Really cool for such a short space of time!

The text was a bit hard to read but the color estethics is great. Cool idea to gather keys to use aswell. Nice game.

Feels very polished!

What a GORGEOUS entry, I love the concept and the presentation. Some "dangers" were hard to notice, maybe some color language would be in order here, but all in all this game is an amazing feat in such short time!

The art style and the score were brilliant! Had a fun time playing the game but maybe the fisheye effect could have been toned down just a bit.

Great game, especially for a first LD!

It has some very good stuff, and stuff I'm less a fan of. The graphics, especially texts and post processing are great (post process could have been toned down a tad tho). The idea is really cool, and displaying the keys at the bottom is very helpfull and adds to the overall look. Finding new keys is super fun.

The platforming and level design are fine and do the job. But not as good as the rest, so here is what I noticed. There is friction while jumping, so you slow down against walls (a physic mat with friction 0 would solve this). If you land while holding the jump key, it jumps again immediately. Imo you should only jump on the key press down (GetButtonDown instead of GetButton). There is a bunch of stuff that kills/deal heavy damages that isn't super visible, I died a few times without even seing what killed me.

In any case, it's a great game overall. Congrats!

Nice game overall.

The soundtrack is awesome, big fan.
Graphism are also neat, but you really put too much neon effect.
For the gameplay, well is pretty simple and short. But there is nothing particulary original to get a wow effect.

But congrats publishing on your first ludum dare it's quite an achievement on it's own.

I couldn't get past a certain point because the platforming was a bit unprecise (or I'm just not skilled enough :thinking: ) but I enjoyed it up until that point. I like the graphics but it looked a bit weird at times with some sprites not having the same size as others, it kinda breaks the pixel art style. And the concept of getting power by getting keys is nice, it could make a great metroidvania or something similar. Great work !

i liked the concept of having to go and find your keys to use your abilitys. thats a fun little trick!

What I liked:
- Artstyle is cute, but maybe too much post-fx :)
- Pun about space
- Music is cool

What I didn't like:
- Music was to loud and I couldn't turn it down inside the game :(
- Platforming in the right part of the screen is very frustrating, when there's a ladder of sort

nice work

this art was so cute oml... and i loved the experience of collecting keys to do more things. i treasure this

Thanks everyone for the great reviews!!

- The style we were going for was a retro one with the constant colour changes representing the **'KEYBOARD' RGB lights** (_since you're a key inside the keyboard_).
We might have gone a _little_ overboard with it :sweat_smile: @henrik-ganard @juhani-koskinen @yorsh @sacramentix @kiberptah

- Some traps were hard to notice while "inactive" since they blended in with the background. We plan to fix this issue going forward after the jam. The same goes for the platforming issues on the rightmost side which some may have found to be a bit difficult. @fredspipa @adamsmccall @kiberptah
Thanks for the great feedback @yorsh on what went wrong and how to fix those. Highly appreciated!

- A BIG Thanks to those who played the game. Hope you found the interpretation of the theme fun!
@garyninja @henrik-ganard @halvardo13 @yorsh @adamsmccall @jcmonkey @kiberptah @robobarbie

*(**For context:** You're a key inside a keyboard which has lost it's keys. You need to find the 'Space' key to restore balance to the limited world of the keyboard. As you collect them, you'll be able to use those keys to complete the rest of the puzzle)*


The future plan is to add more keys to either make it a puzzle-platformer or make it into a metroidvania as @adamsmccall suggested. Until then, have fun :smile_cat:

I liked the convept of unlocking abilities by picking up the associated keys, really cool idea! The graphics are great and I personally didn't get bothered with the colors and post-fx, I quite liked it! The tile set is awesome by the way!

I guess I can do better than 39 seconds :)


The chiptune music is really good. I had a little trouble at first figuring out what was killing me. I don't think I could do it in under 39sec!


Very cool / interesting concept! I loved the retro-style lighting, the music fit very well (good pick!). Controls were very responsive, but I do think the platforming controller itself could use some work (especially the getting stuck on walls was really painful haha - are you using the in-engine physics system for this?)

What frustrated me a little bit was the quick-paced feel of the game, with the timer inviting me to speedrun it- but then there's a massive chunk of text on the middle of my screen, while the timer is running, that I either have to click way (leaving me with only one hand ready on my keyboard to speedrun the game) OR play with the text up. Even with that though, I did have a fun experience grinding the game for a little bit! Might get back later to try and get to 24 or maybe even 23 :D

Thanks @sozey!! Glad you found the game fun!! We got the tileset from itch.io since we didn't have any artists. Had to out out of art but made it up with the effects and sounds :smile_cat:

@enderswype That's awesome!! I guess that's the fastest by a long shot which any player has gotten!

@fifut Thanks! Yeah, the traps when inactive blend with the environment so are not that visible unfortunately :(
Even I can't do 39 secs lol :laughing:

Hey, thanks @kepsert !!

Yeah, the platforms especially the walls on the right were a tad difficult since they didn't work as we had expected. Yeah I used the Unity physics for this game. I didn't change much of the parameters apart from the gravity so that needs some improvement. Maybe adding a physics material to the walls should fix that issue.

Oops!! Thanks for pointing that out!!! It seems I've started the timer since start instead of when text ends :grimacing: Definitely needs a fix. It does slow the speed-run in an otherwise fast-paced game.

Kudos to you for achieving 25 secs with that! I took 2x that on average lol while play-testing. Good luck with beating your own score :D


_(Thinking if sub-20 seconds is possible.._ :stuck_out_tongue:)

@agrmayank Haha it definitely was very inviting to keep trying! In the end when I learned the route well enough, I decided to just play with the text on screen to avoid losing any time there :D

As for the wall friction, I'm not sure if it's something you've done already, but you could try adding a physics 2d material with 0 friction on the player's collision box- the default physics material on a 2d collider has like 0.4 friction which is what gets you stuck on walls. Perhaps this helps!

Fun game to play! Cool take on the theme. Approaching that sub-20 barrier :smile: Only thing I would add is to make it so that I don't have to spam skip everytime I retry. Great job on the entry!

Really sick - i love the neon glow of everything, the way you gradually unlock more keys, and the animations were really fun. Nice work!

Very cool concept and very polished game!
I think you could have done more with the map design and play around more with that the character can do without all of the movement keys. You're kind of forced to go a specific path to get the keys and don't spend much time limited by what you don't have.
Very great entry, I'd love to see this expanded upon.

Fun and gorgeous game. I really like the concept of having to pick up the keys in order to be able to actually use them. I think the platforming part can be improved on a bit as other comments already mentioned. Other than that though it's a great entry, especially considering it is your first.

@kepsert Haha, yes I saw that in the screenshot you posted! Hats off to you :D!!

Yeah, that's the plan. I'm just waiting for the jam to end so I can publish those fixes (not sure if fixing the bugs is allowed for Ludum Dare or not). Thanks again for the advice!

@gamedevjeroen Damn, that's FAST!! After seeing these score, I'm starting to think it's just me who sucks at platformers, lol :grin:

@dan-burns @braeden @woergbi Glad you loved the aesthetics of the game xD

The plan is to expand it into a much bigger game. You'll gradually get the keys with more intricate puzzle-platforming instead of everything in one level. Other keys (looking at you, the number keys) will be introduced as well. Maybe a metroidvania-style would suit this game better! Let's see how it spans out!

Nice graphics and shader usage!

The mechanics of the game are very creative.

Well done!

Clever to work the idea if the "space" key into the theme! A couple of things: (1) it took me a while to figure out you had to collect keyboard keys to unlock basic game controls. I was screaming "why can't I jump?!" for my first 1.5 play throughs. Some instructions to clarify that would have helped. (2) I don't know why I'm getting game overs. I have sufficient hearts, I go over to the side of the screen, I get game over. If there's a timer, detailed instructions could have helped with this too as it wasn't super obvious to me, I may have missed it staring right at me.

Glad you liked the game @keichits :grin:

@johnsensei
1 - It seems I missed adding the controls part on the LDJam page (it was only updated on itch.io). We did add that into the story along with a blink animation to the keys, but I guess that could be improved as well.
2 - So those deaths are happening due to the traps. Right now they're matching with the environment when inactive (spikes & flame traps) so they're not easily visible. This is planned to be fixed in a later update so it should be a better experience down the line.
Thanks for the feedbacks! Appreciate it :)

I really enjoyed the concept and initial execution with how you gather your own movement keys, that's so cool! Like some others though, I had some difficulty with the traps and couldn't bring myself to keep trying after the third death in the same confusing spot (right after you pass the Shift key; I died quite suddenly trying to get that too). I think if the trap sprites were in the same resolution as the rest of the game, it would be much easier to see where they're at and find a safe way through. Music is great, though some SFX are little too loud (key collection). The art is great too! Overall, it's a good idea that needs some improvement to feel more accessible and fun. Keep it up!

This is such a neat approach to the theme and it's absolutely amazing that this is the quality of your first ludum game omg! The use of shaders is super great and the graphics overall are some of the neatest ones I have seen this jam!