Ludum Dare #50compo

Last of the Sky Folk

by ian-kettlewell

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.30

Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.69

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.75

Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.34

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.37

Audio★★★★★★★★★★2.10

Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.21

Mood★★★★★★★★★★2.85

Ascend the tower. Evade the worm!

Play this movement-based 3D game in your browser today! https://ianjk.com/ld50

Controls:

* Use the WASD keys to move.
* Spacebar to jump.
* Aim and click with your mouse to grapple. Your cursor turns white when the grapple's target is within range.
* If you make it to the end right-click is used for something. :)
* Collect the yellow power-ups to extend your grapple length.

Built with a custom Rust game engine: https://github.com/kettle11/koi

Post-jam fixes: Fixed audio getting glitchy after many sounds were played, fixed disabled audio, darkened text to improve legibility, fixed bug where the player could get stuck upside down, made getting stuck in the level less likely.

Comments25

badoomtch4 Apr 2022, 13:00

I had fun with this one. I did find myself in the mesh at some point unable to escape, but I just refreshed and played again. I love the way it looks and plays, it's a lot of fun. Great entry.

lb015 Apr 2022, 02:40

The mechanics are really good. It took a bit to get the hang of the grappling hook, but once I got that the game really took off. One thing I would've liked to see is some sort of difficulty scaling, where if you are going faster the worm will rise faster to keep it challenging for more experienced players. But other than that I had a lot of fun with this one.

Linus Lindberg5 Apr 2022, 20:08

Had a lot of fun playing this, decpite getting stuck inside meshes and disoriented at times.

Colombo6 Apr 2022, 01:31

Very fun, I would improve it by having a music that reflects the urgency of escaping. I played for a long time and would definitely play again. I did not notice how high up did I get in my best run :(

CaramelCode6 Apr 2022, 01:38

Wow this has been my favorite game so far! I love that you wrote it in Rust for a Compo that is SUPER impressive to me! I thought the ending was very funny! My only suggestion for improvement would be some more audio and music, but I understand that would be very hard in a Compo.

Truth Defined6 Apr 2022, 01:41

Very much enjoyed this game!
Art is simple but clean. Gameplay is fluid and and wurm sounds are gross and i love it

Ian Kettlewellauthor6 Apr 2022, 01:46

Thanks for playing everyone!

@caramelcode Thanks for playing it! I totally wanted to add more audio and music. I had *so* many ideas but I literally made all sounds in the last 10 minutes. I was madly making sounds into the computer, trimming them, and inserting the first take. I didn't even test if the ending music worked before I submitted the final build! With even an extra half hour I could have made the audio much better. Next time I'll plan that a little better!

Furtive Pygmy6 Apr 2022, 01:54

Awesome game! I agree with the above posters that some music would have added to the mood a lot.
Enjoyed the grappling, and would totally play a time-trial version of this!
Art is pleasant and geometry was fun to navigate.

s1lv3r Dr4g0n Games6 Apr 2022, 03:46

Love seeing interesting engines. Good job!

vidarn7 Apr 2022, 10:51

I liked the grappling hook mechanic once I got the hang of it, though I will admit that it took me a while to figure out how the game worked. Perhaps you could add some instructions to the game description?

I think you managed to incorporate the theme well, especially considering the ending. Also, the environments were nice and definitely felt like an alien planet.

Ian Kettlewellauthor7 Apr 2022, 18:44

@vidarn Thanks for playing! I added some more instructions to this page which hopefully will help future players avoid confusion. Thanks for the recommendation!

Lazzor13 Apr 2022, 12:52

Hey, nice game and props for making it in your own engine! The grappling hook works well, but at some point I had trouble with orientation, not really knowing if I'm still going up or down :D The movement was really slow for me, which is why I almost exclusively moved with the grappling hook.

Psytron16 Apr 2022, 02:52

This game grappled me! Simple concept but can tell you took a lot of care in it and executed well. Good jam!

sinus16 Apr 2022, 16:07

Nice game! I like both the game idea and the graphics style. It feels a bit like Tomb Raider actually ^^
I manged to get to the top. I guess you could increase the movement speed a bit, as running compared to grappling isn't very effective at the moment.

Jamie Slowgrove17 Apr 2022, 11:47

Nice game! I loved the grapple mechanics, it was fun to play and I thought it was a really cool idea. Awesome job!

kjscott18 Apr 2022, 10:30

It took me several attempts to figure out how to effectively move around, and it may have just been the laptop I was working on but the game ran horribly slowly to begin with for a run or two before it finally seemed to calm down and catch up (fogging and limiting the render distance might have helped a bit with that). Definitely a few issues with getting inside the draw boxes of the different objects but considering it's a compo entry a pretty solid effort there given the time constraints. I think a more polished version of this game could be quite interesting to play as it has an unusual gameplay mechanic.

WobbleBlocks18 Apr 2022, 13:33

very neat! nice entry!

chriiis8818 Apr 2022, 13:36

Let's be honest, the graphics and sound can be improved a lot. What are the yellow balls for? What is the red stuff? There are also quite a few visual bugs:

But that being said, boosting yourself up with the rope is quite fun. This could be a cool game if you built on the good movement mechanic. Also, I have no clue what I did to win the game (shoot the worm? which worm? there was no worm).

Ian Kettlewellauthor18 Apr 2022, 14:15

@chriiis88 thanks for playing!

The worm is the giant purple thing that’s slowly surrounding the whole tower. The red part is the center of its mouth. I can see how it’s not 100% obvious though.

The yellow things are grapple length power-ups. They are explained in one of the messages at the start, but it’d be very easy to miss. Definitely something to be improved.

Ian Kettlewellauthor18 Apr 2022, 14:21

@kjscott Apologies for the poor performance!

On the laptop I developed on I didn’t encounter any lag but it’s definitely a bit more demanding than a typical game jam entry.

If I revisit the game I’d definitely spend time testing across a wider range of hardware.

Tudvari21 Apr 2022, 14:36

Yaaay, I've managed to finish it. I always loved grappling games, and it felt really good going up further and further. Especially when I managed to chain a few good hooks and I was able to maintain my velocity for a long time. :smile:
Good entry! Maybe some intro would have been nice.

alpharock621 Apr 2022, 14:48

Made it all the way to infinity, nice :P That was a really fun mechanic to play around with once I got the hang of it. Nice entry!

Hawke Games21 Apr 2022, 17:16

Game is cool, the graphics are simple but looks nice. The audio is minimal but it isn't irritating. The biggest issue for me is that the game can't be played in fullscreen and for some reason my mouse can sometimes be brought back to my browser so I can't look all the way around. But I really like climbing with the high-speed grappling.

Ian Kettlewellauthor21 Apr 2022, 17:57

@hawke-games Thanks for playing! Sorry to hear about those mouse issues. Which browser were you using?

Hawke Games21 Apr 2022, 19:04

@ian-kettlewell I'm using Firefox