Adam, Rejected by MashedPotato
Adam, Rejected
Moody 2D-platformer with focus on spoken narration.
Updated version available
After the weekend of the jam we had more time to fix some minor issues and do some quality-of-life updates, which you can find on 👉 Itch.io 👈. The (small) list of changes can also be found on Itch. The version of the game on this page is in the state as it was originally submitted.
Story
Scientist Mandy Shelby creates bodies: live bodies. But when some of her creations do not meet her expectations, she is not one to continue on a doomed project. Her children are worthy. If they are not, there is only one way to go, and that is down.
Meet Adam. Once one of Mandy Shelby's children, now a rejected monster, tumbling down a shaft to his new, dank, forever home under the rocks. But this skellie will not sit idly by. And so his journey upwards begins, with you to help him.
Controls
[left],[right]crawl/walk[up],[down]climb vines etc.[space]jump, continue dialogue
Quick start
The game begins with the camera panning downward and some narration. Press [space] to advance the text. When the camera stops moving, you can start crawling. Good stuff is to the right.
Thanks for playing
We hope you enjoy our attempt at the Ludum Dare game jam! Happy crawling :)
MashedPotato, LisaQuill and SmallTalkInc
LisaQuill did the voice acting! You can find her on Twitch, BlueSky, and Instagram!
The other stuff
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/adam-rejected |
Ratings
| Overall | 558th | 3.38⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 568th | 3.18⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 388th | 3.32⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 384th | 3.78⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 491th | 3.54⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 74th | 4.06⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 316th | 3.109⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 102th | 4.125⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 27🗳️ | 29🗨️ |
The Metroidvania-style setup, where you find new body parts that give you new abilities and animations, was a great idea. Though when I grabbed onto a vine, my legs disappeared — maybe there’s a reason for that, since both the vines and the legs are green?
I found a strawberry at the end and it made me happy.
After this short but atmospheric adventure, I think the main thing I’d mention is that using space both to skip narration and to jump felt a bit awkward. Other than that, I really enjoyed the game — the upgrades kept me curious and exploring, and the narrator helped maintain the atmosphere.
If this ever becomes a full game, I’d be happy to see slightly less floaty controls, but even in this short intro, I had a genuinely good time.
I would've liked to see a few more mechanics or upgrades, but given the short context of the jam, and the huge amount of narrative work done, I enjoyed the concept and exploring all the way to the end. One small feedback when you beat the game and it fades to black, it would've been nice to flash some end credits/game ended type text as I was waiting to see if it was going to fade back and another segment was going to start.
The animation go a bit crazy but not really a problem press up and space for speed climbing :D
The controlling part is a bit buggy, though.
At this part, I couldn't get anywhere from the vines, I couldn't jump up, and I couldn't crawl anymore to make it under the rock. I wasn't sure how to progress.
I really want to finish the story! I love when games have recorded voices in them, it adds so much!
Let me know if I did something wrong :) I would love to finish the game yet!
The whole premise of delving the depts to look for upgrades to be able to make it further was a cool idea.
The dialogues did not proceed to the next transcript so it felt a bit awkwards at first. I thought my game froze to be honest. Maybe a blinking "next" would maybe eleviate the feeling the game froze.
The vines to climb were cool, But at the top of them i kept falling down so I had to make a some quirky jump manuever to escape the grasp of the vines. Maybe a one way colision box could work?
Also noted that some for the textures had som seam, What I usually do to resolve that i tranpose the pixels halfway so that the seams are in the center of the image and then clone stamp them. Also krita has a wrap around mode which can help with working with that :D
But all in all a really cool game, Good job!
Only thing I can think of is refresh the page, and sit through the first monologue again, so you can try again :P
Thank you all so much for playing and leaving comments! This was a super fun experience (I have never worked on a game before, and it has been a good 15 years since I last sprited anything) and we're definitely taking your feedback into account!
As @smalltalkinc already mentioned, the arms were an item we didn't have the time to implement, and I unfortunately also wasn't able to finish sprites for Adam climbing with legs. I am very happy you guys seem to enjoy my little boy, though!
Nice work!
Although there's some things here and there I didn't like. Having the voice over stop me every minute was quite annoying. It would have been much better if I could keep playing while the voice was playing.
Also there's room for improvement on the character's movement. It's pretty frustrating suddenly falling down and having to get back up, specially for a "story-driven" game like this!
Anyways, nice entry! I really enjoyed it! Forgot to take a screenshot, but I reached the ending! 😉
One comment I have is that: I think the audio elements could've continued without being tied to the text boxes or perhaps the text boxes could be the things that trigger the audio. With the current difference, I didn't realize I had to click on something to continue the dialogue, so I was sitting there in the first dialogue for a little bit and then after I realized, I had to go through a bunch of text when the audio narration was over.
I found the heart and left. I do hope Adam found some peace :slight_smile:
Nice atmospheric experience!
~Xp