Little Big Dash is an Endless Platformer. How long far can you make it?
This is my first time joining Ludum Dare, I had a blast. I'm not an artist or a musician so the "art" is just colored squares, and the "music" isn't so great either (there's an volume option though if you don't want to hear it).
I tried to incorporate both themes, so there are just two controls, one jumps, the other toggles between growing and shrinking. You can play with a mouse or with the keyboard. Mouse seems more responsive, and you'll need it anyways to navigate the menus.
Anyways, I hope you guys enjoy my submission! Please let me know if there are any bugs.
ALSO: If you leave me some feedback below I'll make sure to play and rate your game also!
NOTE: The WebPlayer build may or may not work in your browser, and tends to run a little slower.
The PC version runs the smoothest, so if possible I'd suggest using that version.
Cool mechanics. I find that it can be unintuitive to figure out how how the character will jump given how tall they are. If there was a UI thing (like a dotted parabola) that would how me the jump arc it would make it a lot more fun.
Also the speed of the level is quite fast, giving me almost no time to plan on whether I need to grow or stay the same height.
I found the game very difficult. It was interesting to try and control the size of the square while avoiding obstacles. The music was a bit repetitive but it does seem to fit the game. Interesting game, but a bit too difficult.
I like the idea of juggling growth and jumping but I think it would be more interesting if there were more obstacles for those that grow too much, instead of just having a ceiling.
while your graphics may be simple, I felt a nice sense of "unity" due to the color scheme. It seems to be mostly shades of purple, which helps ties everything together and makes it look more appealing.
I kind of wish you lost by going off screen, and not by hitting a platform, as I feel that might be more fair while still providing a great challenge. That may just be me though, I'm not saying it's the best idea.
Overall, even though it's pretty simple, it seems like you got a fun idea here, and clever use of both themes. I enjoyed playing it, nice job :)
I like the idea behind this, and it's fun as long as I last. However it seems to be impossible to react fast enough with the whole growing/shrinking before crucial jumps or low ceilings.
I'm having a ton of fun with this - Brutally hard - Smooth physics, so it feels fair despite difficulty - Has that one-more-go factor - No art to speak of, shame - Didn't hear any music? Firefox, Windows.
Hey, thought this game was a really great idea (reminds me of Mario where normally big Mario is best, but sometimes small Mario can get into secret areas).
It was a bit hard though, and it felt like being big was almost always what you wanted.
Not bad for a first entry, and completely on point for the themes.
Thank you to everyone who has played and commented so far! Your feedback will help me to make a better game next go round! The game was meant to be really challenging, akin to geometry dash or the impossible game.
A simple game with simple controls, the grow thing is a bit confusing at first but you get used to it, maybe you could keep working on it after the LD <3
Fun, a little hard and it took me a while to get that you changed the direction of growth with the mouse, not just while clicking you grew, otherwise you shrunk. Quite interesting though.
This is a cute little game. I like your idea of growing and shrinking but I don't think that the player has enough control over it. Growing takes a long time. Additionally I don't think that the game gives you enough lead time to decide how to proceed. Also whilst I'm glad you went with a pattern of obstacles I think your difficultly curve needs a bit of tweaking, or at least a dedicated starting pattern to get people into it.
All in all though I thought it was a sweet game and congrats on your first LD!
Brilliant idea, very unique. I had a lot of trouble as there didn't seem to be enough time to grow after I'd seen what's coming up. This is a case where I'd totally want hand-crafted level design over generation, at least until I got the hang of things.
@Warboys Actually the initial plan was to have a number of levels that got progressively harder, then to also have an endless mode. I ran out of time to do both though, and the endless mode was actually easier to implement. ^_^
I loved the concept-- in fact we did something very similar with the platformer genre rather than the pseduo-random endless runner. Actually I think your works better because of the low iteration time and infinite progression. We also wanted size to affect jump height but failed to get that in on time and now I wish we did because it feels very good to jump higher as you get bigger in this game.
Also you managed to hit both themes which is cool.
Like alot of commenters I think the main snag with the gameplay is that it requires you to focus on both the very turbulently changing floor and the ceiling which changes less drastically and you tend to forget about the ceiling until its too late. I think if you shrank back to original size alot more quickly than you grew this problem would be resolved.
Simple but one of the best take on the theme. It felt like the mix of Super Hexagon and Thomas Was Alone (both are my favorite games). My only complaint was there's no way to restart the game with keyboard. Anyway, excellent job!
first - congrats on ludum dare - you did it - the first few jumps were mosly impossible so you should try to ramp things up slower - good idea - nice job
Nice entry! It was quite hard, but I like challenges ;) An alternative to this could be to switch between two different sizes because managing the shrinking size can be tough in real time ^^ Anyways, good job ;)
Comments42
Good job :)
I find that it can be unintuitive to figure out how how the character will jump given how tall they are. If there was a UI thing (like a dotted parabola) that would how me the jump arc it would make it a lot more fun.
Also the speed of the level is quite fast, giving me almost no time to plan on whether I need to grow or stay the same height.
Overall a decent mechanics-focused entry.
still very fun!
Very difficult to play because of that!
I kind of wish you lost by going off screen, and not by hitting a platform, as I feel that might be more fair while still providing a great challenge. That may just be me though, I'm not saying it's the best idea.
Overall, even though it's pretty simple, it seems like you got a fun idea here, and clever use of both themes. I enjoyed playing it, nice job :)
Or maybe I'm just not very good at it ;)
- Brutally hard
- Smooth physics, so it feels fair despite difficulty
- Has that one-more-go factor
- No art to speak of, shame
- Didn't hear any music? Firefox, Windows.
It was a bit hard though, and it felt like being big was almost always what you wanted.
Not bad for a first entry, and completely on point for the themes.
Nice entry!
I tried the game with wine and it works perfectly, would have liked to have a linux version tho.
All in all though I thought it was a sweet game and congrats on your first LD!
Also you managed to hit both themes which is cool.
Like alot of commenters I think the main snag with the gameplay is that it requires you to focus on both the very turbulently changing floor and the ceiling which changes less drastically and you tend to forget about the ceiling until its too late. I think if you shrank back to original size alot more quickly than you grew this problem would be resolved.
Overall: Nice work, my friend.
Simple but one of the best take on the theme. It felt like the mix of Super Hexagon and Thomas Was Alone (both are my favorite games). My only complaint was there's no way to restart the game with keyboard. Anyway, excellent job!