Ludum Dare #40compo

Hungry Ghost

by mrnyarlathotep

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.92

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.71

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.54

Theme★★★★★★★★★★4.38

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.56

Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.40

Humor★★★★★★★★★★3.69

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.85

My entry for LD40.
You are a greedy little ghost, but the more you eat the fatter you get, the fatter you get the less nimble you are.

In a brave new use of the medium, I made a 2D retro inspired pixelart puzzle platformer - I was shocked to discover I've never actually made a platformer for Ludum Dare before!
Also in a change of form, I found I actually had some time to do Music + SFX, which I usually don't get around to!

Controls

WASD / Cursors = move

Space = Jump

R = restart level

It _should_ work okay with a controller / joypad.
I mean, I haven't tested it myself, but I'm using Unitys generic input binds, so if you have one let me know how that worked out for you in the comments!

Known Issues

If you try and enter the exit door while its still opening, you need to exit the tile its on and re-enter after the doors open to get it to trigger - just jump once if the exit doors not working :smirk:

Sometimes you can 'walljump' off of a soul by jumping exactly as you collect it - If you can somehow use this to speedrun a level, more power to ya!

Tools Used

This game uses 2 external Fonts - _Amburegul_ and _PressStart2P_, both under the Open Font Licence.
All other assets were made by me specifically for this jam, and as with my other LD entries I'll throw them onto OpenGameArt at some point for others to use.

Unity

Photoshop Elements

LMMS

Audacity

PLAY GAME (Web)

Tags: #pixel art, #puzzle-platformer

Genres: platformer

Tools: Audacity, LMMS, Unity

Comments26

SilvervaleGames4 Dec 2017, 04:05

I liked the concept a lot, very good!

Elodeon4 Dec 2017, 04:06

What a cute little game! Love the audio and graphics, and the jumping feels really nice. Nice puzzles too. The only problem I have is the long, slow, lumbering walk the little plump ghost has to take to get to the door at the end of each level.

evandowning4 Dec 2017, 04:23

Fun, short game. It's a good length for the main mechanic without any extra stuff being added in -- I enjoyed the puzzles and being the chubby ghost.

OmnipotentIndie4 Dec 2017, 04:36

Pretty good, I liked the level design near the beggining. Character is a bit hard to control at the beggining, overall, great job

Xacur4 Dec 2017, 04:44

Very good game, I like how you worked the theme with the physics. I like the mood of the game too, I've always liked the dark, lugubrious ambiance.

Tiberiusuciu4 Dec 2017, 04:54

Nice sets of puzzle,

and the character is hilarious how he changes shape so much :)

Good idea implementing that "R" button. I myself realized my game is lacking one, and you can actually get stuck if you're unlucky. Great game, me and a friend played it good amount of time!

niksg4 Dec 2017, 05:05

fun game! I love the look of it. puzzle platformers are my jam (after qwoplikes)

mrnyarlathotepauthor4 Dec 2017, 18:00

@elodeon - yeah, its, uh, satire about over consumption in modern living. Or something.

@tiberiusuciu - on the one hand, a "press to restart" button is a damning indictment of my own personal failures as a level designer.

On the other hand, given how often I use the "don't pickup the thing that is blatantly in front of you just yet or you screw yourself" trick, I kinda felt I had to :smirk:

Taiku4 Dec 2017, 18:05

Nice tight platforming with a good use of the theme. The puzzles were well done. The ghost was funny! Only comment is sometimes it was hard to tell if I *wasn't supposed* to be able to make the jump because I hadn't solved the puzzle correctly or if I was just not making the jump.

oxrock4 Dec 2017, 19:14

Your game fit the theme well and I thought the puzzles were pretty good. The ghost needed an animated scarf though, 10 demerits!

Raziyya4 Dec 2017, 21:43

Really interesting concept for a puzzle platformer. Controls felt really nice and I liked the overall mood of the game. Well done!

mrnyarlathotepauthor5 Dec 2017, 13:34

@taiku - fair comment; I was somewhat limited by the concept and how different I could make the various stages of 'fatness' feel to play; "full fat" was about as far as I wanted to go with regards to hampering player controls, and as others have mentioned its already borderline sluggish / unresponsive at that level and 'full thin' being any faster / jumpier would have veered into 'twitchy' controls, imo

kbjwes775 Dec 2017, 14:14

Eat a few souls, become a fat ghost, what more could a player ask for? For real though, interesting concept with a quirky theme/story. The puzzles weren't too difficult which I liked. Seeing that this wasn't your first jam made sense, it was a solid game!

kbjwes775 Dec 2017, 14:14

sirJupitron5 Dec 2017, 15:03

Great design, loved it!

Kashif6 Dec 2017, 03:51

Awesome work. Feels like a complete game.

Great work on balancing the game properly.

Mike Cullingham6 Dec 2017, 05:41

Nice little game. Tricky because your controls are constantly changing, but the levels are short that it's just part of the puzzle.

ghostlygurustudios7 Dec 2017, 01:32

Interesting mechanic.. and works well with the theme.. good job!

xclementx7 Dec 2017, 14:27

Nice plateformer ! Very fun to play.

Wheffle7 Dec 2017, 18:21

You explored a lot of cool variations on a simple idea. Nice work! Really enjoyed my playthrough. Loved the sprite changes as your ghost got fatter. Also enjoyed being able to restart the level quickly. My main suggestion would be to perhaps run the game with a larger view-port at the same resolution to increase visibility.

Chronosv27 Dec 2017, 21:44

That's a really clever puzzle platformer. I liked how tricky it could get, and that everything had a proper order if you wanted to succeed.

Badly Drawn Rod8 Dec 2017, 13:32

I thought that this was really well put together. The graphics and audio combined very nicely to set that melancholic mood. Good game.

nax_899 Dec 2017, 22:26

Its funny how ours games are similar in mechanics and name xD https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/40/hungry-dino I really really like yours, and it's amazing that it was a compo. The art and music goes by hand. Congrats! :D

asilva400010 Dec 2017, 21:40

Great game. I love everything about it, specially the text you wrote, the fact that you named all your levels, the "intro", the title screen, this is very well made. I know this was a 48 hour effort, and it is great the way it is, however, I would change the level transitions, but there is nothing wrong with your current implementation. So overall, this game is excellent, a joy to play and a serious contender imho. Congrats!

mrnyarlathotepauthor11 Dec 2017, 22:32

@wheffle - yeah, if I was going much further with this, I probably would do that just to give myself some more real estate to work with - the levels are kind of claustrophobic at the moment

@nax-89 - I love when that happens! Yours beats mine hands down on the production values though :yum:

@asilva4000 - like a super mario world style fade to black? Yeah, I could see that being a pretty cool addition

mgsx12 Dec 2017, 20:44

i really liked the overall game mood : graphics, music and spirit fit perfectly ! the glow effect serve the spirit of the game.

levels are not too easy and not too hard, i'm looking forward for harder levels (maybe post jams updated!)

nice job!

Other games by @mrnyarlathotep

★3.04

★3.18

★2.93