Ludum Dare #45compo

...Not Even a Body!?

by snesgaard

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.44

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.67

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.57

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.85

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.58

Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.98

Mood★★★★★★★★★★2.94

Introduction

That's right you start with nothing... not even a body!? How can you possibly make it in the world without one??

Characters

You play this guy (spooky ghost cause tis' spooktober afterall):

Being a ghost is rather challenging as you cannot jump. So you must possess these guys:

In order to reach the goal of each level:

Controls

Controls are displayed in-game, with the exception of resetting the levels which is done with the escape key.

Possession is done by coming into contact with the purple guys and pressing R.

Press R again to escape your newly acquired body.

General Info

There are about 6 levels and an in-game timer, so do feel free to share your completion time in the comments! :)

Oh and here are more screenshots:

The Game was with LÖVE2D and Aseprite

Tools: Aseprite, LÖVE

Comments27

Douwe_Ravers7 Oct 2019, 17:57

Very nice! Very simple but still interesting puzzle kind of game.

Lukein7 Oct 2019, 17:57

Nice concept. Could become a really cool full game, with more levels and different mechanics where you need to take advantage of different bodies.

niterich7 Oct 2019, 17:57

That was a clever concept! The gameplay felt great, and I thought the possessed guy's walk was hilarious. I just wish there was more of it - the end screen says it took me only 58.258968 seconds. I also would have changed some of the controls around, since using R and Space at the same time can be tricky

Iconocatstudio7 Oct 2019, 17:59

Linux shell script worked great, thanks! This is a really neat concept, and it played very well! Also, love the extra spooktober theme!

Grhyll7 Oct 2019, 18:01

Super cool, really!
The concept is original and well executed (ahem my time was 180, I spent almost all of this on the third level), it's very cute and cool to play, great job :)

dqmhose7 Oct 2019, 18:02

Really cool idea, lovely graphics, this would be amazing on Switch. Took me a while to figure out how the levels were meant to be played. I suck at games :D

ofursnati7 Oct 2019, 18:06

Nice game, love the graphics and mechanics :) good job

mimusangel7 Oct 2019, 18:09

The concept is cool, I had a great pity that it was so short, but it was cool.

randdir7 Oct 2019, 18:18

Really like your entry pal. Graphics are very good and concept remind me some old pc game. Like a lot this one keep it up with guess more stuff on pocess people ;) keep it up !

snesgaardauthor7 Oct 2019, 19:54

@lukein Agreed, more types of bodies would make for a more fun game (e.g. flying body). Kinda ran out of ideas for levels, I must admit. Really hard to design for when the ghost form can't really do anything XD

snesgaardauthor7 Oct 2019, 19:54

@niterich Thanks! Yea I would probably bind the possess to ctrl or something if I were to redo the controls. The walk animation happened as the result of a copy-paste gone wrong in Aseprite. Decided to keep it 'cause I thought it looked funny, glad you liked to too!

snesgaardauthor7 Oct 2019, 19:55

@iconocatstudio Good to hear! Tried to make an AppImage out of the game, but that didn't go so well. Glad that my backup solution worked.

snesgaardauthor7 Oct 2019, 19:57

@dqmhose Sure would be cool on the Switch, but I think it needs a few more levels and music before I'll consider that ^^

changemewtf9 Oct 2019, 21:06

Oh no! :scream:

Fortunately I figured out that Escape is reset a few seconds later.

Really fun launching myself out of the body for the win! My best time is 66 seconds.

Tomssuli10 Oct 2019, 17:31

Nice job. I liked the puzzles. Simple and effective and I don't remember another puzzle game where you have to posess dead bodies. Took 183 seconds on the first playthrough.

snesgaardauthor10 Oct 2019, 17:37

@changemewtf hehe yea, implemented the reset function in the last minute, after I realize how easy it is to soft-lock the game XD

tigerfinch10 Oct 2019, 21:42

Cool idea, and nice execution. Particularly liked the bodies animation/graphics

Sarah11 Oct 2019, 00:31

I love the little ghost, its so cute! I also made a game with a ghost character, CAUSE OF COURSE WE HAD TO (I get you xD) But the game itself it a fun puzzle, I liked it a lot (:

Im glad I read the comments/directions (so maybe having that in your list of controls as well would be helpful) so I knew that escape was to reset, cause that launching part was fun haha. Althought it took me like 2 minutes ):

Great job overall!

QuadApe11 Oct 2019, 01:22

This is a good idea! My only complaint would probably be unconventional controls you chose, but you probably already heard about that. Otherwise, nice and fun little game.

Ruud Cremers13 Oct 2019, 10:23

An enjoyable 37 seconds! Good effort for the compo.

snesgaardauthor13 Oct 2019, 14:50

@sarah Yea, in hindsight I should probably have added the reset button to the ingame display XD

@quadape For sure, will pay the controls more attention in next LD!

Gnappuraz13 Oct 2019, 15:48

Very nice idea man, short but enjoyable, really liked the posses mechanic, good job!

GoupixM13 Oct 2019, 16:52

The game is really fun ! I had a great time on it. The designs are super beautiful, the concept is original and really fun. The chara are perfect and I love the animations !

ruthiepee13 Oct 2019, 17:10

Clever mechanic, really enjoyable controls. I can't figure out how to get past the level with the moving red bar, lol. My favorite part is the possessed character's jump animation. Nice game!

Druvsaft13 Oct 2019, 17:23

Very cool concept! The orange walls kind of feels a bit like portal, where you can't move cubes through the energy fields. Very clever! Missing some audio and music to really sell the mood, but the art is lovely :)

samh13 Oct 2019, 17:25

Nice gaphics, I absolutely love the robot walk animation. Sound would have been a really good addition (may I suggest bxfr if you ever need to generate sounds that go well with pixel art aesthetics).

Couldn’t speedrun it in 37 seconds but I got down to 49! The mechanics seem interesting, but a few more levels would have been great. Good job overall for coming up with a good set of rules that look like they have potential!