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Light Runner's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Fun | #15 | 3.962 | 3.962 |
| Overall | #19 | 3.758 | 3.758 |
| Controls | #20 | 3.692 | 3.692 |
| Audio | #22 | 3.731 | 3.731 |
| Theme | #22 | 4.308 | 4.308 |
| Graphics | #30 | 3.885 | 3.885 |
| Accessibilty | #36 | 3.115 | 3.115 |
| Originality | #54 | 3.615 | 3.615 |
Ranked from 26 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Godot Version
4.2.2
Wildcards Used
What The Duck
Game Description
Platformer with light abilities
How does your game tie into the theme?
Some platforms can only exist in the light.
Source(s)
N/A
Discord Username(s)
@.kinderz. @thin_paper @.emiils
Participation Level (GWJ Only)
1
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Comments
OOO the movement feels great! The wall jump especially is so satisfying. The particle affects for the throw and the ambient particles are really pretty. Wall sliding is nice. Took me a bit to figure out how the dash direction works, I thought it followed the character momentum and not the mouse at first. More frequent checkpoints would be nice in places right before I could die, so I wouldn’t need to repeat the earlier tutorial so much. I think I’m not used to the movement I kept confusing dash and throw. (I think it’s just skill issue on my part haha)
This barrier in particular was super frustrating to cross for me when I kept dying up ahead:
Background and character design are looks great! I think adding a visible timer to show when the light would run out would help a lot in planning movement. Character animations are well done too.
Overall a really polished game that feels good to play when I finally beat a segment! Great work!
Hi this is great! All the movement mechanics were well with each other and the great level design! Really well executed, and the aesthetic is great. I think more frequent checkpoints would be nice though
nicely done! great graphics and sound design! movement felt really smooth and satisfying.
i personally would've preferred a few more checkpoints as it was a bit frustrating to have to redo the same challenges i already passed just to get back to what i was currently working on. that kind of difficulty can definitely work in a full game! but imo in jams like this people are playing so many games that they might not have the patience to sit through the same thing they just did like 10 times lol. especially if they JUST completed the challenge and then immediately die on the next one with no checkpoint in between. definitely not speaking from experience here :P
Yeah, one of the things that i would change if i could, would be adding more checkpoints. As you said most people dont plan on playing game jam entries for a long time but only spend around 10-20 minutes for each entry and a couple more checkpoints would have made the experience faster and less frustrating.
Thanks for the feedback!
Fun puzzler game, Enjoyed the combination of the ranged and the dash working together. I want to play this more. There is a ton of potential here!
Pros:
Critiques:
Thanks for the feedback!
We were actually planning on adding volume sliders in the options menu, but we had procrastinated a lot of things until the last day so we had to cut it when we realised we wouldnt be able to implement them in a functional way without sacrificing too much time.
We also were planning on making more levels so the difficulty would have increased more gradually, but now it spikes too fast, and a lot of players get frustrated with how hard some of the jumps are.
Yeah i felt that opening the pause menu was kinda awkward in web, but i hadn't thought of letting the player change the keybind in the options. Probably should have done that.
This is a very solid and polished game, great work. I think the checkpoints could have been slightly better placed, and some more detailed art would have been amazing, but otherwise good entry!
I really liked the art and aesthetics overall, the light mechanic is very clever, tilesets, backgrounds and levels looked really good and the particle effects and lighting were used very well. In all of those regards, the game is perfect, very polished and good looking.
For the gameplay... well, it was quite infuriating sometimes. Respawns are too infrequent for the game's difficulty, the dash direction and wall jumping felt unpredictable at times and I felt constantly slowed down because of the wait time after dashing (which maybe should replenish once you grab a wall or touch the floor), even with the extra one contained in flashes.
I died many times because throwing a flash would freeze the game for a couple seconds and send me into a wall of spikes. A particles slider would have helped prevent the lag spikes (although I can't say anything since my entry suffers from the exact same problem), but considering you almost missed the deadline, I totally get it.
All of that being said, you guys did a great job. This is one of the top games of the jam, for sure.
Thank you for commenting!
Im sorry the gameplay felt frustrating.
We definitely should have added more checkpoints/respawns (literally every comment complained about it lol), but since we had worked so many hours on the game and gotten good enough to speedrun it in a couple of minutes it completely slipped our minds that more checkpoints are necessary, since most people wont be landing every jump with their first try. So adding a few more checkpoints would have made the game a lot better for first time players.
Im not sure why the dash and wall jump felt unpredictable though. Could you elaborate on your experience?
We also tested how the game would function if the dash was reset every time the player touched the ground, but didnt like it since the game is based around you timimg your movement around the flashes duration. So we sticked with a 3 second cooldown on the dash.
We really wanted to optimize the game but sadly didnt have enough time (thats how game-jams are i guess).
Thanks for all your constructive feedback!
I totally get it. Sometimes we get so used to our own game it is easy to overlook things.
Now, addressing the stuff I said. For the dash, I think it is because of it being tied to mouse direction. While falling or running you have to constantly adjust its position to maintain a target direction, so I found myself not dashing towards where I wanted often. To be honest, I don't know how to fix this one. Most platformers feel much better to play on controlers, and I don't think your game would work if dash direction was tied to WASD or something. Maybe this can be remedied through more forgiving level design when it comes to precision platforming. For longer games, as the player gets used to the mechanics, you can throw sections that require gradually more precise player movement and input. Again, I'm very aware of the time constraints here, so don't take this advice as a serious critique of the game. Your entry is very good.
For the wall jumping, I think it was a combination of slowly slipping when I needed to stay put in tight spaces and sometimes autojumping right after landing on a wall. It kind of comes back to the forgiving level design thing.
I'm sorry if my original comment came out as excessively negative, it was not my intention. You guys did a great job here!
This game was amazing. The simple artstyle but effective use of the lighting engine made it really enjoyable to look at, and the music helped distract from the rage of dying over and over at the same jump. Really well done!
I fell in love with this game, I really really LOVED the art direction this game took, plus the particles on basically everything makes it very soothing, the music does nothing but adding to the perfection / coziness of this game. Although here are some things that id love to see
- My Laptop isnt really a performant at running web games so I was expecting there to be an exe version (Seeing that you barely made it to the deadline, i let that slide)
- A timer, I mean who wouldn't love to speedrun this game
- I felt like the dashing should not be towards the cursor but dowards the direction of movement (W, A, S, D to determine the direction of dash)
Other than these, I feel like this game is perfect
Congratulations for this entry
Wow, really cool game. Love the environment and the light mechanic. The vfx were also really nice and smooth. I think my only real gripe are the way the player is controlled. Mainly jumping up a wall by holding space or being able to climb up a single wall feels strange. Maybe playing with a controller would have been better here. Dashing in the direction of the mouse is a cool idea though. Nice attention to detail here. If you had more time, maybe improving the character art would be something that would give the game an even more polished look. Nice work!
This took a very long time to load for me (over 5 minutes) so I had high expectations and I was not disappointed. The platforming feels great and the animations are very well done. I really enjoyed this!
Really impressive platformer and I love the character.
Good job!
Great work on this one!
I loved the smooth controls, and the art style fits the theme perfectly.
The throwing light mechanic was a clever idea.
Cheers!
Love the controls and using the mouse to incorporate the powers of the character. Simple and really clean art style. Cheers!
I think the game is great and the movement is fluid! I wish there was a timer so I could see if I could beat my time, still a fun experience though. The only downside is the checkpoint would send you so far at times its a bit jarring.
Top shelf art, especially the particles from the ‘flashbangs’. Platforming is very smooth, and started to feel similar to ‘flow state’ style games.
Really cool idea! It's like celeste but with flashbangs
The respawn point on death is too far back!