Bit's Adventure Through Spike Hell
'Platformer' with a 1-bit pixel art aesthetic. Launch yourself using your mouse button in order to lead Bit out of Spike Hell fast and quickly.
I made this game for Godot Wild Jam #21.
Theme is: Connection
Wildcards: Juice It!, Move It!, Two Buttons!
The game is controlled with only the mouse!
Music by: @gianclgar
Everything else: @Clem_Account
Font: Futile Pro
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Cheats + Additional Controls:
3: Unlock Hard Level
R: Restart Level
Q: Back to Menu
1+2 (together): Skip Level
Download
Development log
- Minor Bug FixesMay 18, 2020
Comments
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This game is so fun! The instructions are easy to understand, the graphics and sound mesh well together, and the game mechanic is enjoyable! Love it!
good aesthetic, music and minimal art style gives it a lot of polish
mechanics work well, although i'd have liked to see a few other ways of interacting to add more variety and open up some opportunities for puzzles. currently the only challenge comes from really tight paths with spikes which encourages making lots of small launches and cheesing with the slowmo. i dont think this takes advantage of the mechanics as well as it could, it slows down the pace which removes a lot of the fun of launching the ball around
seems to be a bug on the 2nd hard level where collecting all the keys doesnt unlock the exit, so there might be content i couldnt access that addressing the previous paragraph
yeah. I managed to fix the bug on my private build after. I do agree that more opportunities for puzzles and planning out your route might be more interesting.
In the prototype I experimented with breakable walls like in my last game but didn't keep it because they felt buggy and unfun. Another game I saw experimented with sticky walls too. Perhaps if I were to expand the game mechanically i could add a zone where your slingshot ability is inactive.
The 2nd hard level happened to be the last one so you're good there. There is a cheat button that lets you skip levels too in this build too.
The hard mode levels do have a higher skill floor and definitely could benefit from more playtesting. It does have a very different playstyle from the normal levels too w/ what you said regarding the small launches and balancing slowmo. I did consider cheesing the slowmo to be balanced because the timer is still in real time.
Thanks for the feedback. Glad you enjoyed the game enough to play until the last level :D
Great mechanic and awesome execution!
(I have so many questions, but I'm going to ask only this: how did you create the time-slowing effect?)
Also, in Firefox this is how the first level looks like for me. It plays fine, its just that I cannot see where I need to go to proceed.
Am aware of this bug but unsure how to replicate it. Might be due to monitor size of resolution. On Firefox it works for me. I hope you do enjoy the PC export builds.
In short slowdown effect was done using Engine.time_scale (This is because Kinematic2D uses delta for its calculations) but the Timer was divided by Engine.time_scale in order to give a time that is not affected by slowdown.
The music then had its pitch altered via script but you could also experiment with simply swapping the currently muted/unmuted sound if you want more control.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge! Will definitely want to try it myself!
This is really good. I like the title, the visuals are simple but effective, I really like the music (though the transition between the normal song and the "thinky" one could be better) and it's just really satisfying to play through. Really inspires me to work on my current game and get better. I hope you do well in the jam.
The major complaint I have is that the teleporter wouldn't work correctly for me, so some levels are probably way harder as a result. Also when I click the mouse, I expect the character to instantly transition into slow motion so I can plan my next move, but there's this cooldown that stops you from spamming it.
In theory this makes the game more skillful as you have to plan your dash usage ahead of time, but in reality it makes the game less responsive, causing a tonne of unfair deaths, at least in my opinion.
I'd seriously appreciate some proper difficulty options in a similar manner to Celeste's assist mode; removing the cooldown on dashing, gameplay speed options, making it so that spikes bounce you or reduce a life total, all that jazz.
Also I couldn't get the "skip level" cheat to work, but I realise now that you probably meant "Press the 1 and 2 keys on your number row at the same time" and not "Press mouse 1 and mouse 2 symultaniously". My bad.
I have updated the description due to this comment to specify the "1+2" thing with regards to skipping levels. Thanks for pointing out the potential ambiguity!
I think Celeste style assist mode options would be great if this game were to be expanded into a full release. I was hopeful that skipping levels would act as a nice compromise in the meantime.
It was a conscious decision to add the little cooldown for the fire shot in theory and in practice I did get used to it. I think experimenting with the removal of the cooldown if I were to continue working on this game would be a great way to both lower the skill floor while also increasing the skill ceiling.
I do agree now it might actually be better to allow spamming it as a skilled player would be able to balance shooting fast and frequently (since ur speed resets upon each fire) while still allowing a more fair skill ceiling. It may also help to have a different graphic for the character to indicate when the bullet shooting is available (similar to Madeline's hair in Celeste, since we brought up that example).
I do agree that the teleporter is pretty janky. I did design all levels to be complete-able without the use of it as I considered it an 'optional ability for greater speed' to compensate due to not being able to do proper playtesting for this jam T_T
Thanks so much for the constructive feedback! I am glad that you enjoyed the game but am also glad you are able to point out ways it could be better.
Real fun. Playable with one button! :D
I played through all of normal. Bullet time feeling is real dynamic and the loss state has the meatboy moreness where you just keep going playing.