This is Gravedigger. A pretty simple platformer. I hope you have fun with it.
Controls: Arrow Keys - Movement (up/down affects the square where you dig) C key - Claw. Used for attacking and digging. Space Bar - Jumping, selection. Escape - Return to title.
Big fan of the aesthetic. Some of the tiling doesn't look quite right, but that doesn't matter because the color choices are fantastic. I loved the digging mechanic, and the level design showcased it well. Unfortunately that boss room frustrated me enough that I had to give up before finishing. I got stuck with only 4 health left in the boss room, and so I died in almost one hit every time. That combined with having to dig through the dirt for every single boss attempt had a multiplicative effect on the frustration. Side note - took me a while to figure out how to beat the boss, because the boss made an "enemy taking damage" sound when I hit it, so it seemed like that was accomplishing something. Still, a solid 4/5 - wish I could have seen the ending.
The ending is pretty bad, don't even mind about it. I was running out of time. And yes, that boss has some difficulty issues... AND the sound, which causes "misinformation" (it DOES damage the boss, but you would need to land an insane amount of hits while dodging Touhou-like fireballs).
If it's permitted, I would gladly do something about these difficulty issues. It makes it virtually unbeatable, right? (I did beat it two times, but that doesn't mean anything).
The game is cool and the art really nice, but the enemies move and attack really quickly so avoiding damage is hard. I made it to the room with the giant head, but the bats always kill me since I only have 4 health.
I ended up giving up after dying somewhere between ten and twenty times to the boss. That aside, I'm in awe of what you've been able to do in just 48 hours. The graphics and music is just perfect.
With just a bit of adjustment to the boss, I think this will be a classic LD game. :)
Oh, man. I am getting destroyed here. I will have to go dig out a gamepad because my keyboard skills aren't up to the challenge. It looks great so far, though.
This game is really marvellous! I really love the graphics, colour palette, character & enemy designs, animations, sound effects, mood and digging game mechanic. Great job pulling this together in 48 hours! It's incredible!
I'd say the only two weak points of this game are that the digging is a bit inaccurate and the enemies are ridiculous; enemies' movement is unpredictable and every enemy is really hard to kill without dying.
Excellent pixel art. The music is good for the style it is emulating. The boss does have difficulty issues as others are having. It's almost impractical to fight any enemies along the way either due to the tiny punch box vs enemy speed.
I really like the game but I felt like everything was way too difficult. I also felt like the movement speed was way too high which caused me to miss a lot of simple jumps.
Amazing just amazing how you were able to pull this game off in just 48 hours. Controls are just slippery and I kept falling when I wanted to jump to a ledge. The polish is really fantastic I haven't saw any bugs. Now I feel bad about myself :(
I love the artstyle and gameplay but it is reaaaally too hard and I got stuck for a long time in water trying to get out... so frustrating, but otherwise it's an impressive work.
M
monkeyavalanche4 May 2014, 09:27
I love the consistent pixel art and color scheme and the character animation especially the claw attack and crawl movement, really cute.
The only bug that I experienced is that when the character respawned from dying in the water she kept the slow underwater movement even when on land, but that was just it.
Whoops. Yeah, didn't took into account that. The water physics were added at some point of the last day, and didn't even thought about it when I was making respawning (respawn was added because dying by the boss's massively stupid difficulty spike was horribly annoying).
Love the story and graphics! I included it in part 16 of my Ludum Dare compilation video series, if you'd like to take a look :) http://youtu.be/ruvs0qoO4zU
This game is one of the better Ludum Dare games this year. The graphics are very evocative of the Amiga/Commodore era and the sound effects bring you back in time. The mechanics work well and bar a few enemy AI issues the game is very well made indeed.
Comments27
And yes, that boss has some difficulty issues... AND the sound, which causes "misinformation" (it DOES damage the boss, but you would need to land an insane amount of hits while dodging Touhou-like fireballs).
If it's permitted, I would gladly do something about these difficulty issues. It makes it virtually unbeatable, right? (I did beat it two times, but that doesn't mean anything).
With just a bit of adjustment to the boss, I think this will be a classic LD game. :)
It just handles so very well. Well done!
I'd say the only two weak points of this game are that the digging is a bit inaccurate and the enemies are ridiculous; enemies' movement is unpredictable and every enemy is really hard to kill without dying.
The only bug that I experienced is that when the character respawned from dying in the water she kept the slow underwater movement even when on land, but that was just it.
Overall a really solid game.
Thanks a lot monkeyavalanche.