Wow ! Very nice game ! Loved art-style and vfx!
Interesting idea overall.
Play game
AshScend's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Gameplay | #1 | 4.647 | 4.647 |
| Authenticity (use of resolution) | #4 | 4.853 | 4.853 |
| Overall | #4 | 4.463 | 4.463 |
| Graphics | #18 | 4.441 | 4.441 |
| Audio | #50 | 3.912 | 3.912 |
Ranked from 34 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Did you work in a team?
I made this alone but a friend gave me valuable feedback as I was making the game
Was the resolution a challenge?
I wanted to make a high-octane game with lots of stuff happening on-screen, so it was definitely challenging to try to keep the playfield readable at such a low resolution!
What did you learn?
Turns out 1px particles are super fun to work with!
Comments
Thanks for playing! Really appreciate the constructive feedback.
I was thinking of implementing upgrades that shoot downwards to alleviate the issue of bats that manage to fly underneath you.
As for movement that sometimes feels out of control, I think that might partially be caused by a flaky implementation of one-way platforms. When a ton of ash is piled on a platform and you jump up through it, the game hoists you to the top of the mound of ash. But I haven’t nailed down the feel of this – it probably happens way too fast and people might go, “whoa what happened”. I’ll probably rework this if I decide to refine this game after the jam.
Or, perhaps you meant that the character kinda glides too fast across the width of the playfield – especially on steep slopes – and I’m definitely thinking of tweaking this as well.
1 year ago(+1)
Thank you for your feedback!
Yeah, I need to rework the burst of mini bolts. It’s meant to help you escape tricky situations at close range. However, as it stands it’s difficult to see because the mini-bolt appears in the trail of the main bolt. Levels 2 and 3 of the upgrade give you more mini bolts, but since the game only has 7 stages for now it’s rare to be able to get the upgrade to that level.
This is what a fully decked-out mini-bolt gun looks like 
I’ll definitely keep your feedback in mind if I flesh out the game after the jam :)
1 year ago(+1)
Thank you for having my game on the stream! Live feedback from first-time players is invaluable. I’m glad you made it to the end!
1 year ago (+2)
Thank you for your feedback! Yes, the ammo is the little flames. We got in touch elsewhere, but here’s the rundown of the ash sim anyway in case somebody else is interested:
The game maintains a bitmap to keep track of terrain collision data. Basically, each pixel in the collision map is either solid or air. Each piece of ash “claims” a single pixel in this bitmap.
In the update routine, each piece of ash looks at a row of 3 pixels underneath it in the collision bitmap to decide what to do next.
- 3 air pixels underneath ash: keep falling
- 3 solid pixels underneath ash: go to sleep
- At least 1 solid & 1 air pixel: glide diagonally on top of solid stuff
Each piece of ash has a floating-point velocity vector. The ash will only be able to “claim” a new pixel in the collision bitmap once the floating-point coordinates would take the ash to a different integer pixel. I guess if I were to port this to an old platform I should’ve used fixed-point math :P
That was the gist of it. Of course, there’s some secret sauce to improve the game feel of the ash: subtle randomness to make everything feel more organic, ash can also bounce off other stuff if projected with enough force, etc.
The old After Dark screensaver “Confetti Factory” inspired me to simulate ash like this. It used to captivate me as a kid. I have actually never played Noita so I guess I’ll have to see what it’s like!
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