Piton by Bea

[raw]
made by Bea for Ludum Dare 57 (JAM)

Rappel into the cave. A and D to move left and right. S to let out a section of rope. Left shift to grab. Space to place a piton while grabbing. You only get 9 pitons between checkpoints, so be careful.

Made for LD57! We bit off a lot on this one, hoping to keep developing for a more complete release! There's a lot we built that's not quite here.

Art and Animation By Beatrix Bumpbell

Code and Tunes by Nathan Shepherd

Uploaded 2nd time due to caching issue!

Ratings

Overall 690th 3.172⭐ 34🧑‍⚖️
Fun 782th 2.71⭐ 33🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 366th 3.35⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Theme 232th 4⭐ 33🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 354th 3.85⭐ 32🧑‍⚖️
Audio 513th 2.81⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Humor 641th 2.167⭐ 26🧑‍⚖️
Mood 645th 3.207⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Given 40🗳️ 41🗨️

Feedback

gold.daniel
08. Apr 2025 · 02:44 UTC
The game does not seem to be loading for me in the embedded page. Sometimes this happens in Unity builds when the web player settings has data caching checked on.
This is not an issue on itch.io AFAIK, consider uploading there as a backup.

Here is how you can disable Data Caching
- pack it as a ZIP index.html is at the root-level aside the folders created by Unity
- Disable “Data Caching” when creating the WebGL build in “Player Settings” -> “Player” -> “Publishing Settings”
sepjani
08. Apr 2025 · 02:45 UTC
game stuck on loading screen for me too
LDJam user 410492
08. Apr 2025 · 02:46 UTC
hahaha if you go to the right, you zoom off XD, haven't figured out the point of the pitons yet but this is the funnest game I've played so far in the jam! Love the rope physics!
BatTheCat
08. Apr 2025 · 02:49 UTC
game stuck on loading screen
fosf0
08. Apr 2025 · 02:53 UTC
Game stuck:((
Villeloso
08. Apr 2025 · 02:56 UTC
I guess I didn't understand fully how to play, I could just spam to go down and the camera could not keep up. The rope physics are really well made tho, and the pixel art is very good
Pontax
08. Apr 2025 · 02:58 UTC
game stuck sadly
WetBurritoSupreme
08. Apr 2025 · 03:17 UTC
@gold-daniel Thank you so much for the details, hopefully it's back up now!

@sepjani @katastudios @batthecat @fosf0 @villeloso @pontax Let me know if there's still issues, I re-built and uploaded on itch.io too!
Pontax
08. Apr 2025 · 03:20 UTC
Yes it works now!
sepjani
08. Apr 2025 · 03:22 UTC
@wetburritosupreme yeap the game works now! controls are really challenging :)
fragskye
08. Apr 2025 · 03:32 UTC
Took a few tries to figure out the mechanics but I really like how you did the climbing. Great pixel art and animations. I couldn't quite reach the second checkpoint though, I ran out of pitons after around 5 even though the description said I should have 9.
Ayu
09. Apr 2025 · 06:28 UTC
The animation is so realistic
KaueSilva
09. Apr 2025 · 15:27 UTC
Man I really liked the game, the rope mechanics are really good ( one rope bugged for me and was shaking with me all down the cave ) really good idea, nice job
Velis69
09. Apr 2025 · 15:31 UTC
Rope and cave, hmmm its toooooo slow for me, mb camera, but good job anyway!!! makes more games comrade! P.S. Check our games too!
Shadow Veil Society
09. Apr 2025 · 15:36 UTC
Simple concept, but fun to play and effective art direction!
LDJam user 246128
09. Apr 2025 · 20:34 UTC
Rope physics is cool and fun, but camera frequently gets stuck somewhere up, not keeping up.
NiceKot
10. Apr 2025 · 00:29 UTC
Very cool graphics, but the music is too loud imo.

The rope behaves oddly after checkpoint, like ragdolling or something like that. Anyway, very well done!
kuboi
10. Apr 2025 · 11:00 UTC
The graphics are awesome, really love the artstyle. The controls seem a bit hard to grasp and after playing for several minutes I couldn't quite figure out the objective, but it was fun nonetheless:) Really cool rope physics, I can imagine this being a great game with some polish:)
woe
10. Apr 2025 · 20:51 UTC
Oh, i've really liked this interpretation of the theme. Good job!
Dylan Shumway
11. Apr 2025 · 01:08 UTC
This is a super cool entry! Rappelling is such a neat direction to take with the theme, it makes total sense and takes the easy to grasp cave environment in a new mechanical direction. I love the way the game feels to control and how it embodies the sense of slowly making your way down a rock face.

My two critiques are pretty small. One is that the audio loop is a bit clunky (and was really loud for me on the WebGL build) which could get distracting. The other is that I'd love to have some way to easily restart the climb as I got stuck halfway down with an unreachable swing and couldn't figure out a way to reset without just refreshing the page.

Overall though, super impressive. Well done! :confetti_ball:
Ricesteam
11. Apr 2025 · 01:33 UTC
Really good idea for the theme. Nice graphics as well, with well done rope physics. But not sure what else I'm supposed to be doing besides repelling down? I can spam the S key just to keep descending until I hit a black screen.
X2SHADOW
14. Apr 2025 · 09:05 UTC
Guys, very cool graphics and animations, the game has an atmosphere, I wonder what awaits below :) I liked it, cool game!
Adhvik
15. Apr 2025 · 03:30 UTC
I didn't completely understand how to play :(
Ammonit
15. Apr 2025 · 08:56 UTC
I really want to tweak the camera movement behind the character; I flew downward and had to wait a long time for the camera to catch up so I could see anything... Overall, it’s pretty nice!
DancingImp
15. Apr 2025 · 20:42 UTC
Idea itself of diving into a deepness on a rope is pretty cool, there could be a lot of creepy things implemented, but unfortunately game doesn't work properly technically. All I can do is just press S repeatedly to s l o o o o w l y go deeper and seen nothing much new. After some time I discovered I can spam S and it works but at the same time brakes the game even more. MC animation is nice though. Can't say the same about music. Not sure you need there music at all - just some ambiance would be nice.
LDJam user 372635
15. Apr 2025 · 20:46 UTC
Cool concept! I think the vibe and the overall mood is quite there, yet in the gameplay perspective I wished for a little more things to do.
The art is super impressive, specially the animations. They have quite a sense of weight which is very hard to convey! really good job.
The music is very atmospheric, yet it was a little bit loud to my ears and I had to turn it down quite a lot here.
The camera maybe falls too slow in relation to the character, which since the gameplay is quite simple, cause the loop to be a little monotonic.

All that said I think is an overall nice entry with a impressive art and a really cool idea! :) Thank you for the game!
LDJam user 285197
15. Apr 2025 · 20:47 UTC
I have no clue what I was suppose to do, I think the graphics are really cool yet the rope visually can cut off and such which is odd. I pretty much just spammed S after awhile and my player was just completely off screen without the camera following me. Also I noticed that at the start there is a solid run animation but when I am not running the run animation still happens and not an idle. I think alot of these issues I stated are due to a lack of time and it would be cool to see what your vision is when given more time!
librory
17. Apr 2025 · 05:43 UTC
Nicely made game but very difficult. I made it onto checkpoint and it takes me three attempts. But are, sounds and idea are great, like it)
Flightless
19. Apr 2025 · 15:39 UTC
Nice rope physics and animations! I found the first checkpoint, after which I got lost in the depths. :slight_smile:
Euler Moises
21. Apr 2025 · 18:40 UTC
Interesting idea. I don't know anything about rappelling so I just went down. :)

Everything went dark. I won or I lost...