LudumData

Skypiercer by Caladrius

[raw]
made by Caladrius for Ludum Dare 54 (JAM)

Skypiercer is a wholly narrative experience that can run up to about 10-20 minutes. It may be best to skip this one if you're looking for something more short and traditionally mechanical - Ludum Dare and game jams in general are all about growth as a developer, not chasing numbers and unfortunately feedback like "Too many words" does not help us make better wordy games - we'd opt out of "Fun" if we could! This is relevant to the "Theme" score as well, as the theme exists within the text, not the mechanics

Summary

Long trapped behind the fog wall with rumours of demons and giants aplenty, you grow tired of your limited existence. Follow exciting quest markers, solve smart puzzles for smart gamers, and complete thrilling fetch quests on your way to the top of the radio tower and reveal the truth of your solitude

Skypiercer is a comedic narrative adventure game riffing beats from the film Snowpiercer and the most wonderful parts of modern AAA design in which you will solve puzzles, explore, and encounter a cast of the worst animal people you will ever meet.

Settings

Audio controls are in the main menu before you begin the game. Unfortunately to change your audio settings, you will need to reset the game.

Controls

Main game - WASD: Movement - Mouse: Look around - Space: Jump - E: Interact

Minigames - WASD: Movement - Space: Reset

Screenshots

Bat.png

Screenshot 2023-10-02 230016.png

Screenshot 2023-10-02 225915.png

Credits

  • JobeCR - Lead QA, Additional Sounds, Philosopher
  • Sotaroni - Main Menu Programmer & Sound Designer
  • Odakine - Minigame Programmer
  • Dragonfern - Musician & Portrait Artist
  • EddieJennings - Level Designer
  • Callum Craig - Technical Artist & Additional Artwork
  • Rubiia - Top Floors Environment Artist & Voice Actor
  • Kitkii - Middle Floor Environment Artist & Additional Artwork
  • Cheepster - Character Artist
  • PoliteStories - Art Director & Ground Floor Environment Artist
  • Caladrius - Creative Director, Lead Programmer, Technical Designer, Writer & Additional Technical Art
Link https://caladrius.itch.io/skypiercer
Link https://caladrius.itch.io/skypiercer
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/54/skypiercer

Ratings

Overall 593th 3.548⭐ 44🧑‍⚖️
Fun 765th 3.182⭐ 46🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 947th 2.826⭐ 45🧑‍⚖️
Theme 1019th 2.833⭐ 44🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 406th 3.884⭐ 45🧑‍⚖️
Audio 436th 3.405⭐ 44🧑‍⚖️
Humor 231th 3.619⭐ 44🧑‍⚖️
Mood 557th 3.548⭐ 44🧑‍⚖️
Given 74🗳️ 69🗨️

Feedback

Qaolin
02. Oct 2023 · 22:35 UTC
Hi, i think dialogues are a bit too long :D
spider__the second
02. Oct 2023 · 22:39 UTC
Nice Game, music is a little loud and couldn't see any way to lower. Loved the artsyle.
🎤 Caladrius
02. Oct 2023 · 22:41 UTC
@qaolin Not nearly as long as I hoped for them to be!
🎤 Caladrius
02. Oct 2023 · 22:42 UTC
Hey @spider-the-second! There's a music toggle in main menu options, apologies there's no way to lower it once you're in-game. Glad you enjoyed it!
Flancon
02. Oct 2023 · 22:43 UTC
The game feels nice ! But my mouse had a hard time staying in the window, when playing.
🎤 Caladrius
02. Oct 2023 · 22:47 UTC
@flancon It should be re-capturing your mouse every time you click, I'll investigate that, thanks for letting us know. In the meantime, the native Windows version should be just fine if you're struggling to finish the WebGL!
🎤 Caladrius
02. Oct 2023 · 22:52 UTC
We've removed the WebGL version until further notice. It's been a problem in the past with some of our other Ludum Dare projects where due to browser security standards it's tough to capture the mouse, so until we figure out a better approach to mouse capture we'll keep it to Windows only
LDJam user 374135
02. Oct 2023 · 23:57 UTC
Interesting game man! I liked the idea of it a lot, and characters are interesting. I think I liked the raccoon the most, reminds me of Rocky haha. Did you drew all the characters? What inspired the Bear character, Melvin I think? Great entry!
o_sim
03. Oct 2023 · 12:07 UTC
Great graphic style, I only found the scale of the objects inconsistent. The characters are amazing. What set me back is that the bell puzzle only works in certain sequence, thought only the amount of rings matter. (Also who glued down the rope by the well :D)
🎤 Caladrius
03. Oct 2023 · 12:12 UTC
Thanks for playing @o-sim! There's actually a little hint in the dialogue about the order of objects, but I think I might have gone a bit too obscure with it
Jesús González
03. Oct 2023 · 21:15 UTC
TLDR: the game.
The game is about following some objective markers and when you're stuck go read some text then try interacting with everything.

Gameplay is very weak.
Nice graphics and music.
Theme is absent.
Geronimo
03. Oct 2023 · 21:20 UTC
Oh my god! This was an awesome game! I really like how it portrays social classes and from the beginning i could feel a very creepy eerie atmosphere setting in, like something was wrong. The artstyle was phenomenal, the story was awesome, and i liked how you had different music for the different levels, just awesome. The ending was also very nice, overall, this game turned out great and you even included minigames!!! And the humour was also great. I would omit the swearing though, I think it's kind of unnecessary and will lower the size of the audience that wants to play this game, I think. I would also add sprinting to the game, because in the first floor it is kind of slow moving around. And the colour of the grass is a bit too bright, I would lower that a little bit, and the fog is a little too bright as well, especially on the ground floor. In the end, wonderful game, and keep making more! X
🎤 Caladrius
04. Oct 2023 · 00:44 UTC
Really appreciate you engaging from a place of good faith and offering such valuable and immediately actionable feedback @geronimo, that's the kind of thing that really helps make the Ludum Dare feel like such a strong community and over time can progress the medium as a whole! Making a purely narrative piece of satirical interactive fiction in such a broad community event like this is always a risk, so pieces of feedback like yours make it all worth it regardless of the score we end up with from those with a less open mind towards art that strays from the path of second-to-second mechanical complexity. God bless and good luck with your own entry!
LDJam user 300461
04. Oct 2023 · 09:55 UTC
Cool comedy, really loved the "hook" the badger gives you
Bredera
04. Oct 2023 · 18:35 UTC
Fantastic graphics and art. The writing was really good and I liked the mini games. Only minor thing I found was that it did feel a bit repetitive to move from exclamation point to exclamation point in a level that felt a bit to big. But the writing more than made up for that.

Great entry!
Arthur Othy-Gares
04. Oct 2023 · 19:59 UTC
This game has its own atmosphere and I love it. Really fun characters.
Ayxs
05. Oct 2023 · 19:33 UTC
Interesting idea, I do feel that the world is a bit big for the player character. The scale is a bit weird as tables seem to be at chin level (just from the perspective). I also noticed a bit of a weird loop in some of the background music in the game.

The narrative is really interesting. Very humorous and incredibly unsettling at moments. I don't think it's too munch text perse, but it took me a while to figure out all the puzzles.

Well done overall!!

_One tiny sidenote (more of a nitpick really); personally I find it odd to ask for a donation on itch.io on a Game Jam game. As you said yourself, game jams are about the growth as a developers, a bit weird to then also ask people if they want to give you money for that_
🎤 Caladrius
06. Oct 2023 · 00:45 UTC
@ayxs Thanks so much for the feedback! The world is something that we mad overscoped on; there was supposed to be a whole lot more content and characters on each floor and in trying to fill that space in any way towards the final stretch some scaling issues slipped through the cracks. Really appreciate your kind words on the narrative as well!

As for the donation thing, I fully empathise with it as a nitpick and that's something we've definitely grappled with as a sizeable dev collective every jam. We landed on just leaving the default Itch settings on as a point of being hands-off with it, especially since we have a decent non-Ludum Dare following on the platform playing our games. More of an "it's available if you like what we're doing as a dev collective" thing than a "please donate". Just a means of supporting a group making games in and out of jams with no official financial channels.

I think the better question is, why don't YOU have tips open for me to pay you for the three hours I spent on Blockies?
ArivanEverdingen
08. Oct 2023 · 04:52 UTC
Funny dialogue. Found the character moved a bit slow. Gameplay seemed like just chasing exclamation marks around. Lots of content for a game jam which was really cool!
mahalis
08. Oct 2023 · 17:32 UTC
Loved the writing—this is one of the only genuinely funny game-jam games I’ve ever played. I got stuck on the second-floor puzzle: I climbed up on the sculpture next to the key shelves in case there were more hidden ones lying down, and I tried the bells with and without counting the key and sword above them in the totals… no luck. I thought the game was telling me where I belonged among the social classes, but then I saw your hint in the comments here and was able to transcend my limitations and progress to the ending. Glad I did; it gave me much to think about.
exofrenon
08. Oct 2023 · 19:54 UTC
Incredible atmosphere and hilarious writing (with a subtle political message). The final revelation was also great (although it crashed on my while the camera was spinning). I think it is the only game I have tested that had a legit story, and also the only fps game I played.

I loved the music and the graphics of this game, they really heleped create an atmosphere and a feeling like one of those 90's games you would play as I kid but don't remember their name. The character designs were also great and the gameplay was simple but it go the job done.

Great entry overall. You can see that it takes a lot of people to create this in a weekend.
vivid-hallucination
08. Oct 2023 · 23:32 UTC
Zip off denim jorts are the height of fashion
Shaun Meechan
09. Oct 2023 · 15:41 UTC
I thought this game was pretty good. I liked the characters and audio. The game also looks really good. I did get stuck on the bell puzzle (and I could've sworn I counted it right!).
LDJam user 206001
09. Oct 2023 · 19:25 UTC
It's nice to have explained that it's a game with a lot of dialogue and that it's best to skip it if you're looking for something shorter. There really are a lot of games to test, I don't think it's a good idea to jam games like this, but it's an option. Thanks for letting me know
fizzbark
12. Oct 2023 · 06:18 UTC
Great art and genuinely funny dialog, RIP Big Turtle. Since you wrote so many word I'll return the favor.

I mostly liked it but I'm genuinely not sure what to make of the AAA stuff with excessive quest markers and obnoxious HUD. I think it's supposed to be satire but it doesn't really lean into the joke enough to be humorous and more made the first floor frustrating that anything else. I think it would have been pretty hard to get lost in and having to consider my environment would've really drawn me in more as a player. As it stands it feels like you don't trust the player, which runs in the opposite direction to your preamble at the top of this page.

The mini-games were a bit clunky, but worked well to break up the walking and talking. It got good on the second level when the puzzle became more complex than 'talk to character with objective marker'. The bell puzzle could do with a bit more feedback - it isn't clear when it 'resets' if you do it wrong.

Audio was really strong all around - except for the big bells lacking impact and bass so they sound a bit impotent. Music loop was great.

Character art is top notch, it's impressive how much you were able to cram in. Overall art direction gives off a Paradise Killer meets Frog Detective vibe that works really well.

Really enjoyed this entry overall, the parts that're good are great and the parts I like less are at least very interesting to critique and have a strong direction. I'll keep a keen eye out for future entries!
🎤 Caladrius
12. Oct 2023 · 09:14 UTC
@fizzbark Thanks very much for the detailed feedback! You are genuinely correct that we flubbed leaning in harder on that aspect of the AAA stuff. The core of the joke WAS not trusting the player to do simple things - we had some grander ideas in the early planning stages to really emphasise that (I'd intended floor 3 to have a quest marker every few steps) but a lot of that didn't pan out due to time constraints (and some day 3 issues). Left us with a quest tracker without a joke, an inventory used for the first floor only, and a quest tracker that just got in the way. It basically left us putting in WAY too much time to achieve a po-faced implementation of exactly what we tried to mock. Funny in a way but not in the way we intended!

Again, thanks so much for the detailed feedback. A lot to take in and learn from all this! Being compared to Paradise Killer and Frog Detective is a huge W in my book as well

(also, the bell sound was recorded on a phone, hitting a towel rack with an axe haha)
Tiseno
12. Oct 2023 · 16:13 UTC
This was great, had a few laughs, got stuck on the impossible quiz (even though I think I got the answer), but managed to get through randomly. Awesome music and I loved the humor.
Just the right amount of text.
fatEmperor
13. Oct 2023 · 07:11 UTC
Cool game. That's just the riddle with the keys I got stuck T_T
kr4ft3r
14. Oct 2023 · 01:25 UTC
I'd say the odd scale that someone complained about gives that too-much-cheese-before-sleep dreamlike quality to the game, and is perfectly in place. Crossfading music between the floors is such a shift in consciousness, masterfully done. And the theme is covered in the most original way I've seen so far. Someone said having waypoints is too AAA, I agree that maybe just their design is a bit too clean and out of place, but it's good to have waypoint for LD crowd who don't have much time to drift even when willing to give 10-20 minutes to a game.

Second floor puzzle is too hard though; guardians' hints for the sequence are too easy to miss, and one could argue that the keys pointing "up" are really pointing down, and the ones pointing "down" are actually sideways, or maybe I'm missing some reference. Btw, I may be asking too much, but is there any particular symbolism for sword/scroll/key ?

In any case, there is no point in looking for flaws in a game like this, it would be like looking for flaws in a dream, it is just something that happens and it is whatever the hell it was. Good work.
EgorMnc
14. Oct 2023 · 14:13 UTC
The game is interesting, it was quite nice to play it, keep working on it and everything will be cool
AlexTengu
15. Oct 2023 · 04:20 UTC
I have read the the predescription about text-based elements, so prepared myself to proper mindset, brought some fluids. Then I started. My right hand moved fast, and fingers of left hand accurately hit proper buttons, until I finally had entered the portal that led me to another level of indie gamedev pleasure. Good work.
Steampowered85
18. Oct 2023 · 11:20 UTC
YO, nice game! Really liked the feel and what some of the characters say it quite funny! I think I glitched out the fishing game. Held a down and the hook started to move forward somehow. but overall great work!
Paulsams
20. Oct 2023 · 21:54 UTC
It seems to me that you made the jam game with too much of a team, because there is a very sharp dissonance between different parts of the game. And it doesn’t feel very pleasant, it seems to me. But still well done.