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A jam submission

LifeboundView game page

Bewitch your foes and use their abilities to progress in this 2D platformer !
Submitted by TheAppleCake — 1 hour, 1 minute before the deadline
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Lifebound's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Innovation#1333.7353.735
Theme#2453.8243.824
Overall#3143.4803.480
Graphics#4123.5593.559
Game Design#4163.4123.412
Audio#4953.1183.118
Fun#5303.2353.235

Ranked from 34 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

In what way does your game fit the theme?
The player by itself isn't really strong, but it can bewitch ennemies and play as them to get new abilities and extra health, making your player, or your team, stronger !

Did you write all the code yourself and made all the assets from scratch?
I coded all of the game and made all of the assets, except for the music. The music is a copyright free soundtrack by HeatleyBros on YouTube.

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Comments

Viewing comments 26 to 7 of 26 · Next page · Last page
Submitted(+1)

I like mechanics of this game and that every character has different movement. But I wish jump would be just a little higher (for the starting character), because I got offten stopped by a wall, that was just a pixel higher than my jump and it can be frustrating over time. Also checkpoints would be great. And smooth camera movement (for example use of Cinemachine component in Unity) would be nice addition, but this is not too essential for the game, but adds bonus points to game feel.

But I like the pixel art, monochromatic color palette and how every character has its own health. Good job.

Submitted(+1)

The separate health bar is a life saver ! The ability to control enemies is so cool (the snake is my favourite, its dash is super useful). 

With animations and sfx (like hurt/damage feedback) it will be a lot nicer.  Difficulty gets realy easy when you have many binds. (Which is great)

Developer

Thanks for your review ! I'm glad you liked it !

Submitted(+1)

I thought the idea is really interesting. The variety between how each enemy controls and their abilities is not only fun, but a good way to keep the gameplay fresh. The biggest problem for me though are the controls. It would be much easier if you found a way to incorporate the abilities used on the mouse onto the keyboard like left mouse could be Z and right mouse could be X. The controls definitely lead to many deaths, and a another thing is that some checkpoints would be nice. Also, I really liked the art style. Overall, Good Job!

Developer

Thanks for your feedback ! :)

Submitted(+1)

I really enjoyed this, that big boss was terrifying, really enjoyed the retro gameboy style art it's really well made and the capturing mechanic worked really good, one thing i would liked to see used more are the areas that you can't reach except if you have the specific character you need to get there like the fire elemental floating tutorial. but overall really fun and really well made great job.

Developer(+1)

Thanks !
I was a bit afraid of making too many places unreachable without the monsters because i got scared of softlocking players if any of the areas were necessary. But i'm glad you liked it !

Submitted(+1)

Really fun with interesting ideas! The whole Bewitch/swap/separate health bars were really fresh and good. And generally just feels like a nice platformer with extra features.

I'd certainly like to see this expanded upon further, if that's something you end up doing~

Developer

To be honest i really thought i was gonna scrap it because i was so frustrated of everything i had to cut (animations, vfx, sounds) but after reading the feedbacks, i may get back to it someday :)
Thanks for your review !

Submitted(+1)

Very interesting game! I enjoyed it. Also, awesome art, maybe it would be even better with some even small animation, but i understand that it was not enough time

Developer

Thanks for your review ! :D

Submitted(+1)

Really cool looking and drooling with potential.  I really like its art theme, and the music complements the whole game really well too.  The character switching mechanism was also a pretty cool feature.  Several things stand out though, one is the lack of character animations, which is understandable considering the how short amount of time you had to work on it lol.  Another is the main character's gravity, she falls down with quite a bit of force and I think the character would feel a bit smoother to play with if it was dialed down a bit.  Also, when the player dies, I think having them restart the entire game from complete scratch is a bit extreme, and can lead to the player getting frustrated without providing him with at least some sense of improvement.  Maybe adding checkpoints throughout the game would be a good implementation? Or maybe some type of randomized level system like a roguelike game?  Despite that though, good job getting so much done in a short amount of time!  I  Look forward to seeing how you would continue (if you choose to).

Developer

To be honest i never really made randomized levels so i wasn't sure about trying to implement that in a week for the first time hahaha
Also yeah the checkpoint issues was mentionned a few times and i guess i should have added one after the 3rd or 4rth level.
Thanks for your review and the kind words !

Submitted(+1)

This was a fun and unique game! Great job and keep up the great work!

Developer (1 edit)

Thank you very much for the kind words !

Edit : my browser doesn't support WebGL2 and i'm on macOS at the moment but i'll make sure to review your game tomorrow night when i get back home from my week at work !

Submitted(+1)

This was a really cool game and concept! I like the idea of gaining new characters to get around and extend your life bar in a sense. I think this game would have benefited from more feedback, things like sfx, particles and animations would have made some things easier to understand. I also think it would have been nice to be able to bind a new enemy to "replace" one that you already have, just to heal them. I realize late into the game that you could suicide one of your bound characters to do just that, but it would be nice to skip that step. Fun game though!

Developer(+1)

Thank you for your review !
Aah i didn't think of the idea of using the newly bound character to heal your minions. That could have been a good idea indeed. To be honest i was already running out of time and had to cut animations and feedback (trust me i was pissed haha), and it was only late in the week that i realized that someone could (and would) try to bind a monster with the "team" being complete... So i had to do the easiest solution and just make it impossible to bind with a full team. ^^"

Developer(+1)

PS : my browser doesn't support WebGL2 and i'm on macOS at the moment but i'll make sure to review your game tomorrow night when i get back home from my week at work !

Submitted(+1)

Nice concept. The brick material look a little wierd, when I move, especially when jumping. A little animation on a character would be cool, and some feedback on the attack and hurt part. Great levels by the way, and the game's atmosphere is stunning, and the pacing is really good, that you introduce some new stuff in the early levels! Great work! 

Developer

Thank you so much for the kind words !
May i ask you what you meant by "a little weird" though ? Does it distort or something like that ?

Submitted(+1)

I really like this one. The monster mechanic seemed okay, like you could just try to skip the enemies until I realized the health bars were separate. Great implementation of your idea. 

Developer

Thank you very much !!

Submitted(+1)

Amazing graphics and gameplay!

Developer

Thank youu !

Submitted(+1)

Great Game! The music was a nice choice but some sfx would have gone a long way... especially as there wasn't a lot of information feedback visually, like undead brute has no actual swing. I tried capturing the enemies when I had 4 already and despite being fully "bound" when I switched to the character I wanted to die the fully bound killed it but was not then bound and I had to attack again with bind. Not a flaw but it would be nice to "replace" a bound charcter.

The capturing of enemies reminded me of Thralls from Conan Exiles, I also like that you gave us the freedom to capture multiple of the same enemy.

It took me a moment to understand the Dash, much like the attacks was based on which direction my mouse was and not the direction my avatar was facing. Seeing as it has no attack it was hard to understand as I assumed it was a linear dash... but once I understood it was based on mouse location it was a much more versatile dash... I just wished there was more introduction for that... Also considering you have good art, I would have considered making a custom mouse cursor and then using it to show Dash direction facing.
Overall great game!

Developer(+1)

Thanks for the review ! Yeah as i mentionned in other replies, i totally get that one of the main problems of the game is the lack of feedback to the player and i think i would add that if i get back to it.
I thought about the "replacing" you're mentionning but... i thought about it too late to decide what to do with the time i had left so i just decided to make it "ok if you're full, you can max the bind gauge but it's just not binding and it stays full until you have a free slot". It's really not the way i expect a fully realised game to work but it was the easiest solution so i had to go with it hahaha
I didn't even think about a custom mouse cursor and that's actually a cool idea, i'll make sure to think about that in my next jams !
Thanks again for your time !

Submitted(+1)

I really like this mechanic. It reminds me of Pokemon or Kirby in all the best ways, but it has a really interesting style. It has a high difficulty curve, but as I got more used to the game and learned the tricks, it started feeling more fair and felt really rewarding. Because your art style is so nice, it would be really good to see this worked on more to animate all the characters!

Here’s my game if you’d like try it out.

Developer

Kirby and Pokemon are in fact some of my favorite game franchises so i'm actually really flattered by this ! Thanks for the kind review !
I played your game and it was really fun !

Submitted(+1)

Really cool idea. Time was limited but some basic sound effects would have been great to give more impact to actions.

Developer

Thanks for the review ! I agree with you and i guess i was so focused on the lack of animations and vfx due to the time limit that it didn't even occur to me that some sounds would have been quick and would have given a bit of feedback haha

Submitted(+1)

I liked the idea of transfoirming into creatures with different capabilities. Your art is also really good, if you ever continue this game, I'd love to see the characters animated.

Developer (1 edit)

Thank you very much for your review !
Yeah animations would be the first thing i would add if i get back on this project :)

Submitted(+1)

A fun little game! I really like the art style, would of loved of it to have some animations and SFX.
I think the mechanics were cool!
Though dying and starting from the beginning was a little bit punishing, I enjoyed myself! Well done!

Developer

Thanks for your review ! I'm glad you enjoyed it !

Submitted(+1)

I like how you introduced the theme for this game! The idea of utilizing enemies as your helpers was quite the useful mechanic. Although, I was dashing wierdly when my mouse was placed to the left of the character. Also, it would of been nice to have some checkpoints so I wouldn't start all over. Overall though, this game was awesome!

Developer

Thank you very much for your review !

Submitted(+1)

Great game idea, some animations, and sfx would be nice but overall really good!

P.S. I would really appreciate it if you could check out my game, Pitch Black, and rate it.

Developer

Thanks you ! Yeah, animations, sfx and sounds were intended to give some player feedbacks, but i got short on time so i had to make decisions :)

Submitted(+1)

Really great game idea and implementation! Great job :) Kind of brutal having to go all the way back to the start ;-; but I really love all the monsters and art.

Developer

Thank you ! Haha yeah when i coded the death i didn't think i would have "so many" levels and so it wasn't that harsh in the testing sessions ^^"

Viewing comments 26 to 7 of 26 · Next page · Last page