Compo entry made for Ludum Dare 57 under 48 hours.
Below the Machine is a short action platformer with roguelite elements.
_Humanity has built you to reach the depths of the Megastructre in the hopes of breaking out of it._
Controls
W, D: Movement
Mouse click: Attack
Made in GDevelop 5; all art, code, design etc. by me.
Developer thoughts
Me and my team decided we would each submit a compo this time to practice going through the entire development process. I had some trouble with real life stuff on the last day and had to cut the game a bit short, mostly by lacking testing and balancing. Still, I'm glad how it plays.
Liked that you have to collect the dash and dive ability. But gameplaywise it was to hard for me 😄 The dash felt a bit too slow and I wasn't sure about its range
Proud of you, @holysparks! The game nice, and fun. I Liked the dynamic of the movement (dash, etc) and the enemies. The only this is... it seems that I am playing Dark souls, level hard...hahaha.
Well done to create a mini-Metroidvania during a compo! I'm a big fan of that genre. Collecting abilities that give you more access to the map is just such a nice feeling natural progression. And I like that you've randomized the location of the abilities on each run to give the game more replay-ability. I liked the character designs, although the attack animation could be a little faster, and some destruction animations for the enemies would make killing them much more satisfying. But I understand that getting those levels of polish into the game is time consuming, and hard to do during a compo, especially when life gets in the way. Great work!
Damn, it's hard xD I though Dash wasn't working, then understood from a comment here you need to find it in the level, which I finally did. Didn't go very far because I'm not very good at it, but that's a good COMPO entry! One minor thing: the WASD keys won't work on a non-qwerty keyboard. Ideally, to solve that, you'd need to use keyboard layout-independant codes (scan code) instead of key codes, but I don't know how that translates with the engine you are using. Nice job anyway!
G
Game-mon10 Apr 2025, 08:10
Cool game, i love the concept and the upgrades! Unfortunately the game just feels impossible to play, there are hazards everywhere, quite impossible to dodge them all. With a bit of balancing it could be really fun!
The controls together with the slippery physics made it quite hard to play. Together with the slow attack-speed it felt just weird. This is a case of something that isn't wrong per se. It's mostly a question of fine-tuning the movement and speed of things. Nice entry though :)
Nice concept, interesting physics like the dash. Would like to see how it ends up if continued after the jam (with graphics and UI at their best). Gg !
I had to give up after getting too frustrated. Even after several tries, my success on each run largely seemed at the mercy of the random enemy/item placement and randomized shooting directions of the turrets.
The slow back-swing feels similar to the whip from spelunky, but spelunky's whip is waaaay faster than that, allows you to turn around between the back and front swing, and has no gap between the back and front swing during which you can't deal any damage.
Additionally, in spelunky the enemies are less frequent and have more predictable behaviors, the viewport is much larger, and the game has multiple ranged weapons. All of these features together allow the player to plan paths through the level without taking any damage, despite the whip's limitations. By contrast, in this game I see no way to reach the bottom without taking _some_ damage, barring some stroke of luck.
Very fun game, I really liked the animation for such simple sprites, both for attacking and dashing
The hardest enemy in the game is the cannon that shoots everywhere, it felt a bit random sometimes. The health pool was generous, but it was a little disheartning to lose dash if you're dead
Comments20
The game nice, and fun. I Liked the dynamic of the movement (dash, etc) and the enemies.
The only this is... it seems that I am playing Dark souls, level hard...hahaha.
seemed at the mercy of the random enemy/item placement and randomized shooting directions of the turrets.
The slow back-swing feels similar to the whip from spelunky, but
spelunky's whip is waaaay faster than that, allows you to turn around between
the back and front swing, and has no gap between the back and front swing during
which you can't deal any damage.
Additionally, in spelunky the enemies are less frequent and have more predictable behaviors, the
viewport is much larger, and the game has multiple ranged weapons. All of these features together allow the player to plan paths through the level without taking any damage, despite the whip's limitations.
By contrast, in this game I see no way to reach the bottom without taking
_some_ damage, barring some stroke of luck.
The hardest enemy in the game is the cannon that shoots everywhere, it felt a bit random sometimes. The health pool was generous, but it was a little disheartning to lose dash if you're dead
Great entry overall
Is this game supposed to have sound?