Ludum Dare #41compo
Rythm is Lava
Solve puzzles. Sounds too easy? Well, you control two chars at the same time. Or sometimes more. Still too easy? Well, they kill each other on touch! Not easy enough?
Well...
THE FLOOR IS LAVA!
Good luck beating it ;) If you ever manage to do that (doable under 3 minutes, but that's using shortcuts), please let me know on my twitter (@egordorichev).
Have fun!
*btw, the name is not misspelled, its made on purpose ;)
Controls
* X - Restart the level
* C/Z - Toggle speed run info
* Arrows - Move
I would recommend playing binary version of the game, because it runs smoother.
Rythm is Lava is a game made for ludum dare 41. The theme was "Mix two not-mixable genres", but I've mixed four: RPG, puzzle, platformer and rhythm.
Timelapse
Timelapse
Comments167
If i were to add one thing I would put in an effect every time the beat hits (like necromancer does) to keep the tempo more easy to follow.
The concept of rotating lava cubes is really theme-fitting.
This deserves a mobile version. Please, do an extended post-jam release!
Thanks for your work, cheers :)
There was so much content for a 48-hour jam. I'm not sure how you were able to add so much in.
I am impressed that this game seems fully featured and ready to launch. It even had an ending!
Congrats, and I hope you get plenty of rest after such a work-intensive weekend.
The concept of several characters made it definitely more interesting, but it is at the same time what made the game very difficult.
The graphics and audio design was really nice though and it was a complete and nice experience overall. :)
Loved the sounds.
Ah also, i feel like the smokes beneath the characters is a bit confusing, especially if it's bigger than their sprite. I would have put a smaller fx :) But that's just me.
Great genre fusion here too. It's a little tough for me, but I'm not really a puzzle-platformer kind of guy.
Keep it up!
one thing i thought was kinda annoying is that once you beat a level and then accidentally step back then you have to restart the whole previous level
Graphics and animations look amazing. Sounds are simple, but fit well with game feel and look.
It's a nice game and a nice idea. Cheers!
I'm confused with the special thanks at the begining. it's a compo or a jam game?
Congrats on the entry!
well done
Otherwise, great game! Looks great and it has interesting (and hard) puzzles!
I remember seeing you posting the visualizations for the lava in discord, and it looks really good!
Take a look on my game: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/vector-rabbits-slayer
Because of the difficulty in figuring out the lava mechanic, plus the fact that I kept accidentally going back to old rooms I had already beaten (not sure if that was an intentional part of the design), I didn't make it past the first four or five rooms. It sounds like you put in a ton of great content later on, and I wish I could have gotten to it.
Not sure if it's against the spirit of the game to explain the lava mechanic, but could someone tell me how it works? I'm really curious now!
Check out mine over here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/guns-n-goals
Must admit that the rhythm part of it didn't really shine through for me. Maybe accentuate that part of it.
However, overall, a great entry!
Why don't you try mine and rate it, too? Thanks! https://luxgile.itch.io/shooting-mama
-The design is not really clear, the color choices didn't help me to look with the corner of the eye, and it should because I need to know where are positioned the two characters. In general aesthetic is awesome (like everything you do).
-The movement of lava goes with the rhythm, ok, so thats cool, but the music continue by herself after dying, and lava speed changes depending on the music. That makes lava a random object to make more difficult the game instead of a carefully design choice.
-The idea of two players is great! But the core of each level is repeated too many times. You went for quantity over density, I can get that, specially during a game jam. If you take out the lava are the puzzle-platformer worth by themselves?
Conclusion:
This a little beautiful fun game to play for a while, a bit too unfairly difficult.
Art and level design are well done ;)
I don't know if is too much, I mean with all the variations, four characters, the floor is lava, rpg stuff and the puzzles themself. The problem is that the player can track so many things at once, and I found myself several times just focusing in one character and see if the others don't die. If others die in the run, I see if I can save it buy just not focusing too much on that one, unless there are buttons that I should press simultaneously. Don't know if all of this make any sense.
On the other hand, the art and music of the game is great, and the puzzles are very intesting. I'm impress with all the stuff you could put in the game in 48h.
Great job!
Also, if you get time, check out my game! Its about a seaman detective! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/seaman-sleuth
The only nitpick I have is that the difficulty ramps up very quickly for a marathon game. That combined with PICO's graphics and the things get quite unclear and hectic quite fast. I would personally think this kind of game would work a lot better with larger resolution graphics. PICO graphics are sometimes just too small to be clear enough for faster games.
But overall, very cool game with good amount of polish!
I don't know if I'm just super bad at it but uh, Normal is pretty hard...
The invisible block levels were kind of frustrating and I was pretty confused at first when I saw three characters, but I enjoyed the secret shop, the interconnectedness of the map, and the overall gameplay!
One thing that was a bit disorienting was that my two characters could get out of sync with their jumps since one lands could land on a platform before another. I don't know if it would help, but maybe each character would have a different sound effect when jumping to help sync up with the visuals?
How did you code up the background title screen by the way? Did you basically do a software shader for that lava effect?
```lua
pll={4,2,2,2,8,8,9,10,15,7,15,10,9,8,8,2,2,2,4}
function get(x,y,s)
local t=g_time/400
local c=cos(x/80)-sin(y/100)
+cos(x/40-t)*sin(y/40-t)
+cos(x/80)*sin(y/80-t)
+cos(x/200+t/2)*sin(y/80+t)
return pll[flr(c*(s or 3))%#pll] or pll[1]
end
function menu.draw()
for i=1,300 do
local x,y=rnd(128),rnd(128)
local c=get(x,y)
circ(x,y,1,c)
end
end
```
Pico-8 uses indexes for colors, so for example 7 is white, 4 is brown.
So i think that sound feedback is confuging on start.
The damage system is not very notable.
And the scene particles is confuse
Anyway the game is fun and looks finished
I really didn't like how you could accidentally get sent back a level by walking backwards. That made me really frustrated.
It was sometimes a little hard to track things on the screen. I'd be focusing on one character and tracking the other in my peripherals, when suddenly I'd find myself tracking a smoke effect that was as large as the character. I don't know what the best solution would be - perhaps smaller smoke or characters that stand out more? I don't know. Like I said, it looks great. Just a little hard to track.
Solid work. Good job!
It feels extremely polished, hard to believe what someone can do in 48h :D
The art is minimalistic but yeat very clear, the music doesn't drive you crazy after 3m and the control definitely feels responsive.
I've only got one gripe with the game : I really dislike how you can be sent one level back ... I spent something like 5m trying to get past a level only to be sent back to it as soon as I started the next one ... really frustrating :(
Congratulations !
I don't really like the weird red shape in the background, I don't get what it's supposed to represent. As some have said I think you can still improve your games readability, there's always so much going on on screen :P.
I'm not the biggest fan of the main mechanics but that's more personal than anything, I do think the game is unfairly punishing by bringing the player back after failure. Especially if you're gonna do different difficulty levels, the player should get to choose how much they're gonna suffer (let us scrubs in piece). Btw I think I might have run into a bug, I failed twice a level in a row and got sent back to the beginning.
Wonder what you'll come up with next jam, you pico-8 devil.
The only problem is I don't understand why sometime I was sent back to the previous level. But overall, it's a very good game, very well done. So, congratulation !
The rhythm component seems mostly ignorable since you don't take much damage from lava and can just walk over it quickly, I think making it 1 hit kill would help with that. And the puzzle element seemed mostly ignorable too since you only need one of the two to get to the exit so you can mostly focus on one character and ignore the other and play it just like a normal platformer except for the annoying bit where if one character goes back to the previous level you have to redo it (which was more annoying than fun). I was confused why my characters kept making puffs of black smoke when they weren't near lava.
.....my head hurts.
Graphics is nice, audio fitting. I'm fascinated how many different puzzle styles you managed to include, and the number of levels you were able to create...
Congrats on this excellent entry!
(phew, that was >= 2 incompatible genres!)
I left my rating of your game, if you can leave your feedback in our game, Witch's Escape.
I hope you continue with the project.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/witchs-escape