Ludum Dare #39compo

Jetpack June and the Tower of Power

by geeitsomelaldy

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.58

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.28

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★2.74

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.56

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.63

Audio★★★★★★★★★★2.83

Humor★★★★★★★★★★3.37

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.05

Play Now (WebGL)

Download for Windows (bottom of the page)

It is the far future...

Ten years ago, Maximus Maximillian, the worlds richest man, and the worlds only Maxi-millionaire, went into seclusion within MaxCorp headquarters

The Year is now 2001, and life is stirring within MaxCorp Tower...

The tower lights up, draining all the power from the city. Only Jetpack June can ascend the tower and stop what ever nefarious scheme is going on inside... The Tower of Power!

#### Source on Bitbucket (git)

Developer Notes

So this is probably my most ambitious Ludum Dare game to date, the key component of managing your jetpack energy came right at the start, but making it a difficult boshy-like game came after. That may not have been the best idea as I was making level content for it right up until an hour before I submitted it, and that last hour was taken up by making the intro music.

I usually spend the last half a day making music for LD games, so this was a fumble on my part.

As such I recommend you listen to your own music while playing. I recommend anything by AC/DC, any power-metal, RCHP's 'Zephyr Song', Rocketman, Let's Go fly a kite...

There does appear to be a bug on the WebGL version where the jetpack exhaust doesn't stop when you enter a 2-tile high corridor. The ability itself stops (so you're not wasting any fuel) but the graphic doesn't. This only happens on the WebGL version and I only noticed it after publishing and didn't have time to fix it. it doesn't appear to happen on the Windows version, so if it gets annoying try the download link.

Development Videos

Tags: #2d, #pixel art, #precision-platformer, #retro

Genres: platformer

Tools: Unity

Comments33

Thorneto31 Jul 2017, 18:39

Controls were a bit too slidey but the game was funny and the intro was really well done. I appreciated the checkpoints.

mutuware31 Jul 2017, 18:41

Liked the intro tunes! But no game music?

Taffaz31 Jul 2017, 18:41

Nice game and difficult in a good way.

Hephyrius31 Jul 2017, 18:43

This game is brutal, Died. SO.MANY.Times! overall it is pretty fun, tho I did end up rage quitting after dying so many times :l

geeitsomelaldyauthor31 Jul 2017, 18:44

@Mutuware There wasn't enough time to make music that wasn't just a 30s loop. In a game like this I'd rather have no music than an irritatingly short loop.

TheLukker31 Jul 2017, 18:49

Great game.

Demandooda31 Jul 2017, 19:11

Cool artwork, nice story, challenging levels and awesome implementation of mechanics. This might be my opinion, but I thought that the levels were a bit too hard, so it kind of felt annoying to play after a couple of minutes. But overall, this is a terrific game!

Ace1731 Jul 2017, 20:48

Excellent! (except for the jump sound, which gets annoying very quickly)
The levels are quite good (I liked the non-linearish way you connected the rooms), and the graphics are beautiful. As soon as I finish writing this comment, I'm going to resume playing this game, which is as hard as it's addictive!

Bill Zeng1 Aug 2017, 21:08

Funny. Reminds me of I want to be the guy

gonutz1 Aug 2017, 21:08

Really cool game! Very nice, big world, cool graphics, very cool music and sounds (I hear sfxr sound effects).

I love the animations, the title screen is awesome and the intro - man that is really impressive for 48 hours! And the effect that the guy shrinks into the backgrond :-)

Very solid game, only thing I don't know is how to open those doors, do I need to find anything first?

Angela He1 Aug 2017, 23:46

Nice! It was a lot more complex than I expected. The challenges are really well-designed and crafted. It's definitely for someone who loves strategy games, because you could spent quite some time trying to figure out all the puzzles :P Good job.

James Dunlap2 Aug 2017, 00:06

Cool game. I found the jump controls themselves to be a bit annoying.They were obviously coded that pushing space while in the air would activate the jetpack, but in the two tile high corridors, a jump happens so quickly that I often ended up falling down through the hole and getting killed by the sliding spike thing. Died over and over. Also was having trouble getting the doors to open. I got the key that I could get to (the green one?), but it did not open the green door when I went to it.

Great concept, though, and I loved the graphics. Too bad that you did not have enough time for more music.

FYI, I only saw the jetpack bug once while playing the web version.

Jupiter_Hadley2 Aug 2017, 11:07

Challenging game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 39 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AUyAsiiWQQ

Badly Drawn Rod2 Aug 2017, 20:06

I suck so badly at playing this game, but it's reminiscent of Super Meat Boy in terms of gameplay and Commander Keen in terms of looks. The levels seem to be very well thought out, and I always felt that when I died it was my fault. All it needs is a jolly 16-bit tune and it'll be good to go.

nikrt2 Aug 2017, 20:27

The graphics and audio seem really nice. What makes it more interesting is the level of challenge this game provides. The animations make it more visually appealing. Really nice work within 48 hrs👍

jusw852 Aug 2017, 21:16

I liked it, controls were tight, but it was really hard. I got to the food lab, and was working on the moving platform to get the green key, then I tabbed out and accidentally closed the game :( I restarted then found out I had to start from the beginning then rage quit. I really wanted to finish the game and see the ending, and that just shows how good this game was.

Meta-link2 Aug 2017, 21:24

Great game ! Hard but I liked it, and the style is really cool too :D

Good job !

Knarfux2 Aug 2017, 21:33

Not really my kind of game, but the level design and difficulty is what we can expect for it.

Xerouss2 Aug 2017, 22:11

Great game, had fun playing it. Like the difficulty of the game. I did manage to find a bug inside the tower though where you can go through the wall.

Agecaf2 Aug 2017, 22:24

Those smashing blocks are so fast you can clip through walls!

The only complaint I have is the corridors that are just as tall as your character, since you often have to jetpack over spikes, and for that you have to jump, but the ceiling is as tall as the character...

Having said that, I found the respawns fast and the checkpoint frequent so that the game feels challenging-ly hard, but neither punishing nor unfair.

geeitsomelaldyauthor3 Aug 2017, 07:32

@Xerouss @agecaf Glad someone found that. I left it in on purpose. There's one place later where you can do it too for a bit of a skip. Since you can never go up with it (only horizontal and down, if you jump) I felt it was a safe enough bug to keep in :)

eptwalabha3 Aug 2017, 19:30

Even if I give up (for now... damn spikes!), I have to admit that this one is my favorite so far.
Very nice game.

Prabhjot3 Aug 2017, 21:57

well done, this is a really fun game. wanted to smash my head against my desk after playing it after all my deaths.

Dragojt3 Aug 2017, 22:01

Nice platformer introducing the jetpack. In my opinion the character style is a bit different from the level, but everything else is so good. There's a level that I can't go through cuz I don't see the exit.
Good entry!

SVR_Audio3 Aug 2017, 22:13

Very good game, the art was what I liked the most, it is really well made, the sprites, the sprites movimentation, the background, the tiles, everything looks, so good, the sounds are not great, but the good gameplay and cool story makes this game really good, its impressive see a game like this in a compo, great job !

JSMCAG3 Aug 2017, 22:53

Really well done game, but incredibly frustrating! Sometimes unfairly so, requiring the player to make a series of frame-perfect jumps without failing otherwise they have to restart the whole room again (the room with the blue card being my biggest gripe with this).

No music and annoying sound effects are a bummer, but don't detract much from the experience.

Still, very well made! I would just make the character walk less stiffly...

zenmumbler4 Aug 2017, 11:45

It got a bit too "I wanna be the guy" for me with all the spikes and traps and reloads and all, but this is a very impressive entry. Good work.

harusame6 Aug 2017, 17:14

Good entry, very challenging for me ^^
So many "hard" traps ^^

Graphics are good, sound too except the jump sound.
Fun to play, good compo entry :)

simonhutchinson6 Aug 2017, 18:07

Go Jetpack June! This is a great compo entry!

The controls are a touch frustrating. I feel like you should just be able to hold down for the jetpack (not re-tap), but I think that challenge was what you were going for anyway. Really nice work!

pcmaster6 Aug 2017, 20:06

Very hardcore. Very.