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A jam submission

SacrificialView game page

Use the corpses of your own clones to progress in this 2D platformer.
Submitted by nabladeveloper — 5 hours, 39 minutes before the deadline
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Sacrificial's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Fun#224.1824.182
Mechanics#224.1824.182
Story#363.8643.864
Theme#494.0914.091
Sound#503.6823.682
Aesthetics#724.1824.182
Music#893.7273.727

Ranked from 22 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How many people worked on this game total?
1

Did you use any existing assets? If so, list them below.
Sonniss GDC 2020 Free Sound Package, Loading Screen Loop by Brandon Morris on OpenGameArt.org

Link to your source?
All source files included inside zip file

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Comments

Submitted

It was quite challenging, I am surprised I was able to complete it. The last level didn't even have any hazards and it still took me a while to do it. I am impressed by the number of levels and mechanics you were able to add in the timeframe. The only thing I didn't like is the wall jumps. I would have preferred it if the player walljumped only when I pressed space, and not just when I let go of the direction key.

Submitted

Seems like a very fun little game, well presented. I loved the little chalk outline guys showing you what to do in the early levels. Sadly I couldn't get passed the part where you had to throw a corpse at spikes on the wall and then jump off the wall onto the corpse and back to the wall and on top. That was way too hard for an old fossil like me, not that I was ever good at these types of games. 
Bit spry for a corpse but it works for the mechanics you're going for. Very well polished and all the mechanics were introduced well

Submitted

Wow, there are a whole lot of mechanics here! :D Really well built puzzles, I had fun playing your game, good job! :) However, controls felt a little too responsive to me. Wall jumping felt a little unrealistic, a bit too forgiving. Even when most of your body touches the spikes, when you touch the wall just a little you don't die.

Submitted

Oh yeah, and accidentally I skipped some text with WASD. I think it would be better to have dedicated keys for skipping text (Enter/ maybe space).

Submitted

Very good game. The controls are very precise and you can do exactly what you want.

The tutorial phase for all the mechanics is so well explained, great job.

I had a great time playing it.

Submitted

An amazingly polished game great job! I really liked the attention to detail such as the smoke clouds when one changed directions quickly! My main issue with the game is the way the wall hopping is handled I would have much preferred if I had to press space again to jump of the wall instead of the game doing it automatically when I jumpend on a wall and did not press against it. Also some of the hitboxes feel off so that it is hard to grab the corpses or spikes that kill you even though it does not look like you would hit them. Also I think the throw distance of the bodies could be toned down a bit as I found myself overshooting buttons quite often which was not the greatest experience! You did an incredibly amazing job at introducing mechanics simply then making them more complex and then adding in previous mechanics that was absolutely stellar!

Developer(+1)

Being able to use up to wall hop has been recommended, and I agree.

 
 Hitboxes have been reported as slightly off and I definitely can see room for improvement. 

Throwing distance has been a sticking point and needs to be fine tuned. 

All your criticism is valid. I was going for a more polished piece, but there still seems to be some rough spots I missed. 

Thank you for playing!

Submitted

There will always be room to fine tune and I find this rating phase so amazing for being able to get a bunch of people to test your game!

Submitted

i've seen similar ideas a couple of times now, but you definetely pushed it the farthest!

you certainly found a lot of creative ways for dead bodys to be used.
graphics and music were spot on, as well!
here are some minor points, that might help (or not ;-)


- i imagine you didn't have a gamepad to test, right? because movement on the RIGHT stick was super strange. also: jump not being on the lower button kept confusing me till the end - that's like the 1 convention all the console makers agreed upon ;-)

- i think the hitbox should be a little smaller especially around the head - at least when it comes to receiving damage/hitting spike/edges of platforms. I was getting a lot of deaths that felt unfair/incorrect. also: involuntary head bumps.

- the wall slide gets triggered a little too early for my taste. lots of unwanted wall clutching

- I do prefer a controllable jump height through how long you push the jump button - so just a little hop when you tap it -> high jump with a long button push. it gives you more control imo.

- ok last one: I think you introduced a lot of mechanics, but you didn't really use them to build puzzles. it was like the whole game was a tutorial. some levels where a bit tricky to execute, but I don't recall a moment where I actually had to think about a solution. so instead of introducing a new ideas every 2 rooms, I think the game would benefit from exploring a single mechanic and get creative with it for a couple of rooms, before introducing a new one. (I'm thinking about portal here. which clearly, you did too ;-)

all in all: very strong entry though!

Developer

I didn't test the controller, which was a huge error on my part. I wasn't expecting anyone to use controller with a game jam game, but that isn't an excuse. Your arguments regarding the controller set-up are all fair and I agree with them.

The hitboxes could use some work, I agree. The jumping, sliding, and running animations al have the same hitbox, but the sprite doesn't necessarily conform to it at all times. This would be a great polish point.

I had the opposite problem with wall slides, where I wouldn't grab on. As part of jumping and wall sliding there is a bit of user error allowed, you can jump about 10 pixels above the ground for example. I could tone down the wall slide buffer zone.

Controllable jump height would have been great. I wish I had thought abut it. Beating myself up about it now. What 2D platformer doesn't have controllable jump height? 

The game does lack depth. I generally have 1 room intro, and one room basic implementation, but no mastery rooms afterwards. I am  aware of puzzle introduction structure, but I felt I could skimp a little here due to it being a game jam.

I'm impressed by this reply. 

Submitted

Wow great work man. Using your dead body to hop on spikes was a great idea. Beside that the movement was super smooth. 

About a bug I found.. I noticed that if you go near a wall and jump pretty fast you do a bust up until the ceiling and can skip some puzzle. 

Please play my game if you have the time and give me your honest feedback :)

Submitted

You really managed to get a lot done in 10 days!

Submitted

Wow this feels almost like a commercial game without all the marketing. There are so many stages and each of them are well conceptualize to force players to think.

Submitted

Great concept, with interesting mechanics. the wall jump feels a little off for me because it uses movement control instead of jump button (A and D to jump off a wall). a really nice game regardless.

Submitted

Neat little game. Controls feel a little clunky, but that's not bad.

Submitted

Very cool mechanics! A few rough areas that other people have mentioned below. 

Great job with this!

Submitted

Great mechanics in this game. I never knew there were so many uses for corpses!

The music is nice and moody, and always makes me suspicious, especially with people watching me through the glass. I'd like to see what comes next, who are these people? What are they doing to me? etc etc

There was some good use of humour too, and the corpse bouncing on the trampoline made me laugh.

There was some particular frustrations in the game though. The first was a level with 2 rotating turrets, with 2 sets of spikes pointing down and 1 pointing up. So you get past both of them, then jump off the wall and get across the spikes with the corpses, it might just be me but that was the most difficult room to pass.

And the final room (I think it was final) with the many switches and doors, I had trouble getting the corpse through one of the doors on the floor, as it had to be almost pixel perfect to fit through.


Overall it was great, and imaginative use of the theme

Developer

Thank you for the comment. I agree with everything you said. The corpse tossing mechanic feels imprecise and there are certain rooms that could use improvement.

Submitted

Thanks for your reply.

I did have another problem, but it's also down to the corpse tossing. It's the level where you have to go up between 2 walls with spikes on left and right. The idea is to kill yourself at the top, then go back up there and toss the corpse down to the button on the floor, but the corpse would often get stuck on the wall spikes and I couldn't get it off.

Either way, overall the mechanics are still great, and using the corpse to platform off is a great idea.

Developer

That room isn't great I agree. The jump height isn't perfect for the spikes, and because you often threw the corpse into the wall spikes, I usually jumped down to toss the corpse on the button. Having to do the wall hop 3 times was tedious.

Submitted

The game is really well done! The animation is really cool. Were all sprites done by yourself? (the are really cool).
There is a little bug (maybe) with wall crawling that could be abused in some levels:
if you hit jum mulitple times (fast) durin while you leap sliding the wall will bring you to the top very fast.  But it could be really usifull only in the level where bodies are introduesd, so it is not a big problem

Developer

Wall climbing with wall hop is known. It is a difficult technique to pull off, so I left it in if anyone wanted to use it. There are a few puzzles where it can be used, but it is rarely faster to wall climb.

Submitted

Impressive! this is amazing.

Submitted

I really enjoyed this and I was impressed by the art style and the Portal-like test chamber atmosphere 

Developer

Thank you

Submitted

I really enjoyed this game but couldn't make it to the end, not sure what level number it was but I was stuck on the bit where you have to jump up the spike wall against 3 turrets with the 1 corpse, couldn't make it past the turret, what are you supposed to do there? I would like to finish the game as it was very fun!

Developer

Not sure which room this was, there are a few with 3 turrets and spike walls.

There is one room where after you climb the spike wall you need to kill yourself on a spike  and then bring that corpse to a button(You can grab corpses off of spikes) .

There is another room with triple jump pads, where you have to turn towards the turrets as you carry a corpse and at the end wall hop to the door. An older version required you to toss the corpse onto the spikes at the top and wall hop off it as soon as it landed, but I'm pretty sure the current version just has a normal wall hop there. 

Regardless, thank you for playing.

Submitted

I went back through and completed it this time round, this has been one of the stand-out entries for me, very fun game!

I saw another comment you posted which described that you could wall jump whilst holding the corpse, which is what I hadn't tried the first time around! 

Thanks for making and submitting this game!!