UPDATE: A small post-compo bug fix (1.0.2) version has also been uploaded. See the version control at the end of the page and download that version if you want.
Instruct commands at specific times to your pal Ev'ry, so it can collect gems and get to its goal in 10 seconds or less.
Made by *manta ray* (a.k.a. José Bonilla, i.e. me) in 48 hours for Ludum Dare 51 *Compo*.
* Version: 1.0.0 (compo) * Genre: Puzzle platformer * Builds: Windows x64 - Download below and unzip to play * Total playtime: 15-20 minutes
This game is a puzzle platformer in which you do not control the character directly, but rather instruct it actions to perform at specific time slots of a 10-second period. You do so by placing different action tiles in the timeline:
After placing tiles there, you can start the commands by pressing the green Play button and stop the current run by pressing the Stop button. You can also press the Restart button to restart the level with a clean slate.
NOTE: There are 7 tutorial levels and 6 regular levels in the Compo build. Try to get all three stars in all levels! The game will save your progress.
Finally there's an Options button to take you to level select and/or mange options (Sound/Music).
Controls
* Mouse Left click - place tiles in the timeline, and generally interact with the game UI * Mouse Wheel Up/Down - scroll and toggle between available action commands for Ev'ry (see below). _Also used in the Main Menu for scrolling up/down for the level selection!_ * Mouse Right click - use while over an already placed action in the timeline to remove it.
The actions you can specify are the following:
* No action or empty (doh!). By default all the timeline is empty. * Walk right. Ev'ry will keep moving right unless told to stop explicitly. * Walk left. Ev'ry will keep moving right unless told to stop explicitly. * Stop. Ev'ry will halt all horizontal movement, even while airborne. * Jump. Ev'ry will jump, keeping its horizontal momentum. If specified while airborne, Ev'ry can also double jump. * Duck. Ev'ry will duck to avoid hazards and remain ducked until further instructed to do otherwise.
* Game Design by me, relatively inspired by King of Thieves * Coding by me - GameMaker 2022.8 * Art by me - Aseprite * Music and sounds composed and performed by me (Roland GP 609 + Audacity) * Font is *Milky Coffee* by Syafrizal from dafont.com (https://www.dafont.com/milky-coffee.font)
Note that you cannot drag and drop tiles in the timeline.
UPDATE: A post-compo bug fix version has been released. See below
There a a couple of bugs (now fixed in the post-compo bug fix release):
- The cannons currently have a small bug that does not initialize their timings exactly the same every level restart. This can prove difficult to overcome the levels that contain cannons. If faced with this issue, try your same timeline configuration again several times. - Even though there is a volume slider in the options menu, it actually does nothing. This is a bug. - Tutorial level 5 has a bug in which certain ceiling tiles are not solid and they should be.
I opted out of the Humor category.
Source code is included (see LD51.zip).
* A Post-Compo 1.0.2 version has been released, fixing the above bugs and adding very small UI/UX enhancements. If you want to try it out, please go ahead. The bugs are not game-breaking but it's always nicer to play the clean version :)
* Fixed a bug found by players on the GUI animations, where clicking restart twice would animate the GUI twice and would position it incorrectly * Fixed a bug on Level 5 that was introduced in 1.0.1 in which the timings of the barriers changed making the level impossible to finish.
1.0.1
* Cannon and barriers now reset their state every time, so they are predictable now on every run. * Fixed Tutorial Level 5 bug where certain ceiling tiles were not solid. * You can now press SPACEBAR to start/stop the timeline. * Improved timeline UI so initial selected tile is non-blank to avoid confusion and selected tiles are displayed with transparency to indicate they are not set * When levels are finished, current action sequence persists and is no longer wiped out, to allow for easier iteration over the same level. Note that the action sequence does not get permanently stored in the progress data, so quitting the game and restarting it will reset the sequences to blank. * Fixed Tutorial Level 5 bug where certain ceiling tiles were not solid. * Added Quit button in the title screen * Garbage-collected surfaces
Awesome game! I loved the way you used the 10 second mechanic and the variety was just the right amount for a compo game. Some more consistency with cannonballs/doors would have been nice to keep it the same each run, and I sometimes got frustrated when finishing the level cleared my code, but those are just nitpicks. Great job overall!
Hi, I'm sorry I really wished to play your game but I cannot figure out how to place time? They do not appear in the UI. I click on the piano but nothing happens. What did I miss? Thanks!
Well done for entering into ludum dare. The game is interesting, I didnt like the UI so much as it felt like a video editor/ animator. Cool game though!
@chaseplays thanks so much for playing it and glad you liked it! It's true, as noted on the page, the cannons are not reinitialized every time to the same state, so it's a bit inconsistent.
Post compo when my kids played it and did not get 3 stars the were also frustrated by the game clearing the commands.
For the post compo I'll fix those two. Thanks again!
@chevre thanks for stopping by and I'm sorry you could not play it right away! To place commands in the UI, hover over it with your mouse and use the *scroll wheel* up and down to choose the command you want to place, *then* click.
It would really mean a lot to me if you can give it another shot, knowing the above, if you can!
@thegamearchitect thanks for your kind comments and glad you liked it. If anything I'd say the timeline UI looks flat/uninteresting. Wouldn't know how else to depict it and be able to place commands on specific moments - will think about it though!
@senso thanks so much for playing the game! It would be awesome for a mobile game, however I think it would need a major UI rewrite and maybe even reduce the 10 seconds :) so glad you liked it.
@jose-bonilla thank you for the help! It did work with the mouse :-) - I think you could improve that a bit by drawing the picture with some transparency (or greyscale) when it's not validated, then with no transparency once you've added it (mouse click). - It could be also nice to trigger the commands by pressing "spacebar" (play/pause behavior). - When you "stop", you could draw on the piano the last avatar's position reached to help the player building the sequence. - You could maybe redesign the level a bit so it's mandatory to get all the gems to have the end flag ("goal"). Like in a golf game. I'm thinking of that old super nintendo amazing game : "Kirby's Dream Course" :-) - I think the first level is a bit too hard (the last jump it's too high). You could let the player some space for finding its own way to the goal. - Also the same concept could be more "puzzly" with a top down camera and no gravity
Anyway you've a done a great job with that game. There's a lot of potential in level and game design! Keep up and Congrats.
I agree with your UX comments, I'm including some of them in the 1.0.1 bug fix. I also think obviously there's some further level balancing that needs to happen in a post-LD release (if that ever happens!). Cheers!
Very cool concept, and impressive amount of content (even a tutorial!) for a compo entry. great job! If you update this in the future, some improvement to the UX (being able to easily drag and reposition entries on the timeline, having a palette to pull from instead of using the mouse wheel) would be some nice improvements.
Best game I've played so far. I like the game mechanics. I originally had a similar idea, but I didn't even know how to come up with it to make sense in the game, and here it worked. Good job
@walaber Thank you so much for your comments! I agree on the UI/UX stuff, more needs to be done. I thought about the pool of actions but couldn't come up on time with graphical stuff to implement it. Also my kids (post-compo, since I didn't have time for letting them playtest) were trying to drag-drop already placed actions, which makes sense as you say! If I keep on updating this I will rethink the whole UI.
Note that, on the time being, I published a 1.0.1 post-compo build which at least allows you to use spacebar to start/stop the timeline, shows currently selected (non-placed) action with transparency and allows to keep the last configuration - all ideas by @chaseplays and @chevre :)
I really liked the whole programming movement thing. At first I thought I wasn't gonna like it but then after actually trying it, it wasn't bad. My biggest problem is that you cant like skip the tutorial text, I really only needed it for the first level, and even then I could have skipped most of it. Beyond the whole changing of tile type its pretty intuitive so good job on that! Other then that really cool game and nice puzzles.
Thank you so much @mcnuttys for your nice comments :) Glad you liked it! Thanks for the comments about the tutorial text - if anything I think it's a good sign that you didn't need the tutorial to know how to play. Regards!
This was a really enjoyable playthrough. The tutorials felt nicely paced to teach the mechanics of playing the game. The concept of the queuing commands on the timeline and doing micro adjustments when needed was great. Sortof reminds me of a board game I played with my kids when they were younger and I wanted to get them into programming call Robot Turtles. For only having 48-hours for development for the compo, a lot was put into this.
One suggestion I have would be how the commands themselves are input. Using the scroll wheel works well, but having a command picker would be a nice touch. Maybe something like clicking on the timeline cell opens a palette to click the command you want to input.
A very well done game. I've played games like this and I really like them. Congratulations on the work. The music was very pleasant to listen to and matches the ambience very much. A small bug happened to me. I reset stage and the timeline went up.
A very good game with amazing mechanics. I have a problem with the mouse wheel, but that's not your fault. :smile:
I love the music, I played the game for quite some time (mainly because of level 5) and it was still a joy to listen to.
I really appreciate the tutorial, it would need far more games in this jam.
Just by the way, I have no idea how to beat level 5 in 10 seconds. I managed to get the character under the barrier, I don't know if this is the right way or just a bug.
@aristurtle thank you so much for playing it and very glad you liked it! Never heard of Robot Turtles, but there's a solo board game called *Hacker* my eldest son used to play that has similar concepts. The command picker idea you mention would be great (I'm thinking something like a context menu), others have pointed out the UI needs improvement and I think that would be one good way of making it better, plus it would be more suitable for playing it on a touchscreen device.
@euler-moises thanks so much! Great that you liked the game and also the music, I improvised a little on the piano (performed it on my digital piano and recorded it to my PC).
The bug you show might have to do is surely related to the easing of the UI elements (note that the buttons, options and level name UI is also lower than it should), I'm at work right now and can't access the GameMaker project but I'm probably just not resetting the initial position of the UI elements on the start of the level, and my easing script works on a delta (not on a target value / I knew this was a bad idea but didn't have time to change it) so if you click "restart" twice too quickly, then the easing starts from an already higher (or lower) position and ends up farther from where it should. Thanks for pointing that out, I will release version 1.0.2 and upload it as soon as possible.
@mira thanks for playing it and so proud you liked the game and the music! As I was pointing out above, I improvised the music and recorded it from my digital piano to my computer. This was like 30 minutes before the deadline :)
Level 5 is beatable depending on the version: if you played the original compo version it's just a matter of starting the timeline at the right time, since barriers are not synced exactly the same every time (this was a bug with barriers and cannons, as described on the page). If you played the post-compo fix, you should be able to double jump to the middle platform, wait there for a bit and then go forward, you should reach the goal at nearly 10 seconds. Probably too hard though for level 5 :)
hey @mira, thanks for your post again! I just played both (the post-compo fix and the original) and you're right about the post-compo fix - the gate timings in the post-compo fix are wrong. I've now uploaded the 1.0.2 fix (with the fix for the interface bug reported by @euler-moises) and fixed the barrier timings that were changed from the compo version to the post-compo version, when I fixed the inconsistency on the timings. Sorry about that.
I think this is the most innovative take on the theme I have come across thus far in the jam. Even before I made it through the tutorial levels, I was having so much fun playing this and knew I would be disappointed once I ran out of levels to play, because I would want more! I hope you continue to develop this game and publish it somewhere!
@rage-paint-games Thanks so much for your kind comments and for playing it on stream! I really appreciate your words. I can't promise I will keep pursuing this, but I *do* promise I will think about it seriously! Best of luck with the jam. Also, congrats for your stream, it's really cool, and your art is AWESOME.
This game was such a relaxing experience, well done! Great mechanics have a set timeline, and plenty of options/obstacles to keep it fresh each level. Great entry!
Played the compo version. I see that my issues were already fixed post-compo (those nasty cannons). I've seen this type of game before in LD, but this one's especially good.
There's so much to like here. The tutorials are helpful and fun. The level select and overview of the gems acquired is nice if I want to complete the basics then go back for the gems. The programming mechanic is so pleasant to use (mouse wheel was a good choice). Watching Ev'ry go (and hopefully make it to the finish) is entertaining. Nice animations. The music's great too. It's super calming.
Sometimes I make it to the finish when I'm trying things out, but I want to get all of the gems. Since I finished, the instructions get wiped out and I need to reprogram Ev'ry. It'd be nice to have a "continue" option, rather than a clean restart.
@pincushion Thanks so much for your kind words and very glad you liked it so much! Now that you've rated, you can play version 1.0.2 where I have already included what you suggest (others had suggested it before). In post-compo versions, previous instructions persist until you quit the game, so it's easy to try for the three stars. Thanks again!
This was fun to play! In order to rate it fairly I played the compo version, but it sounds like you've implemented fixes for the main gripes I had with the later levels, mainly not being able to trust that the same action would play out the same every time, which is really necessary when trying to adjust your action list. But very nice submission, very impressive to have a fleshed out tutorial in such a short time, great job!
I would have liked a different input method with hotkeys for the main directions, like using WASD or Keyboard, but it's a minor thing!
Our game also explored the concept of programmable actions, but you took it in a very different direction from us, so that was fun to see!
@druvsaft Thanks for playing! Indeed the post-compo version is for people who want to play after rating it and want to see the issues fixed.
Input method/UI in general is definitely tricky here and can go many places depending on input type (keyboard vs mouse vs touch...) etc. I did check out your bot.copy() game as well and I see what you mean about the inputs, that would be a little different approach.
Excellent game! Best I've played so far. Great tutorial and level design, interesting mechanics and lovely music (the music get's a bit repetitive, but you even added a setting for that!). I think most of my feedback have been said already but the fact that my commands get cleared (because the level ended) when I hit the flag, before I've managed to collect all the crystals, is a bit annoying. Otherwise a superb game for the amount of time it took.
Awesome game and especially impressive for a compo entry! And it was awesome welcoming you to the stream yesterday! Here's the VOD if you want to check that out again:
OMG! One of the best Compo games I have played so far! Well executed and matched the theme so well! I will keep playing it and think about how can I make a game like this in 48 hours :bow:
The game is really well polished! The art style is nice, music fits quite well with the game and game mechanics are cool. 2 things of feedback: the Tutorial level 5 is not deterministic (the cannon shoots each time at different time after starting the level) and it would be nice to be able to exit the level and the game with Escape button :) Besides that, great job with the game! Really impressive for Compo entry!
@zimny11 thanks so much for you kind feedback! I agree, I fixed the non-deterministic stuff on cannons and barriers on Post Compo version. Unfortunately I couldn't allot time to play test and fix it before the compo submission. ESC should open the already available options menu as well, this sounds obvious but is not implemented. Thanks for the suggestions!
Excellent entry, I am amazed at how much content you managed to get done in that short amount of time! The game is very polished and even 7 Tutorial levels, I mean come on!!
Also a very clever take on the theme, I really liked how well the game eased me into the mechanics and then let me play with them. The only thing I missed was the ability to move entire sections on the timeline but i really had to look with a microscope to find something negative ;) Even the music is nice!
Comments54
Thanks!
Love to this in the app store some day :)
Post compo when my kids played it and did not get 3 stars the were also frustrated by the game clearing the commands.
For the post compo I'll fix those two. Thanks again!
It would really mean a lot to me if you can give it another shot, knowing the above, if you can!
Thanks
- I think you could improve that a bit by drawing the picture with some transparency (or greyscale) when it's not validated, then with no transparency once you've added it (mouse click).
- It could be also nice to trigger the commands by pressing "spacebar" (play/pause behavior).
- When you "stop", you could draw on the piano the last avatar's position reached to help the player building the sequence.
- You could maybe redesign the level a bit so it's mandatory to get all the gems to have the end flag ("goal"). Like in a golf game. I'm thinking of that old super nintendo amazing game : "Kirby's Dream Course" :-)
- I think the first level is a bit too hard (the last jump it's too high). You could let the player some space for finding its own way to the goal.
- Also the same concept could be more "puzzly" with a top down camera and no gravity
Anyway you've a done a great job with that game. There's a lot of potential in level and game design! Keep up and Congrats.
I agree with your UX comments, I'm including some of them in the 1.0.1 bug fix. I also think obviously there's some further level balancing that needs to happen in a post-LD release (if that ever happens!). Cheers!
Note that, on the time being, I published a 1.0.1 post-compo build which at least allows you to use spacebar to start/stop the timeline, shows currently selected (non-placed) action with transparency and allows to keep the last configuration - all ideas by @chaseplays and @chevre :)
Thanks again!
One suggestion I have would be how the commands themselves are input. Using the scroll wheel works well, but having a command picker would be a nice touch. Maybe something like clicking on the timeline cell opens a palette to click the command you want to input.
Overall, great work.
Congratulations for the game.
I have a problem with the mouse wheel, but that's not your fault. :smile:
I love the music, I played the game for quite some time (mainly because of level 5) and it was still a joy to listen to.
I really appreciate the tutorial, it would need far more games in this jam.
Just by the way, I have no idea how to beat level 5 in 10 seconds. I managed to get the character under the barrier, I don't know if this is the right way or just a bug.
Thanks!
The bug you show might have to do is surely related to the easing of the UI elements (note that the buttons, options and level name UI is also lower than it should), I'm at work right now and can't access the GameMaker project but I'm probably just not resetting the initial position of the UI elements on the start of the level, and my easing script works on a delta (not on a target value / I knew this was a bad idea but didn't have time to change it) so if you click "restart" twice too quickly, then the easing starts from an already higher (or lower) position and ends up farther from where it should. Thanks for pointing that out, I will release version 1.0.2 and upload it as soon as possible.
Thanks again!
Level 5 is beatable depending on the version: if you played the original compo version it's just a matter of starting the timeline at the right time, since barriers are not synced exactly the same every time (this was a bug with barriers and cannons, as described on the page). If you played the post-compo fix, you should be able to double jump to the middle platform, wait there for a bit and then go forward, you should reach the goal at nearly 10 seconds. Probably too hard though for level 5 :)
Thanks!
There's so much to like here. The tutorials are helpful and fun. The level select and overview of the gems acquired is nice if I want to complete the basics then go back for the gems. The programming mechanic is so pleasant to use (mouse wheel was a good choice). Watching Ev'ry go (and hopefully make it to the finish) is entertaining. Nice animations. The music's great too. It's super calming.
Sometimes I make it to the finish when I'm trying things out, but I want to get all of the gems. Since I finished, the instructions get wiped out and I need to reprogram Ev'ry. It'd be nice to have a "continue" option, rather than a clean restart.
Now that you've rated, you can play version 1.0.2 where I have already included what you suggest (others had suggested it before). In post-compo versions, previous instructions persist until you quit the game, so it's easy to try for the three stars. Thanks again!
I would have liked a different input method with hotkeys for the main directions, like using WASD or Keyboard, but it's a minor thing!
Our game also explored the concept of programmable actions, but you took it in a very different direction from us, so that was fun to see!
Input method/UI in general is definitely tricky here and can go many places depending on input type (keyboard vs mouse vs touch...) etc. I did check out your bot.copy() game as well and I see what you mean about the inputs, that would be a little different approach.
Thanks a lot and glad you liked it!
Also a very clever take on the theme, I really liked how well the game eased me into the mechanics and then let me play with them. The only thing I missed was the ability to move entire sections on the timeline but i really had to look with a microscope to find something negative ;) Even the music is nice!
So much better than my game! 🥲