Careful Caverns

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.13
Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.00
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★2.90
Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.71
Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.38
Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.29
You are lost in some caverns and need to find your way out. Unfortunately your lighter only lasts for 10 seconds. Fortunately someone has left a bunch of barrels with fuel all around the caverns. Watch out for those rats though, there's something weird going on with them.

Controls

`W S A D` or `Arrow keys` = Move player around.
`Spacebar` or `W` = Jump!
`P` or `Pause key` = Pause/Unpause the game

`F12` = Debug mode.
`F5` = Reset game.

(All of the control bindings can be edited in the file "data/game.json")

Credits:

* Myself - Programming, engine, and some graphics (player, barrel)
* Twitch viewers and friends - Various ideas!

* Graphics from OpenGameArt:
* "Cavern Fable Tileset" (https://opengameart.org/content/cavern-fable-tileset) (CC-BY-SA 4.0)
* "Seamless cave background" (https://opengameart.org/content/seamless-cave-background) (CC0)
* "Animated Rat and Bat" (https://opengameart.org/content/animated-rat-and-bat) (CC-BY 3.0)

Tools:

* Visual Studio 2019 (C# language)
* LDtk (level design tool)
* Pixelorama (pixel art)
* GIMP 2 (misc image editing)

Libraries:

* SFML.Net 2.5
* OptimizedPriorityQueue
* .NET Framework 4.8
* J2D (custom engine, work in progress)

Comments12

Firebelley
Firebelley3 Oct 2022, 23:19
Really cool interpretation of the theme and great atmosphere! However, the lack of checkpoints was really morale crushing. More forgiving checkpoints would be great. But I enjoyed it overall!
spencerflem3 Oct 2022, 23:25
Great vibes, and the theme is on point :)
As someone who gets lost easily it was very hard :p
ShauKaula4 Oct 2022, 10:07
Cool game, it's easy to understand! But the difficulty of the game is too high in my opinion. More checkpoints would have been nice. Good job for someone who worked alone!
LDJam user 2511704 Oct 2022, 15:09
Interesting little game!

Even though I must be honest, I was mostly appealed by the gameplay; it made me keep trying cause I wanted to "do better" every time I died. In a way this gives me the getting over it, or jump king, kind of vibes. Rinse repeat, learn, get better, and I'm all in for it!
Raddad4 Oct 2022, 17:03
Great little game. Hard though. I'll have to spend more time getting through it. Right now I think the boss thinks I'm writing an angry email the way I'm hitting my keyboard!!!
natpat
natpat10 Oct 2022, 00:07
I really liked the take on the theme! It was an interesting case of slow, deliberate exploration and then frantic execution. Fun! I think perhaps it could have been a bit clearer that the player was actually making progress, as I was very lost at some points but still actually moving forwards - though I guess that's probably the mood you wanted. There were some very tight platforming sections too, and sometimes the screen transition made it very hard to control. The controls were slightly unforgiving too, it didn't seem possible to jump whilst holding the button, you had to press it every time. The rats multiplying was a neat touch, I liked them jumping to their deaths as they tried to attack me! Nice entry :smile:
WFMG
WFMG10 Oct 2022, 00:11
Cool game! It's fun to go through the caves. I've always liked this setting.
broodjethomaat13 Oct 2022, 07:56
Nice game! Kept me wanting more, the game is difficult but fun! The screen transistion could be smoother
Mossieur Patate16 Oct 2022, 05:14
(I am now in a rush to test as many games as possible to help, so please do not mind the cursory reviewing style.)

1. Controls are QWERTY-only instead of layout-independent (I have an AZERTY keyboard), BUT arrow keys are enabled; there is also the key rebinding as suggested. Just note that programming in a position-independent way is possible :)
2. no sound? I feel it would help knowing what happens, especially given the darkness!
3. display may be a bit small; fullscreen option or something may help. In particular, while playing, I give little to no attention to the counter because they are remote
4. oh, you can jump on rats
5. the torch concept is cleverly used (reminds me I used such a personal torch shader in several games; very useful! :))
6. duplicating amoeba-like rats? X)
7. I think that while the rat duplication counter is useful, the light one is not so, because you visually see the light radius; I think you could do away with the light counter
8. the game feels SO HARD XD
Verbante
Verbante16 Oct 2022, 21:34
I like how the world looks :) I think barrels could be more visible
Mascoll
Mascoll20 Oct 2022, 12:35
Nice graphics and cool take on the theme. Hard game!
OtterFaeLure
OtterFaeLure20 Oct 2022, 13:50
This is a realllllllly cool concept, I loved the ideas.

That being said, some fine-tuning would definitely be needed to make this a "finished" game in the sense of getting it past the game jam limit.

I found the totally of not being able to see frustrating, I didn't know if I was going in the right direction or not and nearly stopped before stumbling on the end.

Even with that though, getting something this engaging is hard in a game jam so super well done. =) Thank you.

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