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I Died in a Cave's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Presentation | #11 | 4.676 | 4.676 |
| Overall | #30 | 4.263 | 4.263 |
| Fun | #97 | 4.028 | 4.028 |
| Originality | #198 | 4.085 | 4.085 |
Ranked from 71 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?
Our game focuses on a skeleton who's soul is leaving his body, but is tethered him. The soul can't help but be joined to the skeleton, otherwise they both die. Don't keep them far apart or the link keeping them together will break and they both will die.
Did your team create the vast majority of the art during the 48 hours?
Yes
We created the vast majority of the art during the game jam
Did your team create the vast majority of the music during the 48 hours?
Yes
We created the vast majority of the music during the game jam
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Comments
Nice design, polished game and really good mechanics. It is fun to play I like it, the only thing I can say is that the cursor labyrinth slows down the dynamics of the game.
Hey EZaki! Thanks for giving ours a go! Yeah we couldn't get the soul to stop sticking to the walls xD we figured out out later, but by then it was too late to update the file lol I agree with the labyrinth stopping gameplay when all I find myself wanting to do is go go go!
Totally understanding you. I submitted my game 1 minute, 15 seconds before the deadline :D and I didn't noticed my awful "last ship" bug :D It is too weird that we are talking in our games comments simultaneously :D
xD You aren't wrong! lol yeah we did the first build like an hour and a half before so we could all try to play and check for any bugs, and ended up uploading two more times with the last one being five minutes before the deadline xD
Very nice! Most polished version I've seen yet of the soul tether/character switch mechanic in this jam! Very lovely art, smooth controls, and nice interpretation of the theme! Great work
Thank you for playing! Our whole team is surprised at how well this turned out (or that we even got to a playable state in 48 hours). It is so heartwarming to see how many people love it!
We had a similar experience, first jam for all of us!
Wow, this game is incredible. The art, the levels, the music, the mechanics, all of them were stunning. Can't even imagine what the lot of you will do when given more the 48 hours. Great job!
Thank you so much! There are a lot of things that we wanted to do and change, and a few things that we totally forgot about in the end but for 48 hours we are so happy with the results. <3
I can imagine! This was our first jam as well, so the wanting to do too many things and forgetting about some is something I can relate to all too well.
I hope everyone takes time to polish the little bits they wanted to do after the jam is over, I think it would be really fun to re-visit some of these games once bugs are fixed!
I agree!
Made my graphics card crash so I won't be rating sorry, maybe work on optimisation, because my graphics card should be good enough to render graphics like that
Totally understand and sorry to hear that you couldn't play our game. This was something highly discussed with the team, based on all the feedback. Was our first game jam and we went pretty all out that we didn't consider everything in the 48 hours.
There is actually a gameplay video in case you are interested in what the game is about. I'll message you with an update if you are still interested in playing it once we've optimized the game.
Thank you for at least trying and for letting us know!
Fantastic game - the platforming elements were a lot of fun. I especially liked the "rocket jumping" mechanic : )
An incredible amount of work for 48 hours - well done team!
Thank you so much! The Blast Shroom is def a favorite, though my favorite is the grapple one because if you get a good jump going you can Tarzan everywhere xD
There is definitely a charm to not having a tutorial and discovering things like when you first blast yourself with the fire shrooms. Need to find that balance. Glad you had fun!
Thank you for playing!
I tried to play it but I think my computer is too bad for this ^^ but it looks nice ^^ good job ^^
Oh no! Well, hopefully you were able to watch the gameplay video. Thank you for the comment!
We'll definitely need to consider scaling for future releases.
Thanks for trying!
Nice, organized teamwork needed to make this in 48 hours! Congrats!^^
Thank you! As a team of 7 with us all working together for the first time we were shocked at how well it went. It is like we were all using the same two braincells by the end of it all xD
xDD
Haha, if you could imagine all of us on discord streaming what we were doing and checking in on one another going WOAH at each other's work. We definitely fed off each other's work for inspiration the whole way through.
Thank you for playing!
Awesome game. The look is great. The controls could use a little polishing- maybe a little more vertical gain on the wall jumps- but overall felt pretty solid. Also a recall button for your soul would be nice. The art and levels are really impressive and I like the power up mechanics for the soul a lot. Well done!
Thank you so much for the feedback! We defiantly wish that there was a little more time to polish a little more, and I agree a recall soul button would be wonderful. As one of the artists I'm so happy to hear that you liked the art style we went with!
A recall button would be an interesting idea! We would need to somehow make it so it won't break some of the puzzles though. Definitely something to think about.
On a side note, I fed off the artwork so much for inspiration on the music and quite impressed as this was my first time working with the team so I feel you on this one!
Thank you for the feedback, suggestion, and for playing our game!
Impressive :O How big is the team that worked on this? Really curious how many artists and programmers it takes to change a light bulb, ahem... i mean make a game like this.
Love how the main menu transitions into the game when you click start. Instantly gives the player feel for how the mouse is connected to the character.
Hello! We had 7 people working on this team with with three artists, three programmers (One of the programmers helped as a sound tech), and one music guy. :)
impressive :D very cool, turned out super good. This'll probably make it into top 20 this jam
Wish I could have contributed more! *drops light bulb for sound fx* xD
Thank you for playing our game!
No don't drop it! you were suppose to change it! lol :D
This isn't jam game! It's too good!!!!!!!!
jkjk, i mean it is excellent and it's absolutely incredible that you did this in a weekend!!!
Hat's off to you!
Nice!
Thank you for playing on stream! I really appreciate the look :)
But it is!! Haha, this made me chuckle.
Thank you for playing our game and the response!
This game has absolutely beautiful art and music - masterful presentation, amazing work.
Thank you! I'm happy you enjoyed the game :) our art team was wonderful
It is really wonderful to hear that everyone is enjoying our game, especially for me seeing all these mentions of the music! This was quite a surprise for me!
Thank you for the kind words and for playing our game!
This is an awesome game! I could see myself buying a full length version of this, I'm so amazed by the level of detail in every single aspect of this game even more so knowing that it is made in a game jam. You can see the that this team knows what they are doing!
Thanks Nina! It was a crazy stressful time but so worth it. We will be making this a full game so stay tuned :)
I feel like the game jam brought out the creativity in everyone on the team for sure!
Thank you for the feedback, encouragement, and for playing our game!
The game has a fantastic presentation and the gameplay given worked with the puzzles. The animations were smooth and the art style is consistent with bright colors when needed to present gameplay mechanics. All of this done in 48 hours is astonishing where it shows the team's ability to do more in the future. I look forward to your future projects and wish you the best of luck.
I'm glad you liked it :) we did a lot of work to make the art and presentation easy, consistent, and beautiful. I'm glad it came through. I'm also glad you were able to pick up on our subtle color cues!
Cometx5 already said it. xD
Thank you for playing our game!
I... There's nothing to say. This is a full game in itself! It has everything: art, music, gameplay, fun main mechanic, smooth controls, and it fits the theme perfectly. I cannot believe this was made in 48h!
Excellent job!
I can't believe it either tbh! Most of the team is still recovering from the lack of sleep we had during this experience. Thank you for playing and I'm glad you enjoyed!
As the musician and working with the team for the first time I was just as surprised that the dev/art teams did all that in 48 hours too, lol!
Thank you for the kind words and for playing our game!
Dig the old platformer mood
Well done !
I'm glad that platformers aren't dead! I personally adore platformers, thankfully the team does too. Thank you for playing!
Platformers have been making a comeback!
Thank you for playing!
The game is great! The mechanics and concepts are very interesting, the art and audio are aesthetically pleasing to the eye. It's a little laggy on my device but I understand that cleaning up code isn't the easiest in game jams. Nice job though!
I'm glad you enjoyed it! yeh we didn't have time to do an hardening run like we wanted to, ran into too many issues at the end... best believe its on our todo list!
File size too! I'll optimize the music better, which should help overall.
Thank you for playing and commenting!
This game is crazy polished for 48 hours, besides some weirdness I managed to.. definitely not abuse with the grapple, or the explodey mushrooms, it was great I even almost got all the... toys? I was half expecting to see another ability but the two that were implemented were great. Definitely led me to some interesting combos. Though the grapple just led to a lot of funny swinging and flinging around most of the time.
The only big "gripe" I would have is the last screen was a bit... over bright? Not sure how to word it, it burned my eyes!! Other than that though, just the bugginess with the grapple and the fact that the wall jumping was a bit clunky...
It seemed like there wasn't too much time while on the wall to pull off a wall jump, since you seemed to almost immediately start falling. Which lead me to a lot of just jump spamming, so maybe tweaking that a bit would help.
Overall though, awesome overall concept. I would definitely play more, that explodey mushroom is too fun.
Thank you for playing! Thank you for your criticisms also, we will work on those! The grapple relies a little bit on performance unfortunately so sometimes it results in physics artifacts. The final screen seems to put a lot of people off so we will reconsider the final screen :)
Walk into the light! hehe. well yeah, that scene was definitely bright, I've been seeing them come up with ideas of how to keep the same intended effect without blinding our players.
Thank you for playing our game and for your feedback!
I know you guys are looking into making this a full game, so I played through a few times and jotted down the worst issues I encountered (please don't take this as pure criticism, I love everything about the game except for these few things and I can't believe it was made in 48 hours, even by a team of 6)
Needs a proper tutorial, I pushed every button I could think and still got stuck in some places (soul abilities are the worst culprit, I still have no idea how the grappling hook works)
There's a spasm glitch when attempting the wall jump, seems to happen when the player collides with anything that isn't a flat surface. I'd suggest only allowing wall jumps on specially marked walls, would help with game design and make your lives a lot easier.
Every time I reloaded a level I got stuck in the terrain, sometimes I got out, sometimes I had to keep restarting until I got unstuck. This can probably be fixed by spreading out the colliders a bit or adjusting the spawn location.
The soul is really bugged out, it often sticks to walls for no reason, and I'm not sure how to suggest fixing that because I don't know your exact implementation, sorry about that. Something that might help with the soul getting too far away is teleporting it to the skeleton when it's not within eyesight of the skeleton (you can still keep the same puzzles by adding "glass walls").
Lastly, for the maze puzzles, you should find a way to adjust the camera to a more 2D perspective when in that area, it'll help alleviate some of the frustration of getting stuck behind walls when in that location.
Can't wait to see how the game turns out, you guys definitely have something going here! And as a fellow music producer, Glim, I love the atmosphere you've created, wonderful job.
I really appreciate your input! The team totally agrees on all your critiques. We planned on getting a tutorial in there but unfortunately ran out of time before fully finishing the mechanics. The collisions were also a thing we ran out of time to iron out, we were going to do a collision pass but we ran into last minute issues and had to push the game as is so that's the first thing we are going to be revisiting. The soul is another thing we are starting over with... there's lots of issues surrounding it so we have plans to start from scratch and figure out some new implementation! Also the mazes are probably getting removed, they were mostly there as a quick puzzler but it's not something we particularly want to expand on, we want to introduce better puzzles that better suit the mechanics.
I'm really happy for the feedback! Keep them coming :)
Thanks for the personal shoutout! I haven't gotten to play your game yet as I'm actually finishing a school film score project due tomorrow but I have it on my list to play on Friday. Looking forward to checking it out!
Thank you for the feedback and for playing our game!
Thank you! We will definitely be making a post jam project furthering this concept :)
Honestly, I can't believe it either! Funny how a deadline and random theme can drive a production.
Thank you for playing our game! Glad you enjoyed it and will keep you posted!
Clever, fun, beautiful graphics, cool animations, nice particles, great music!
:( But very buggy!
At first, I admired the rope simulation, and twirled around until my soul got stuck, and I had to restart.
Then, I had no idea how to crouch, or even if I could. After mashing every button on my keyboard, I eventually got past that.
Then, I couldn’t figure out what I was supposed to light with my fire. So I restarted.
After restarting, there were weird invisible obstacles in random places. And I couldn’t ascend the already moving elevator.
Thank you for your input! Sorry for how rough around the edges the game is, it really needs reworking. We were going to implement tutorials to the game but unfortunately ran out of time before we could implement anything, I added a moves section to the description after reading these comments. The check is working as intended... just not telegraphed at all. You're supposed to whack the lantern with your soul, but it's not obvious so I understand the confusion. We didn't notice the invisible collision issue until 20 minutes before the deadline so that reeeeally sucks! We will be working on a newer more polished version after we recover from the jam. Again, really appreciate the feedback :)
I felt like I was on autopilot with the music and just doing something different from what I usually do, haha.
For the most part, I feel like we tried to implement a lot of features to keep things engaging. 48 hours wasn't much time to work out the bugs, but I feel like the feedback we've been getting helped bring attention to many things we may have overlooked.
Thanks for the feedback and for playing our game, was much appreciated!