ludumdare page : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/soulbound
--- STORY ---
The HilFord Brothers are famous archeologists : Clarence is a successfull businessman and he raises founds for his big brother's expeditions.
You're playing as Wellington Hilford and you must find the legendary soul gem, known for giving to his owner the potential to bend space.
--- CONTROL ---
(z/c) : jump
(x/v) : attack/talk/read/take
(left/right) : move around
(down) : drop object ( you can't attack or walljump while you hold an item )
--- GOALS ---
- Open the entrance of the temple.
- Find the treasure rooom.
- Take the gem.
- Leave the temple.
- Give the gem to Clarence Hillford.
--- CHECKPOINT ---
There's a way to save progression and restore hearts.
You can go back to your last checkpoint by selecting "retry" in the pause menu ( ENTER key )
/!\ Restart the game will erase your checkpoint ( not enough time to code save storage )
--- PLAYTHROUGH ---
Some riddles are tricky.
Here's a video to help you out : https://youtu.be/DnNdUEiaFC8
I wasn't sure what to do at a certain part but I really like it!
Very well done, but having only 3 hearts with no way to recover any or any checkpoints is quite unforgiving
@ChakAttack Infact there's a way to restore hearts and save your progression. But even this is a riddle too. I guess It was bad idea. Here's a video to check the game content if you give up : https://youtu.be/DnNdUEiaFC8
@benjamin_soule Oh, sorry, my bad. I guess I didn't explore the game deeply enough. Thank you for the game, I'll spend more hours in it for sure.
This is amazing, a proper game of riddles! Got stuck on the screen with four snakes, maybe will get back to it later.
@Zverik There's a tablet with a hint just before the pit that lead to the treasure toom. I'm not sure it's enough to guess what the snake riddle is about. Please tell me.
@benjamin_soule Are you talking about the tablet that says:
Because, if so, My small brain cant comprehend how that can solve the puzzle.
Edit: Oh, you probably mean the one that says:
I found out how to do the snake part!
Here it is:
The gem makes it so that you can go from one edge of the screen to another, and acts as a center point. If you get trapped in the pit, do this:
@Zverik Yeah, I updated the comment, It's not very precice because im lazy, but it should help a bit.
Very cool mechanic! Kudos!
Solved the snakes... jumped down... shot by dart, DEAD. Sniff....
@benjamin_soule
Wonderful work, as usual. The visuals were great, with lots of little touches to make the environment feel real. The level and mechanics were both well designed, and clever. I like that there were only subtle hints, and it was largely up to the player to figure things out. It made the "aha moments" all the more satisfying.
FYI, there were a couple spots where I was stuck and forced to retry:
I finally finished the game! I got stuck, so i just backtracked as much as I could, and I dunno if this is intended, but this is how I beat it: (I HIGHLY RECOMMEND PLAYING IT FOR YOURSELF FOR THE FULL EXPERIENCE FIRST! IT'S A GREAT GAME, ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU EXPERIENCE IT FULLY!)
Even if it is unintended, I found it really funny you can just ignore half the puzzles in the game and win this way. I also think the ending itself is hilarious.
Just to be clear, I did all the puzzles after cheesing the game. Great job, I genuinely think this could be a game on its own!
@zatyka Ah ! I forgot player could dig under the gem... and I never tried to fall in the south-west room with the gem in hand... Warp-leveldesigning is hard ! I'll try to fix it in a post jam version, thank you !
@Meme_Meister Totally unintended :D I added the darts in
the last couple of hours and didnt think about this possibility. But if you could solve every puzzle it's ok : I had doubt about the one with the code.
@thattomhall I was in a hurry and took the first old fashioned font I found on my computer. Name was viking something... I had to redesign some of the letters
Sorry for breaking your game so much, but its just so fun
@Meme_Meister I knew it would happens when I painted this top foliages minutes before submiting :D Was Clarence able to take the gem ?
By the way I'm now trying to draw mockup for a posjam version :
way too hard in my opinion , even getting to the gem is extremely hard !
@benjamin_soule He kinda just grabs it and sneaks through the foliage with it.
Colonel, I have the gem, reporting back to base.
Oh, I'm exited for the post-jam as well! It looks smooth. To fix the damage boosting skip, I recommend either lowering damage boost in air, removing the bottom two to three arrow turrets (or whatever they are), or just making the turrets higher up so that you cant reach them with the gem.
This is so well done.
And I really like the (mostly) single colour tile art style.
A minor thing I noticed: If you select "Retry" when the game hasn't started yet, the game starts but the title and "press x to start" message remain on screen.
Man, what a genius move with the world warping GEM mechanic. And the way the game make you play for a little while before encountering it, and how it's introduced piece-wise (first it's locked in place, and you don't even know the world-warping is centered on the gem necessarely, only for you to solve the puzzle and go away with the gem and discover you have complete control over it) makes the surprise ever more earth-shatgering. And it has a whole cascade of realizations over the player. You discover you have a new super power, but it comes with a whole slew of new limitations. Great.
Yet...
I find the enemies and the punishing difficulty an absulutely unecessary distraction to the actual core of the game. You have got something really special in there with the gem mechanic, and the enemies do nothing but water it down. The fun part of the game is exploring and trying to find new angles to navigate the environment and find unexpected shortcuts. I found the enemies just made me constantly backtrack to the save-spot to replenish health (and have the darts and skeletons not respawn - please for the love of god don't respawn) instead of going further and exploring more. Really man, seriously re-think the enemies. For a game with such original concepts, the enemies are the least interesting in design. The darts are actually a pretty overused obstacle in dozens of other temple-themed games and they are almost alway way more of an anoyance than an engaging thing to think about or navigate through. But the snakes and skeletons are not very special either. Maybe there could be enemies that play up to the world warping aspect, that are more thought/riddle based than reflex and action based. That would fit the theme much better.
As for the game breaking, I found the same skip as the guy above on my own (the one with the damage boost upwards) and found the final puzzle quite a creative surprise, and its solution very clever (that's the kind of riddle-based enemy that plays up to the core mechanic that I was talking about). Also, don't feel like it's super important to fix these sequence breaking opportunities. I think their possibility are a given in game with a mechanic as bold and emergent as yours, and players actualy enjoy the fact that they can expect to find ways to break the game. If anything, having more ways to break the game, and even having the game react to some of them is actually better than trying to fail-safe it. Breaking the rules is the whole point of the gem anyay, reward the player for doing so.
Also, I too at one point tried leaving the Gem on top of one of those blocks that can be triggered on/off and pulled the lever to have them disapear underneath the Gem to see if the Gem would fall to the floor below. I think that kind of mechanic could be explored if you wish to expand the game further. The gem gives you amazing space-warping abilities, but you soon realize warping to new places has little use if you can't get the Gem there. Finding ways to actually move the gem from place to place while not in your hand may open up MANY new puzzles ideas, like implementing treadmills or elevators to move the gem between rooms while in warp mode.
Of course that also opens up a whole pandora box of new ways players can break you game, but as I said before, I don't think that is necessarely a problem. It's a feature!
Great game! The "special mechanic" and level design around it is genius. I personally find the overall difficulty very fair, though for those inexperienced with platforming and especially with puzzles, it may be punishing ;p
It's been a while where I've actually been challenged, thanks!
Two changes I would make would be:
1) to put the hint for the snakes in the same room as the snakes.
2) add a new hint to write down or screenshot the other hint for the door.
I found an absolutely MASSIVE skip
edit: found it before i saw the comment detailing how to do it
Absolutely fantastic puzzle solving. Highly recommend figuring it out yourself before resorting to hints above. One of my favorite Pico experiences!
They (the skeleton's bones) can still hit me through walls and the floor.
Very much enjoying this!
Issue:
If you set the gem on a destructible block and then destroy the block, the gem can't be picked up. You're probably at char limit tho, and adding a gravity routine is the only fix I can think of.
Edit:
Oh no, posting a comment resets progress LOL
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