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Too Deep's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Gameplay | #6 | 3.868 | 3.868 |
| Visuals | #23 | 3.605 | 3.605 |
| Mood | #24 | 3.421 | 3.421 |
| Overall | #43 | 3.033 | 3.033 |
| Audio | #90 | 1.237 | 1.237 |
Ranked from 38 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Engine
Unity
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Comments
Another nice take on the platformer genre, good work! Add some audio and you are good to go!
The Hellspawn was really a nice touch.
Wasn't there supposed to be gamepad controller inputs? For me they didn't work at all (using the web version), although with most games they worked for movement at least (sort of the default settings).
Hi, yes, the game should feature universal controller support, I personally play the game with an Xbox-360 controller. Could you let me know what kind of controller you are using and I can have a look at what might not be working?
I've got a wired PS3 controller.
In the native build the gamepad works. A bit weird is the "press anything to start" when you have to press start, so maybe the message should read "press any key or 'Start' button"...
When moving away from the wall at first the character stops and I couldn't go on until I stopped for a moment. Maybe that's intentional, can't say whether it's the same with keyboard input.
Within the game, "Select" resets the level (as is said in the table on the game's page). Maybe there should be a selection of "Continue", "Restart Level", and "Quit"?
It's interesting that it doesn't work in WebGL build but does with Windows.
The "Press Anything to Start" message is a bit unfortunate when playing with a gamepad, I admit. Given more time I would have liked to work on localising the tutorial text to keyboard or gamepad depending on which one you had plugged in, but ultimately we were working right up until the deadline and controller support was always something we considered a "nice to have" rather than a true essential.
Unfortunately, the other two issues are really more of the same. Being able to buffer movements before the player takes control of Urist is something I have been looking into for a while now and I am still looking for a solution that I am satisfied would function how I would like. A "pause" menu with some options like you described was again something that came up in our discussions towards the deadline but didn't go forward due to time constraints.
Essentially, I have a bunch of things that I would like to go back to and tidy up! I hope you were able to have fun with what was there so far and hopefully one day it will feel a little more complete.
Amazing game!
I really liked the art and the gameplay, the text font is also awesome!
btw if you can play the game that I made and give me some feedback I really appreciate it :)
Absolutely loved this game, took a while to get the hang of some of the mechanics but I like everything about this and want to see it as a complete game. I played it tonight for quite a while on my livestream if you wanted to see it you can below
That's so nice to hear. Unfortunately the video has been made unavailable in the USA for some reason, otherwise we'd love to watch it!
Someone used copyright music in their game so it got removed, it should be back up now that I removed that. Give it a try now.
I watched the video, thanks so much for playing it! I just wanted to make a few points to address some questions you had in the video, partially because this was the first time we've seen anyone play it that wasn't friends or family. It was very eye opening, at least for me.
1. Yes, this was a group effort between three of us! I did the level design, but you can see the other two hidden on the page somewhere. All the art was handmade by @patrickpatrick and programming was done by @bluspur.
2. You have the patience of a saint. I wish we would have tutorialized that you need to hold "down" while in the air to maintain momentum somewhere. We shouldn't have made you think it was your fault, or that the game was missing that somewhere. It was especially painful for me to watch, because I clearly let you and probably a bunch of other people down there.
3. Maybe we should have made it more clear in the first level, but the coins make the wall move faster, so collecting them and throwing them away is sort of a "choose your own difficulty" mechanic and fulfills (in our mind) the "all that glistens isn't gold" prompt to some degree. We had a message written on a wall in 1-1, but obviously with the wall coming after you, you don't always have time to read it. We'll try to think of some way to make it more obvious.
4. We're happy you used the controller support! We weren't actually sure if anyone would use it or not (besides us) so we're happy you got to play it with something you were comfortable with.
5. I should have toned down the difficulty maybe, or introduced difficulty options of some sort. It's so hard to figure out what's too difficult, especially with platformers. Some of my friends have beaten Celeste with all strawberries (a very difficult challenge) and have been playing Mario since they could hold a controller and they found it to be very easy and beat it within 7-8 minutes on their first attempt and getting all the coins. Other people haven't made it past the first level. With you saying that you've played other platformers and it being too difficult still, it just reinforces the idea that I messed up with the difficulty curve quite a bit somewhere along the way. That last jump you were on I knew was especially difficult (you have to dash, pogo, jump, then dash again) and the tutorial text there is just vague.
6. Audio is coming! You're right, we just ran out of time on it. Clearly it's something we should have made a priority according to the other comments on here as well, but we didn't want to half-ass it and end up with something annoying for the player. It was something that was going to need at least a couple extra days but probably more to get it right.
Thank you for making the video, it was very informative and entertaining for us! We greatly appreciate it. I think I was able to address most of your questions/concerns here.
I think the difficulty is perfect actually I wouldnt tone it down personally. I guess it depends what type of players you want to target but I think having it hard like that is great, its hard but it doesnt feel cheap hard. Like when I fail at something I know its possibly and doesnt seem like its forced to be hard where you feel cheated. I think that side of it is very polished actually.
Yeah its really just the down thing for those big jumps that was confusing. Once i got the hang of it though after that I knew how to do it. So maybe a little text at the first one explaining it just like when you unlock double jump or dash would work.
I really like the gradually unlocking abilities method, its like a mini tutorial in itself.
Awesome game.
Great job! I hate platformers, and I hated every moment of this, so you certainly did a great job. I gave up after getting the dash and my fingers started bleeding from the pieces of keyboard still lying around. My wife also threatened to leave me if I continue to use the words that was coming out of my mouth in front of our children. I kinda like my wife.
PS. Don’t take my comments as a bad thing. Your game is excellent!
Well, we're happy you enjoyed(?) the game to some extent! Thanks for playing!
Excellent platformer! Challenging, almost Super Meat Boy levels of frustration, but so rewarding once you complete it…
I only miss some audio.
You get my sincerest apology if we brought you anywhere close to the frustration that I've experienced with SMB, nobody deserves that! Thanks for playing!
Cool feature rolling down the slopes, I liked the unlocking abilities, but I missed the audio.
Good job :)
Building up the speed is always fun, happy you enjoyed it!
A really fun game to play. Only missing audio. Great submission.
Thank you for playing, we're happy you enjoyed it!
Gameplay-wise - it's a new Celeste! Great game, great mechanics, great level design!
For future develpment - for sure audio, but also to add some personality to our dwarf.
Celeste was definitely one of the games we had in mind when designing the game (a difficult junglegym of a screen where you only have one shot to get through it) so that is one of the best compliments you could have given us. Giving Urist some personality would have been nice, I'm sure they could have a lot going on personality-wise. Probably couldn't make them as well fleshed out as Madeline, but one can dream.
Good platform game! It is fun and "the wall" idea is very good!! Good work!
That nice of you to say, thank you for playing :)
Fun little platformer! I do like how you increase your skills as you progress. Some audio would be a great addition.
Nice of you to say, thank you for playing!
This game was great fun and i loved slowly growing in strength with gradual introduction of new jumps and mechanics!
Thanks for playing, glad you liked it!
What a nice platformer! the control is nice, but as a keyboard player, I somehow always defaulted to pressing up for jumping - A feedback I can give about control is that if I kept holding the right arrow as the game restarts, it doesn't register my the input - I think people do tend to do this upon restarting.
I only managed to get to the level where I need to keep jumping on the bats, but I don't think I'm understanding the physics of the jump as sometimes it feels like it should bounce more and sometimes it doesn't - quite possibly my issue but some kind of explanation would've helped clarify the game mechanic. It was quite the challenge but it was also fun!
It's also a shame that you're lacking and audio which will make this submission feel a lot better, but great job nonetheless!
I don't see any problem with us adding the up arrow as a jump button, as it's not exactly bound to anything else right now. I'll look to see if we can get that added in the next hotfix.(See edit below) Yeah, especially on some of the later levels when the wall is moving too fast I can see how people would like to just hold down right to get going. Not sure if that's an easy fix or not but we'll look into it. I'm sorry if the game was too difficult, given more time we would have tutorialized the abilities a bit better. Hope you enjoyed your time with the game anyways, thanks for the feedback!Edit: After looking into adding up arrow and W as jump buttons, we realized that makes ramp jumps impossible without putting your hands in a really weird position (middle finger on W and index finger on S.) This is because our movement system has a weird quirk where you have to hold down S in the air to maintain momentum after a ramp jump. It would be annoying to make it through the first half of the game only to learn that you can't use that control scheme on the most challenging jumps. Sorry about that, I hope I was able to explain it properly.
This is a great little platformer, and has the potential of being a cult hit, sort of like Shovel Knight style. I love the concept. The gameplay mechanic potential etc. The movement needs a bit of fine tuning and work, but it's on the right track. You definitely need to actually implement 'lives' so that you don't have to restart from the very beginning after one failure? Unless this was intentional so that the player masters the entire level and finishes it unhurt...?
Also, the messages when you get the new abilities are confusing, because you can see them BEFORE you get the chest haha! Maybe a 'dramatic pause', a tada sound when you get the ability would have helped to notice it immediately. Unfortunately I didn't find it useful enough to drop my coins, but I can tell this spin is a great idea, I've always told people in this jam with similar ideas, that maybe you just slow the player down, so make it an interesting trade-off decision for the player: you want more coins, fine, but you're slow, otherwise be fast and go away with nothing.
Sadly as others noted, no music in this game, but I don't fault the team. I had no time to put any music in my game either, but at least I had some SFX.. would have liked to see (or rather hear!) some audio in this one.
That's very nice of you to say, we appreciate it. We weren't really aiming for the player to take damage and lose hearts like you do in a game like Shovel Knight, since if you die it's usually due to falling in lava or to the Hellspawn wall. It's more like Celeste in the sense that it's more about making it through the jungle gym we set up for you in one go, with the light punishment of starting the level over. The messages and abilities were just sort of constrained by how much time we had to work on the project. We considered making the character slower with more coins, but decided to make the wall go faster instead. Changing the player's movement speed sounds good on paper, but making the game feel worse to play and hurting movement options was too much of a tradeoff (plus designing levels around different movement speeds would have been a nightmare.) Audio was clearly our greatest shortcoming, and it's something we'll work on. Thank you for the feedback, I hope I was able to explain some of our decisions!
Yes thanks, very good stuff. I don't disagree with your movement choices. But personally, I didn't see or feel if and how the wall was going faster. Remember some times the wall is off screen so we can't immediately see it change speed. But that's indeed the right idea and a good alternative option if you don't want to alter player's movement. Perhaps with music (that speeds up!) the messaging to the player will be clearer. I hope you make a prototype of this game in the future, good luck with it if so.
Awesome game, and even playable with controller... very challenging, I want more :)
There was this one level where you had to dash thru 2 coins, I tried this like 15 times and gave up..... 10/10 xD
PS: Add some nice 8bit action music :)
Happy you enjoyed it, sorry if we made it a bit too difficult!
I am in the "it was too difficult camp for me"... but that being said what I managed to play, played well and I liked the retro feel!
Agree that sound would really have helpped nail the feel, good old fashioned synth music!
Reading the other comments it clearly has an audience so well done, great work!
Thanks for playing! Hopefully we can help soften the difficulty in the future.
Reposting in the game comments section:
I really like the art style of this game. Super solid and nice retro feel. I also like the little tutorial messages you've sprinkled throughout the level in the background. That's a really cohesive way to implement them. I suck at platformers so I didn't get very far but the controls seemed solid. No crazy slipping and sliding like you get in some platformer games. I didn't hear any audio? That would be a nice touch to add. Other than that, nice work!
Thanks for the feedback, we're glad the game at least felt good to play! Sorry if it was too difficult, we're looking into adding options for that in the future. No audio yet, but hopefully coming soon!
My absolute favorite so far. everything was great, the features blew my mind away and I love how you should have the perfect timing to pass the levels. that last level was insane and so awesome. bouncing off mushrooms at high speed and once you think it wouldn't get any crazier there is two more bats and a decent amount of free fall. I got 70 gold coins out of the whole 140 so I guess I didn't do so bad. Awesome game, real great work.
Honestly this game deserves more players and credit.
Thank you so much! Glad you enjoyed your time with it. The mushrooms at the end was our equivalent of the warthog run at the end of Halo CE, just wanted people to feel that speed!
Probably the best game I tried so far in this GameJam. Got me addicted super easily :P I got stuck on the pogo/double jump/dash section. Nice work! I would have liked some music with the game to make it even better. Thanks for sharing :)
That's very kind of you to say, thank you. We had to throw in a couple tricky jumps to keep folks on their toes! Audio coming at some point soon after the voting period.
Probably the best game I tried so far in this GameJam. Got me addicted super easily :P I got stuck on the pogo/double jump/dash section. Nice work! I would have liked some music with the game to make it even better