Clear level after level of monsters, using the very blocks you stand on as your only weapon. Can you defeat every foe without falling through the shrinking foundation?
Features:
- 30 levels of block-throwing combat - A variety of unique enemies and throwable blocks - An original soundtrack - Controller Support - High quality pixel art graphics
Controls:
- WASD/Arrow keys - Move/Aim - Z/Space - Jump - X/Shift - Grab tiles/Throw - Hold Up/W or Down/S to aim your throw. - Esc - Pause - Throw a tile downwards in mid-air for a boost!
Credits:
- sarn - Programming - THX - Art - valentines - Art - orisghost - Art - NotYourSagittarius - Art - Snakeblock - Art & Level Design - squp - Level Design - Shrombus - Level Design - Routt - Music - Mista Jub - Sound - attfooy - Concepts - bub - Thumbnail Image
Game design by everyone involved.
Changelog: - Fixed the player not being spawned in a certain level. Oops. - Added a block to 3-5 to fix the difficulty being much higher due to an oversight. - Fixed certain enemies walking offscreen and never despawning. - Fixed the final encounter's music never restarting correctly if the player died after clearing the wave. - Fixed 1-2 incorrectly spawning enemies from multiple waves at once. - Corrected an oversight in enemy behavior that made 3-1 much more difficult than intended.
Woah, I think we have the LD winner right here! Amazing job, it's a full blown ready to release game. Amazing art, very clever mechanic and lovely tracks, with tons of production value and a whopping amount of levels. This is incredible, really! I just couldn't figure out if there were more elements related to "unstable" besides the mechanic (not saying that's not enough though)
I love pixel art so this was soo satisfying! I suck at the game so I haven't come that far yet, but I enjoyed the first 2 levels a lot (with my boyfriend yelling at me what to do lol). The animations are amazing and the sound really adds to it! Even for such a big team this is amazingly done! I'll keep it on my laptop and try beating more levels tomorrow! :)
i loved this game!! its incredibly polished anc would would fit great in my nintendo switch's library! the only feedback i have is aiming the blocks is a little difficult with only 4 directions, maybe changing to 8 would help.
I found the controls difficult to get the hang of: I kept throwing or picking up instead of jumping, or trying to press up to jump, etc, but overall the game is incredibly polished and a fun little challenge!
Excellent use of the theme. I had a lot of fun playing, and the amount of effort that clearly went into this is astronomical! I had a bit of brain meltdown with the controls but I got the hang of things.
This another fun game I played from this jam. I don't see much of unstable effect/feature anywhere though (maybe it's subtle?). Nonetheless, it is fun throwing blocks especially indestructible blocks.
Such an amazing and polished game! I had so much fun :) The graphics, the music, the simple but addicting gameplay and the cute monsters. I'm amazed by how much you were able to do in such a short time. Well done!
Great fun! The mechanic was great, it made for some interesting tradeoffs - throw the block and lose a plaform, or be patient and risk getting hit? Being able to aim in all 4 directions added a lot of depth to gameplay as well, and the little bits of movement when throwing things added some good feedback too. I appreciated the variety as well, the variety in enemies, in level design, in blocks, it all added up. The art was brilliant - I particularly liked the contrast between 3-colour muted backgrounds and the bright, high contrast outlined foreground, it made reading the scene very easy to do. Showing the ghost of the enemies was a good addition too, it made the game much more fair without feeling too easy, I liked that mechanic. For the music and sound design, I especially liked the level select sound effect; the rest of it was still all very good, but I just liked the steel drum particularly, it's a pleasant sound effect. All in all I had a great time, and you all did a great job making this game! Great work!
That might be just a little too much content for a game jam xD Anyways, the music is great, the graphics are neat and the game design and level design are well done!
M
mike091235 Oct 2021, 16:11
I just love games that teach you how to play DURING the game. Gameplay was fun, I enjoyed the block mechanic and throwing, although I found the control scheme to be awkward. Great game!
seriously though this is incredible! only complaint so far as that there's a bit of annoying bug where you can be inside the grey blocks, then if you try to pick it up from inside it just takes whatever's beneath you instead
A very cool game with interesting mechanics. It's a lot of fun to play, and a variety of opponents add to the fun too. The graphics are also great. Super cute styling and cool colors blend in chic with the gameplay and add to the mood.
Well done for the incredible game! I love the art style and the game is so polished! Its also amazing how much content you put into it. Definitely one of the top games I've played so far!
Great stuff! Its really fun I just wish I wasn't terrible at it. The only thing that would be a nice addition would be some sort of animation that show where you are aiming. Art style is also lovely!
Background and art design are nice. It's fun having to play around the floor going out as the waves progress. If I had to offer criticism, i'd say that it feels a little slow in the beginning waves. Solid game overall though.
Reminiscent of Super Mario World, and unbelievably polished. I had a hunch I was going to love this just from sitting on the title screen for a minute or two, the music + UI polish was *that* good.
I found the controls pretty frustrating until I swapped to using a controlled (curse you Sticky Keys), but an excellent experience even if I wasn't skilled enough to make it very far.
Love it! Very polished, great art, music, sfx, and gameplay mechanics. Only complaint would be that the tuning is pretty difficult right out of the gate. I probably would've eased into it a little more (e.g. in the second level, making the bouncing enemies only take one hit perhaps) but no one has time for tuning in a game jam haha Nice work!
Really well polished game with an interesting core game mechanic. The panic as you approach the final waves is something quite special, and made the combat much more interesting than anticipated. The amount of content for one game jam entry is also really impressive. Great job!
Man this game felt like something you would actually spend money on it was that well done. Great job to the team and big respect to the solo programmer
First time I give 5 stars in so many categories, this game is so polished and full of levels it's amazing. Usually I say with a bit more work you can sell you game but it's already finished, there's nothing missing. Really amazing
Love it, the mix between platformer, waves and breakout is a fun and cool idea, the graphics are fantastic, loved the music but not sure it suit the mood of the game. I would have love to be able to play it with a gamepad.
Wow. This twists my brain in a positive way. I believe the core mechanic is unique to your game (at least I never played anything like that), and it's hard to adapt your brain to simultaneously move, decide where you can pick a block and shoot. I kinda suck at that though :(
Excellent graphics, sound and polishing, but that has been said so many times already.
I don't even know whether I should congratulate you on keeping or raising the quality bar, since your previous game was also excellent.
Heyy, very nice levels designs! It somehow reminds me of the old mario games - I really loved the vibe. At the beginning I had troubles with the controls, but they made sense and I quickly was used to it. Very cool game, would play it on Steam too!
Really a masterclass in game making. This thing is so well made and polished it's basically a full game. I really have nothing to comment other than praise. You folks rule!
The team did a great job on this! All the levels, sound, and art are amazingly done, including the tutorial that details the moves and how to play. Cute, fun, and makes you want to play more!
Now that's one polished game! I felt like the one hit fail is a bit too punishing but at least the waves were short enough that it's not the end of the world when you get sniped by an enemy. Great music and art!
This is amazing, i'm impressed with how much you guys managed to do in such short time, and also managing a big team is really hard i'm truly impressed, great work.
At first, games that look as good as this make me feel really bad. But then I realize you had a team of 10. That's not even on the same level! Super well done and 30 levels is a ton of content for just a few days.
The core game design feels really good. Your terrain (and safety) is your weapon. The controls took some time to get used to. I think I need a twin stick setup because my brain can't quickly throw in a direction and control using the same inputs. The single hit life made the levels feel a tad long and punishing though. I only got to level 4 or 5 because it got too frustrating to get hit once on the last wave. A little safety net for hits would have felt great.
Y'all did a great job on this. I expect this will place pretty highly. :)
i absolutely loved this game! the visuals were so eye-grabbing and the gameplay was such a fun concept for this theme!...i havent beaten all the levels yet but that is something i will look forward to trying to accomplish over time! great job on this game!
Бах, ба-бах, ба-ба-бах! Бомбим монстров! Кубики - наше всё! Это наше главное оружие! Нам не нужны танки, автоматы и пулеметы, у нас есть кубики! Урааа!
This got me playing through six levels. That's awesome! What a great work, team! If I had to complain about something, I would mention the frustration about picking unwanted blocks that are on the floor and jumping, but I feel this as right in the game and it's just I'm bad playing at :laughing: AMAZING!
High quality game, incredible stuff ! The controls didn't really click with me tho, maybe WASD to move and arrows to pickUp/throws would have worked better ? (Now it creates other problems for people that don't have arrows, so idk really).
Everything in the game is done smoothly - animations, transitions. It satisfied me a lot) Gameplay is addictive, but contols aren't very convenient (I would prefer use F or E key to pickup blocks on WASD layout)
Really good game, with beautiful pixel art, great soundtrack and unique gameplay. I really liked the enemy variety and the fact that your weapon is also your platform (and shield from attacks), so you have to think from where you want to take your "ammo" so that you won't create too many gaps and fall. And when enemies that can destroy your platforms come in, it really adds a lot of tension. It was a very fun experience!
After playing this game I got down the rabbit hole of playing most of your games. You guys are awesome. I really wonder what engine you use. I looked at twitter itch etc but I couldn't find the engine or thing you use to make your games. Keep up the good work
Absolutely perfect game! hands down the most polished game experience I've seen in a ludum so far. The team can rest reassured that you've all made an amazing experience. As a fellow developer is a helluva an inspiration to see your acomplishments! Congratz!!
It's always refreshing to play something as polished as this! Definitely great effort and seems like a superb synergy between the team to pull off something like this in a short time.
Nice atmosphere, cute graphics and good music track. I thought it was actually pretty difficult, although I was playing with keyboard and mouse instead of a controller, which may have helped? Still, this is a really solid entry!
The amount of levels actually surprised me, so much work must've been put into this! Congrats to the team for making such a big and well polished game!
I'm definitely going to save it here because I want to get to the end. I loved it so much! One of my favorites from this JAM. Everything is very well done and polished. Practically an "Official" game.
An incredible amount of polish; absolutely love the player spawning animation as well as all the juicy UI transitions. Also one of the largest teams I've seen, must have been amazing coordination!
These graphics and animations are amazing. I included it in my Ludum Dare 49 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look. :) https://youtu.be/QOqT7v58gqA
this game is awesome! what a great entry. the only thing i would say is i wish the game was a little more fast paced, i felt myself feeling impatient at times waiting for the bad guys to show up.
Extraordinarily polished and fun game! The enemies have a really lively Mario/Kirby theme that really makes the mood work, and the main mechanic feels good and intuitive to use. The enemy variety was really cool as well, and as you failed levels, it was interesting to re-strategize to beat them based on the knowledge you gain of the different waves. Really cool game to play through!
This idea for a game mechanic is really clever! I absolutely love this game, and the general polish is extremely well done! A very polished and enjoyable entry overall. I love all of the different interactions you were able to create with the enemies
Close to perfect! 1. Thank you for including controller support, I think with keyboard I would have given up in early level. 2. Great presentation: graphics, animation, sound 3. So many types of enemies 4. Hard, but fair (mostly) 5. Great game meachanics A few polishing things, but minor and even a production game can have these. Congratulation!
Really cute game! The controls were a little difficult and the game felt more difficult than I initially imagined. Didn't end up being too fun as it was quite stressful due to the clunky controls.
I'm seeing a lot of comments about the controls in particular, but nobody has yet to actually detail *what* about the controls they don't like. I'd really appreciate in-depth feedback on that if anyone's willing to expand on their issues with it.
This is SO good, It's unbelievable it was made in 3 days. It's so solid, reminds me a lot of when I used to play Nitrome games! The enemies have a lot of character and personality on them, it feels really complete, and the game has a loooot of levels already, which is what makes it feel so complete. Amazing entry, love it!
I'll get the gushing that others have mentioned out of the way; incredible music and art direction, animations/transitions are so fluid, unbelievable that there's so many levels, just overall really, really fun.
@saturnyoshi I can't speak for others, but I really had one "critical" piece of feedback on the controls, and even then I see it more as a design choice, and that is the aiming.
I actually played this first on controller, since this is the first entry I saw that specifically mentioned that there was controller support (thanks for that, by the way!). But I mention this because I think playing on the controller first lent to this feeling even more: that there should have been 8-directions of aiming. First playing with the analog stick, my brain assumed that I would be able to, and it was only throwing in the four directions, I thought I was aiming wrong or just got the sense that it was not as "responsive" as I wanted it to be. I even tried aiming with the other stick for a moment, which did not work of course and in hindsight would not have made sense.
So that was really it for me, and I got used to it pretty quickly and wasn't really a problem because I understood the constraints, but it did leave me with that early window of just feeling "this isn't quite right".
This is not even really the kind of feedback where I suggest you change it, that's up to you all of course; there's no doubt that allowing 8-directions for throwing would change a lot in regards to the difficulty and therefore the enemy/level designs. Did you all play around with 8-directions when prototyping? What made you land on how it is now? I'd love for you to talk a bit about that.
I genuinely think every other aspect of the controls are great, though; jumping, picking blocks up, the movement itself. Really excellent work. It's crazy to see what your team can do in 72 hours; I see you all have worked together before, and it shows.
@dsoberdan thank you for the detailed feedback! We did a few different iterations on the throwing mechanics including 8 directional throwing. One of the big reasons we removed it was that we felt it didn't provide enough actual utility for the amount of complexity it introduced into the controls and that in most cases it's preferable to just throw directly up / down without having to awkwardly release the left / right keys for a moment.
I wonder if the problem would have been solved by more explicitly telling the player "you can throw in these 4 directions" in the tutorial? It's a tricky problem to solve.
Thanks again for leaving such detailed feedback! It really helps.
So polished! Personally I would have liked to aim using the mouse or some other method, I felt using WASD to aim as well as move a little awkward (I played with keyboard, don't have a controller to hand currently). Maybe it just takes practice! Very fun and amazed that this was all done in such a short time! Well done :)
A lovely little game! It's pretty hard, but I love the challenge and the idea is great! The theme works, and the graphics and art is incredible. Really well done, and like lots of other people are saying... put it on Steam!!!
Damn! This is some crazy polish! The art and music really bring in a lot of charm. It's a very simple mechanic, but you push it to its aboslute limit with how many levels there are and different enemy types to mess with. Really solid work!
As a huge fan of the big boo fight from SMW, Nitrome, and biblically accurate angels, I think this game was made for me. Completed the whole thing and it's by FAR the most time I've spent enjoying any game jam game ever.
Very impressive, extreme level of polish as expected from such a big team, this is the only game that i've played so far that i saved to play some more, 30 levels is NUTS!
What a good game!! The art and the music seem great to me, the characters, the animations, the palette, the logo, everything incredible!! I had a long time playing xD excellent job!
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Somehow, I felt like the first time I played ice climber.
Nice work!
I'll keep it on my laptop and try beating more levels tomorrow! :)
Graphics, audio and feel were all good.Really well done.
Anyways, the music is great, the graphics are neat and the game design and level design are well done!
seriously though this is incredible! only complaint so far as that there's a bit of annoying bug where you can be inside the grey blocks, then if you try to pick it up from inside it just takes whatever's beneath you instead
Definitely one of the top games I've played so far!
I found the controls pretty frustrating until I swapped to using a controlled (curse you Sticky Keys), but an excellent experience even if I wasn't skilled enough to make it very far.
Everything is really high quality, amazing yall can do this and so much in such short time! Congratz!
Maybe a bit too difficult, but still, it's incredible the amount of polish you managed to get into this game.
Congrat for your work !
Excellent graphics, sound and polishing, but that has been said so many times already.
I don't even know whether I should congratulate you on keeping or raising the quality bar, since your previous game was also excellent.
Make Grabanakki merch, I'll buy some.
No time to type, I need to go play more Grabanakki.
The core game design feels really good. Your terrain (and safety) is your weapon. The controls took some time to get used to. I think I need a twin stick setup because my brain can't quickly throw in a direction and control using the same inputs. The single hit life made the levels feel a tad long and punishing though. I only got to level 4 or 5 because it got too frustrating to get hit once on the last wave. A little safety net for hits would have felt great.
Y'all did a great job on this. I expect this will place pretty highly. :)
The little animation at the end of the level is buttery smooth
AMAZING!
The controls didn't really click with me tho, maybe WASD to move and arrows to pickUp/throws would have worked better ? (Now it creates other problems for people that don't have arrows, so idk really).
a touch... of French? Anyway it's a cool game.
Still, this is a really solid entry!
Congrats to the team for making such a big and well polished game!
One of my favorites from this JAM.
Everything is very well done and polished. Practically an "Official" game.
Congratulations!
1. Thank you for including controller support, I think with keyboard I would have given up in early level.
2. Great presentation: graphics, animation, sound
3. So many types of enemies
4. Hard, but fair (mostly)
5. Great game meachanics
A few polishing things, but minor and even a production game can have these.
Congratulation!
Amazing entry, love it!
@saturnyoshi I can't speak for others, but I really had one "critical" piece of feedback on the controls, and even then I see it more as a design choice, and that is the aiming.
I actually played this first on controller, since this is the first entry I saw that specifically mentioned that there was controller support (thanks for that, by the way!). But I mention this because I think playing on the controller first lent to this feeling even more: that there should have been 8-directions of aiming. First playing with the analog stick, my brain assumed that I would be able to, and it was only throwing in the four directions, I thought I was aiming wrong or just got the sense that it was not as "responsive" as I wanted it to be. I even tried aiming with the other stick for a moment, which did not work of course and in hindsight would not have made sense.
So that was really it for me, and I got used to it pretty quickly and wasn't really a problem because I understood the constraints, but it did leave me with that early window of just feeling "this isn't quite right".
This is not even really the kind of feedback where I suggest you change it, that's up to you all of course; there's no doubt that allowing 8-directions for throwing would change a lot in regards to the difficulty and therefore the enemy/level designs. Did you all play around with 8-directions when prototyping? What made you land on how it is now? I'd love for you to talk a bit about that.
I genuinely think every other aspect of the controls are great, though; jumping, picking blocks up, the movement itself. Really excellent work. It's crazy to see what your team can do in 72 hours; I see you all have worked together before, and it shows.
the left / right keys for a moment.
I wonder if the problem would have been solved by more explicitly telling the player "you can throw in these 4 directions" in the tutorial? It's a tricky problem to solve.
Thanks again for leaving such detailed feedback! It really helps.