the keyboard or the browser, as far as I'm aware, there is nothing that should provoke the game to double a single input.
Doraemon
11. Oct 2022 · 04:53 UTC
Great game!
🎤 Cheville
11. Oct 2022 · 16:49 UTC
After having spent time considering everyone's feedback and what would be best to improve on the game, we've made a patch for anyone who's interested in playing the game beyond just experiencing it for the sake of Ludum Dare. We appreciate all of your support, suggestions and criticisms, which I hope we have satisfied with the new patch.

Here are the patches as follows:
- Options tab, able to change resolution and mute game
- Reworked high score menu and increased limit to 10 scores per category
- Changes to the Normal Mode and Endless mode text
- Adjustments to menu formatting
- Reworked red tiles
- Heavy improvements to the jump tiles, changing their camera movement, sprite movement and sprite animations
- Improved the in-game camera
- Can no longer walk off the goal tile after landing on it with a jump pad
- New sound effects for select tiles
- Guide menu, featuring tiles, how to play and controls
- Increased time for Fall Tiles
- Linux and Mac releases
- Arrow key support

I must clarify again, please do not rate the game based on the patch we will released on itch.io as this patch was not made within the Ludum Dare time limit and exists purely for players to enjoy more of the game if they wish to do so.

We were also unable to find testers for Linux and Mac so there is no absolute guarantee they will work but if you let me know, I will attempt to work on them.
TranziT
12. Oct 2022 · 17:36 UTC
really fun game!I had a lot of fun playing it!
SlimeWizardRobyn
12. Oct 2022 · 18:28 UTC
Cute little game! I quite enjoyed it