I finished the belt of death with 168 deaths. I can't take this anymore. This game really is hell. Wonderful game, truly. The audio and visuals combine to create a truly excruciating experience. I love it.
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RED RING OF DEATH's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Narrative | #115 | 4.148 | 4.148 |
| Enjoyment | #293 | 4.074 | 4.074 |
| Audio | #322 | 3.889 | 3.889 |
| Creativity | #362 | 4.259 | 4.259 |
| Artwork | #865 | 4.037 | 4.037 |
Ranked from 27 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does your game fit the theme?
Each level is a loop. Each world is a layer (loop) of hell. The titular "RED RING OF DEATH" is a loop, presumably.
(Optional) Please credit all assets you've used
See description for full credits.
(Optional) What would you like to be called if GMTK features your game?
TIS
Comments
This is the most stressed out that I've felt playing a game this jam, and I say that as a compliment. Everything about this game seems to scream that this was very much an intentional choice, so well done! The red backgrounds, the music, the screaming, it all felt so completely unwelcoming, and yet I wanted to keep playing. I am very much not your target audience, I'm not a platformer player at all, but something about this one made me keep going. The style on this one is something else. I made it to the world with the keys before I had to give up.
I will add two small bits of feedback though, in case you plan to work on this one in the future. Firstly, the second jump on the second "unholy speed" level felt far more difficult than everything else in the game. I died a good 60 times there, it felt like sometimes the jump just worked and I don't know what I did differently to succeed. I'll include a screenshot of the level below for reference. Secondly, something about the music in the "Maw of Hell" was just a touch over the line from unsettling to downright uncomfortable. I can totally see what you were going for, I actually really like the feel of the piece, but I think the notes were just a bit too sharp on the ears.
Overall a fantastic game, this is easily one of my favorites of the jam. Well done!
1 year ago (+1)
yea, i really agree with the pain points here. so uhh i did NOT code the game perfectly. as you correctly assumed, gravity is kinda screwed up: each planet has a predefined "gravity radius" that flips the player's gravity when they get into the collision box. the problem is that the radius in which you reverse gravity is unfortunately arbitrary so it can feel more or less lenient than expected sometimes. i VERY agree that a light ring around gravfields would have been an excellent visual hint (and I was considering as much, but for some reason didn't get to it). not only that, but a visual indicator as to which was moves you left-right with an arrow (sometimes left is right and right is left: even I never really got it 100%)
preserving the player's velocity vector would have been difficult on gravity flipping: the vector used for preserving speed is different from the ACTUAL vector that gets used for doing movement calculations due to the way I had to kinda work around Godot's pre-existing cartesian calculations. therefore, i did the thing that gave me the least amount of headache and just zeroed each velocity vector on flip.
regarding the super speed level: ceiling bonks are the real reason why its a bit screwed up. you transmit a lot of vertical momentum downwards when you bonk into the ceiling (-0.7x your current vertical velocity, shoulda been more like -0.5x or lower). so, actually NOT holding jump and simply mashing up 2x to jump through those inner pits allows you to not bonk your head as hard (because you have less vertical momentum).
finally: you absolutely do NOT have a skill issue (nor does anyone else whose played it). the game is very much a masocore rage game. i should have been more clear that "yes, this game is very hard and you will die a lot".
i plan to make at least one more update to this game after the jam's done, so your feedback is VERY helpful! thank you so much for checking the game out : D
No problem, I feel as though I made many similar mistakes too such as indicators that would have made gameplay 10x simpler, I never considered how tricky it must of been to code all the gravity so really awesome job on that! In regards to the speed level my hardest jumps were actually the outside ones, the inside one I got second try as other platformers have taught me about ceiling bonks, just no matter what I did during the outside jumps felt consistent and I was always just a 1 cm off (that's probably why it hurt lol), I don't really know how to intuit the angle and momentum needed to jump the big gaps and I don't even know if it's possible to explain something like that, or maybe I'd pick it up better the more I played, idk. Good luck on the update too! (I might try it out again once it's updated)
1 year ago(+1)
very glad it clicked!
I very much believe games have "souls": not literally, but oftentimes they are the ones who tell you what they should be. a reason why this game really turned out the way it did is because of the harsher aesthetic elements that I experimented with, and I found that the game wanted to be like that. so, i went all-in for better or worse.
ill prob talk about this in the post-mortem, but a big goal of mine was to make a game that placed / appealed to a larger audience. this jam skews casual and lighthearted and I knew that. i very much made a "sickos game", but even though I did the exact opposite of what I planned, im very happy with the result nonetheless.
truthfully, im not someone who really excels at curbing my design impulses to make more accessible experiences. For better or worse, i make what I would like. not that im incapable of making a difficulty curve or anything, or balancing levels, but i feel just a liiiiiitle bit of cruelty (or a lot) makes for a memorable experience. most of all, I really view the more dissonant and off-putting elements of my design tendencies as part of my artistic expression.
so, tl;dr hearing it clicked for you really made my day : )
1 year ago(+1)
Really glad I could keep up my level of output from Major Jam 7! Thanks for checking my game out!!!
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