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A jam submission

Ruled By TwoView game page

Lead with logic, guided by emotions
Submitted by ARehaili_Dev — 1 hour, 20 minutes before the deadline
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Ruled By Two's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Theme#1803.6673.667
Game Design#2183.5243.524
Innovation#2213.3813.381
Overall#2563.4053.405
Audio#2763.3333.333
Graphics#3443.5713.571
Fun#5852.9522.952

Ranked from 21 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How does your game fit the theme?
Ruled By Two is a pixel art, 2D platformer that derives its name from the duality at the heart of its gameplay. Each stage is ruled by two distinct modes—Mind Mode and Heart Mode—representing the balance between thought and emotion.

Mind Mode (the calm before the storm): In this phase, you are safe, and no harm can come to you. However, the time it takes to cross the stage directly affects the intensity of the next mode. This period is all about preparation and careful decisions, setting the stage for what’s to come.

Heart Mode (the stormy mode): Your performance in Mind Mode determines the speed of both the player and the environment. Here, everything becomes dangerous, and survival becomes a challenge as the storm intensifies based on how well you handled the calm. Your strategy and efficiency in the calm phase directly impact the chaos and danger of the storm.

With its retro pixel art style and 2D platforming mechanics, Ruled By Two challenges you to navigate both serenity and chaos, where careful planning in the calm influences survival in the storm.

Did you write all the code and made all the assets from scratch?
Yes, all the code, design, and asset creation were done by me from scratch.

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Comments

Submitted

Cool art and music. The movement was also smooth. 

Kudos!!

Submitted(+1)

I love the style and the music!

Submitted(+1)

Cool game! I loved the art, and the idea was really interesting too. The game felt polished and smooth. I enjoyed playing it, good job man!

Submitted(+1)

Great idea. Art is wonderful!

Developer

Thanks for giving it a shot! I really like the art too—in fact, I've somehow fallen in love with the one-bit art style.

Submitted(+1)

Really fun concept and nice look.  I like the loop between learning the level and then having to blast through it the other way. I would have liked to play more, but my jump stopped working after a little bit every time I'd retry one of the levels

Developer

Thanks for playing the game! I'm very happy that you liked the game loop—it's indeed designed the way you described it. As for the jumping issue, if reloading the stage doesn't solve the problem, you can restart the game and use the right arrow to skip stages and reach where you left off. I highly recommend trying the desktop version if you haven't already.

Submitted(+1)

nice job there, pretty fun game and the sound is really nice too

Developer

Thanks for playing the game! I'm delighted that you found it fun.

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

Great game! I liked your take on the theme. I will share only one constructive feedback, the platforms could have been one-way platforms (it's preatty simple to include with unity), there was a moment where I was below a platform, and it didnt let me  jump. Again, great art, and polished game, congrats!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the feedback! As for the platforms, they're actually one-way platforms. The issue is that I'm using the parenting approach for the moving platform, which conflicts with the one-way platform and nullifies its effect. I didn't notice this during testing. Thank you for pointing that out!

(+1)

Awesome game design! Simple but really effective for the theme. I especially loved the synthy soundtrack—it added a great vibe! The mechanics worked well, though I think some of the platform timing was a bit tricky. Overall, really cool job!

Developer

Thanks for the feedback! I'm happy that you enjoyed the game.

Submitted(+1)

Awesome, this is really cool game design. Simple and effective, and perfect for the theme. I loved the synthy soundtrack especially!!

Developer

Happy to hear you liked the game design! I really like the soundtrack too.

Submitted(+1)

What a beautiful aesthetics! good job, impressive puzzles as well

Developer

Thanks for playing the game, I really appreciate it!

Submitted(+1)

A very solid visual concept. I really appreciate how you tied the theme into not only the gameplay but the visuals as well.

As for critiques I'd say that there was some weirdness with the changing platforms. It didn't feel particularly fair that some platform timers would change not just depending on whether you were in heart or mind mode, but seemingly for no good reason within the same mind mode stage. Maybe this could be remedied by a more visual indicator of when they were going to change? I'm unsure.

I'd also say that the movement felt pretty floaty.

Other than that I think you're one of the more creative takes on the theme and I really appreciate that about your game.

Developer

Thanks for playing the game! Regarding the changing platform, I agree that I could have included a visual indicator to make it more fair. Lessons have been learned.

Submitted(+1)

Interesting idea and interpretation of the theme. The Graphics were quite cool too. I played it in the browser and it crashed in a couple of different ways. It would randomly skip levels and sometimes the jump didn't work. But over all well done!

Developer

Thanks for playing the game! I'm very happy that you found the graphics cool. Regarding the browser version, unfortunately, it may have some issues. You can try the desktop version—I think it's much better than the browser version.

Submitted

Unfortunately, I have a Mac. You only have a Windows version for download :_(

Submitted(+1)

cool concept, but the movement of the character wasnt polished well to the point that it seemed impossible to try and perfect your movement and jumping in level 3 to continue...
and i dont know if it was my speakers or browser or if it was the music but it had some unpleasant sounds...

Developer (1 edit) (+1)

Thank you for the feedback! I'm very happy that you liked the concept. Regarding the audio, unfortunately, the browser version has some issues, but the desktop version is clean.

Regarding the movement, I tried using SmoothDamp to create a slow-in, slow-out effect, but it might have been out of place. Lesson learned!

(1 edit) (+1)

Very cool game, with fun graphics! A bit too difficult for me in the morning, but I'll definitely come back for more later!
I submitted a duo game as well :)
https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-12/rate/2972302

Developer

Thank you for playing the game! I'm very happy that you liked it, and I hope you find your way around it.