Slime Post by Sebhulhu

[raw]
made by Sebhulhu for Ludum Dare 53 (JAM)

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Description

Slime Post is a simple physics-based platformer in which you play as Slimey, a new employee in Slime Post delivery company. This is your first day, but they put you on graveyard shift anyway - and you can take it quite literally. Deliver a package to a drop zone before going into a portal, which will take you to another location. Avoid skeletons, throw tombstones on spikes to make way through them, and generally do anything to finish your job.

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Controls:

Moving Left/Right: A/D, Arrows

Jump: Space

Grab item: E, Left Mouse Button

Drop item: E, Left Mouse Button

Throw item: Q, Right Mouse Button

Restart level: P Warning: this will result with loosing one of your hearts, but can be necessary if you will soft lock yourself.

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Note from creator:

Hi, I'm glad that you are reading this right now. This is my first ever entry to Ludum Dare and even though I had few hard moments I'm quite happy that I managed to finish it. I'm aware that this game has some problems, but I think because of those, this is a fun and short rage platformer. After some rest, I will try to document how it went and what I would do different if I started again on my YouTube channel. Even though I never intended to take part in compo, as a self-imposed challenge I wrote all code and made all art during jam. The same goes for background music (For sound effects, I used sfxr.me). If you manage to finish a game, please let me know how long it took you. You can post screenshot from end screen or just comment it either here, on itch or on any of my socials. 07.PNG

Projects future

I would be more than happy to work on this game post-jam. At first, I need to finish my other project that I'm currently working on but after that I see myself reworking the whole thing with less wobbly physics, new graphics, more story and more levels as mere six of them seems to be just not enough. 06.PNG

My socials

YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/@sebhulhu

Twitter : https://twitter.com/sebhulhu

Itch.io : https://sebhulhu.itch.io/ - Still work in progress, but link works.

Ratings

Overall 724th 3.453⭐ 34🧑‍⚖️
Fun 668th 3.344⭐ 34🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 1063th 2.734⭐ 34🧑‍⚖️
Theme 406th 4.094⭐ 34🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 579th 3.703⭐ 34🧑‍⚖️
Audio 640th 2.984⭐ 34🧑‍⚖️
Humor 461th 3.317⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Mood 772th 3.328⭐ 34🧑‍⚖️
Given 43🗳️ 43🗨️

Feedback

Fiinrii
01. May 2023 · 21:28 UTC
Fun, I loved the slime very cute.
waptaincaffles
01. May 2023 · 21:35 UTC
Really cool game, I think it's a little bit too wordy at the beginning, and I really struggled with that first spikey area.
pfeyffer
01. May 2023 · 21:49 UTC
tldr; There is way too much text :-) The controls feel a bit "direct", maybe look into using acceleration and forces. Nice graphics.
LDJam user 240168
02. May 2023 · 07:40 UTC
Looks like a fun game! Unfortunately I couldn't proceed past the spikes on the tutorial level: the tombstones almost always just slipped under me and moved away when I landed on them, leaving me on the spikes. On the rare occasions when I managed to land successfully, the tombstone was too far from the right end of the spikes, and I couldn't just far enough to avoid them. So I'd say the difficulty needs to be tweaked, and also the tombstones can be replaced with something that doesn't roll over, like e.g. some solid boxes.

There's a bit too much text in the tutorial; the font used is a bit too wide and short, which doesn't help much. Maybe just increasing the line spacing would help with that. The text also sometimes stays for too long and kind of distracts you, and sometimes it stays not long enough, before I finished reading it (I had to restart the game to finish reading the message explaining how to throw stuff). I suggest to simply show the text if the player is below the text area, and hiding it otherwise. This way, only one text is visible at a time, so that it doesn't distract you much, and also the players can decide for themselves how long the text stays there.
AndideBob
02. May 2023 · 13:38 UTC
A fun little game but the mechanic of throw object and then jump on it would work much nicer if the objects would be fixed once they hit the spikes would make this a lot easier. I also think the mechanic, that you have to restart from the very beginning when you lose all your lives is super punishing. All in all with a bit of polish, this could be really fun.
bashem
02. May 2023 · 21:22 UTC
We really enjoyed the game. You should definitely deliver (ha!) the post-jam version!
LDJam user 250825
03. May 2023 · 22:14 UTC
Cute game, slimes are the best :D I think the heart system was a bit too punishing, just retrying the level felt like punishment enough. Also I think up arrow didn't work for me. Otherwise I really enjoyed the level design, great progression and mechanics!
Supermango
04. May 2023 · 19:04 UTC
Really cute game with lovely art, sounds and animations. The jump felt good through the throwing was a little fiddly, definitely felt a little hard as I got stuck on the first level after jumping on the mushroom and wasn't sure how to get back! Enjoyed this and think it has a lot of potential!
Michael Darling
04. May 2023 · 19:20 UTC
Cute art! Mechanics felt good, movement and jumping was nice and snappy. I agree with the other commenter, losing all progress when running out of lives felt pretty harsh. When I ran out, I simply stopped playing, whereas I would've gladly kept playing had I just gone back to the start of the level. But overall, I had a lot of fun playing. Nice work!
Najimi
04. May 2023 · 19:23 UTC
Very cute game, you did a very good job considering you did it all by yourself! I had fun playing it, unfortunately I feel like the physics are a bit off because I kept sliding off the tombstones even though I perfectly landed on them. That's also the reason why I couldn't finish it. Other than that, I think the graphics are very cute and the sounds as well. It was a challenge, but mainly because of the sliding off the tombstones. Keep up the great work!
Quoc
05. May 2023 · 14:45 UTC
Woah very cool & cute game. I love the idea and the lovely art. Enjoyed playing it :)
zbugba
05. May 2023 · 14:51 UTC
The game is fine to play however there are two major things that I really _didn't_ like:

-- the colour of spikes is almost the same as the background colour. This is very bad given the character can move quite fast and it's really hard to notice them.

-- given this is a platforming game, what I expect as a player is a consistent movement behaviour. Unfortunately jumping in your game is very incosistent and sometimes while jumping vertically I couldn't reach the ledge of a platform while other times I could. I'm not sure what causes this but this is definitely number one thing I would fix.

Otherwise I enjoyed picking up the parcles and throwing stuff around :)

Cheers!
Iqoribou
05. May 2023 · 14:51 UTC
Cool little game, congratulation on your first game jam! Don't worry, every game around here has issues :) I loved the graphics, the controls were snappy and the collisions seemed fair. Of course physics always messes up a bit in those kinds of game but it's what makes them funny. I feel like some jumps could have had a bit more leeway and the pick up range could be a bit longer, sometimes my package was stuck on spikes and I coulnd't grab it. Also in the browser versions I think some of the UI was out of my screen, I couldnt see how many lives I had. Still very good entry, hope you take part again in the future!
Le Don
05. May 2023 · 15:03 UTC
As other people mentioned, very cute game! I also think the mechanics worked really well, even though it might be helpful if there is some kind of preview curve for the throw, as it felt like throwing the items blindly. Personally I am not a big fan of the limited continues and having to start all over again, as there are so many jam games to play. So I think I stopped playing at that one level with the deep pit, which also felt like having to do some leaps of faith. But again, overall very cute game!
Kitira
06. May 2023 · 08:14 UTC
Nice platformer with great ideas and nice pixel art! I liked throwing the tombstone on the spikes and jumping on the mushrooms. The delivery points were also nice, since you didn't always have to deliver directly to them, but could also just throw the package there. In the second run, I completed the game in ~396 s - but lost a lot of lives:

![SlimePost_2ndRun.png](///raw/84c/65/z/5b749.png)


For your post-jam version: Nearly all of the lives I lost resulted from the tombstones slipping out from under my feet. This can be a nice idea (e.g. levels with surfaces made of ice), but in my opinion it should be used rather rarely, because it is a bit frustrating. Also, a throw indicator might be helpful to know where the tombstone will land.

But really great first jam game! I had a lot of fun playing through it. :)
🎤 Sebhulhu
06. May 2023 · 09:40 UTC
@kitira it's really great to see someone actually made it till the end <3 . Definitely post-jam version will need to have a lot of quality of life improvements and I need to work on those sliding tombstones :D I'm really glad you enjoyed it :-).

@zbugba - thanks, I think I will put border around spikes to better indicate that they are dangerous and so they can be more visible. About jumping I'm not sure myself what could be wrong but I will definitely take a look into that :-)

@le-don - indicator for throw is definitely must have for post-jam version :-) Thanks for feedback!

@iqoribou - <3 maybe I could made slime stretch a bit to reach packages :-) thanks!

@quoc - I'm glad you liked it :D

@najimi - Thanks a lot! Physics are definitely a little bit wobbly even though I spend more time on fine tuning them that I would like to admit :D

@michael-darling - thanks a lot :-) After thinking about it giving limited number of lives for game jam was not one of my brightest moments :D

@supermango - I'm glad you liked it - about mushroom -> It meant to be a bit of a trap, that why you see it from other side. In tutorial level there's info that you can press "P" to self-destruct slime to start level from beginning. I think I should put that info also in this level probably :-)

@bqq - thanks for feedback <3 I agree with you, hearts are too punishing especially for game-jam :-( Lesson learned.

@bashem - <3 I will definitely do! Need to finish my current project first though :D

@andidebob - Thanks a lot! Notes taken!

@lisyarus - thanks for feedback :-) fully agreed that difficulty needs to be more adjusted :-) It seems that first level for many people was actually hardest one x.x . About text - I wanted to put whole tutorial into game instead of description but now I think I could just put one or two "slides" with controls. Otherwise I could base displaying it on entering and leaving collider not only on entering and time.

@pfeyffer - thanks :D Will work on that :-)

@waptaincaffles - thanks for feedback - definitely I need to adjust difficulty, it seems that many people had most problems with first spike area.

@fiinrii - thanks <3 I'm glad you liked it :-)
digital bacon
06. May 2023 · 12:39 UTC
Cute game! Enjoyed the graphics and the rage-inducing gameplay :laughing: Good work for your first jam, well done!
🎤 Sebhulhu
06. May 2023 · 13:47 UTC
@digital-bacon thanks a lot! I'm really glad that you enjoyed it :D
Grommit
06. May 2023 · 13:58 UTC
Nice game!

This feels like a complete game, so you scoped it well. The mechanics were simple but pleasing. Chucking boxes and tombstones was quite fun. I like how the blob you play as carries the boxes in spite of its bugginess (obligatory in game jams!).

The limited lives might make the game a bit frustrating to some. It also creates a problem where if I lose a few too many lives on level 2 for example, I'm inclined to start over from the beginning simply because I don't think I can finish the rest of the game with too few lives, and I'd rather start over straight away than game over in a few levels.

Another issue is the physics or weight of the props could use a bit of tweaking as I'm sometimes falling through the tombstones and into some spikes. The packet would bounce from where I threw it and into spikes on occasion as well, at which point it cannot be picked up since you can't pick up things you're standing on.

But! Overall the impression is very good and for your first game jam you should be very proud indeed.

I beat the game in 275.04 seconds
digitaldude555
06. May 2023 · 14:22 UTC
This is a good game, follows the theme well, not very innovative but otherwise good. That's a cute slime post man, I also have a mailman as a protagonist. It could use some tweaks like any other platformer but overall it's good.
🎤 Sebhulhu
06. May 2023 · 22:05 UTC
@grommit thank you so much for this feedback :D I think you are currently holding record for fastest run :-) Physics is definitely something that I need to work on post-jam :-)

@digitaldude555 thanks :D To be honest at the beginning I really disliked the theme, but after some time it grew on me :-)
yumykon
07. May 2023 · 04:32 UTC
First of all, congratulations on your first participation in Ludum Dare! I really enjoyed the game, I had fun and at the same time got frustrated, so I believe you achieved your goal with the gameplay! The game has all the necessary sound feedback imo, and the music is charming and fits well with the overall atmosphere of the game! The art is simple, but it's beautiful and intuitive! Congratulations on the good work and the great game! (⌒▽⌒)♡

I beat the game in 315.07 seconds!
🎤 Sebhulhu
08. May 2023 · 08:14 UTC
@yumykon thanks a lot! I'm glad you liked it :D
caeonosphere
15. May 2023 · 07:24 UTC
As others have noted, I had trouble with tombstones slipping out from under me. Ouch! I did like the level designs, though, nice work getting so many in for the jam! I see you've also commented on this already, but in the future, I would suggest doing away with limited lives for game jams — you do want players to see as much of the game as possible!
Don Fouts
17. May 2023 · 19:27 UTC
Cool game, I liked the mechanics for this. It took me a minute to get used to some of the controls and get the hang of grabbing things while doing the platforming. Overall nice entry for the jam!
🎤 Sebhulhu
18. May 2023 · 08:01 UTC
@caeonosphere Thanks for feedback :-) Definitely I will remember for next time to not put limited lives :D It was bad design choice from the beginning :-)

@don-fouts I'm glad you liked it and thanks for feedback :-)
gamescodedogs
18. May 2023 · 12:02 UTC
Good game. But the thin outlines of fonts strongly dissonant with large pixel graphics. This somewhat spoils the pixel aesthetics. And the rest is good! I liked it!
🎤 Sebhulhu
19. May 2023 · 06:40 UTC
@gamescodedogs I'm glad you liked it :-) I will definitely take your feedback into consideration on next project :-) Thanks :-)
AceArcher
19. May 2023 · 23:53 UTC
Overall, it's a nice physics platformer! Like other people have mentioned, it was really wordy at first and the tombstone physics were hard to deal with, but it's well polished and the art is great. Very impressive for a first jam, especially since you did your own art and music!
blotosaur
20. May 2023 · 00:03 UTC
Nicely put together! Challenging but doable. Found myself kinda missing something for finer controls, like acceleration, for example. Great entry!