My first Ludum Dare! Help your gargoyle friend escape the abyss. I've been teaching myself Game Maker for a few months and built Gargoyle Abyss off of an existing engine I have in progress.
Gargoyle Abyss seems to run most stable in Safari (only tested on os x so far).
I would love to spend more time working on Gargoyle Abyss. Some known things I would change and room for expansion:
- The game is super short. I wanted to have portals connecting to different themed worlds. Even simple linear adventuring would be fun.
- More enemies of course. A boss. And I need to fix the floating ground collision on my Old Ones.
- Music integration was a little rushed and this is my first time publishing an HTML5 build out of Game Maker, so there may be some music overlapping if you replay the game (known in Firefox for os x). Apologies for that!
- Current web build is busted in Chrome.
- Lots of subtle little player feedback polish (better invincibility once hit, knockback, etc.)
- More effects and sound effects / feedback for enemies.
- Not having late fall allergies, a cold, and starting one day late would have been awesome too!
All that said, I learned A TON in just doing this. Better able to understand controlling player animation and states, first time including sound effects, and first time setting up a game with a beginning, middle, and end.
Bummer only having 1 level. The theme felt a bit forced. Cool graphics... nice use of color. I'd suggest giving the option to jump with the up key; I think it would feel more natural.
I'm glad you learned a lot, and hope to see you in the next LD.
Thanks all. Sorry about the Chrome situation. Still figuring out the subtleties of publishing web builds from Game Maker. Runs o.k. in Safari, Firefox, and IE (I've heard) in the meantime. I'll look into uploading a desktop version too.
I had the same problem with chrome as other people seem to be having. Played it in Safari though and really loved the art. I would have loved to see more done with it, but it was nice for what it was. I understand the time constraints, I had the same issue and did not manage to do nearly as much :P
Amazing looking game! The Animations (the flapping while he slowly drops, awesome!) , the tiles and the background. The background sound is really good, but the shooting sound too squeeky.
Also: the german keyboard has y and z switched. Just put the actions on both key, makes it easier for us Krauts.
I love the pixel art in this, Im not sure if it was just me, but the movement when flying up seemed to move kinda rapidly, like it skipped some frames. Id love to see more done with this. I like the idea of it being an adventure game possibly, like you said in the notes. also some fluidity added to the controls instead of instant start/stop would add a lot to a game like this with the flying done the way it is. I enjoyed it though, very nice work.
Thanks everybody! I definitely want to add more to this (though obviously not for LD30). I spent most of my time trying to make the gargoyle animations fun, then wound up with less time to expand the actual game : p lessons learned though!
@Polona – great thought on the Euro keyboard support! If I did up for jumping like @zatyka suggested controls could be arrows to move, space to fire.
@GraveyardPolice - thanks dude. The jump up state is just a single frame right now. Looking at it again it would probably work better as a wing flap down and hold on the final down frame. Good to take note of.
Anybody have any experience making html5 builds from Game Maker and having them not run proper? I'm going to google around to see if there's some noob setting I'm missing.
Wow, you weren't kidding about short. :) The graphics are super good, though, and I liked the music too! Only worked in Firefox for me, but very smooth.
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I'm glad you learned a lot, and hope to see you in the next LD.
The background sound is really good, but the shooting sound too squeeky.
Also: the german keyboard has y and z switched. Just put the actions on both key, makes it easier for us Krauts.
I really would have hoped to see more levels.
Great work on your Ludum Dare! Keep it up
@Polona – great thought on the Euro keyboard support! If I did up for jumping like @zatyka suggested controls could be arrows to move, space to fire.
Weird enemy aside, Pixel Art is just great!
Although it's very very short, what you do have here feels really solid.
Game hints at something really cool - hope you take this further!