Pyramid Peril

Escape shoddy workmanship!

The grand opening of a brand new type of pyramid is drawing close, expedited by the Pharaoh's mandate. Corners have been cut to meet the tight deadline in harsh conditions.

Everyone involved knew the risks and expected the worst, but why did it have to happen on your shift‽

Controls
Movement - A&D or Left & right
Crouching - S or Down
Jump - W or Space or Up

Restart - R
Back to menu - Escape

Gamepads supported (360 and One tested)

Audio assets

Music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK4QNqgTN-M
Proper credit:
"Ibn Al-Noor" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Sound effects:
https://freesound.org/people/devlab/sounds/170507/
https://freesound.org/people/toxicwafflezz/sounds/150837/
https://freesound.org/people/Slave2theLight/sounds/157112/

Developer's comments
Team effort, woohoo!

Desktop builds of the post-jam version are now available for Linux and Windows.

Voting results

Overall
3rd
8%
7.316
Graphics
7th
25%
7.600
Gameplay
1st
7.250
Originality
6th
21%
7.000
Theme
4th
13%
8.211

This game entered in the Team competition (24 entries).

Comments (21)

Orionintheforest
 • 6 years ago • 

Very hard, but oh so addicting. Great job, especally on the visuals.

Spartaqui
 • 6 years ago • 

A very cool game ! i love the way the blocks fall. Sometime it's a little bit frustrating because you are stuck but it's still a very good game ! BRAVO

Kleinzach
 • 6 years ago • 

I'm loving this a lot. The art style is so cool and the gameplay is really fun. The arcadey feel was excellent, but I think the character controller could have been a little tighter to reduce some of the frustrating traps you can get into.

TheKillerFly
 • 6 years ago • 

Great stuff!
It's a quickly addicting game.
Too bad on opting out of audio, it's very good. :)

HuvaaKoodia
  • 6 years ago • 

@Orionintheforest
Thanks! I'm sure @SUOMAR appreciates the compliment too!

@Spartaqui
Great to hear! The prefall jitter, for instance, is courtesy to an old and super simple script which always proves its worth in nearly every project.

Getting stuck can be avoided by waiting for a moment before diving into the next open area. New routes can appear as floors tiles turn into 1 ton projectiles, but so can the roof tiles so… Risks, who doesn't like those!

@Kleinzach
Thanks! I agree that the movement is a bit finnicky in places as a result of the running and jumping speeds as well as the size of the character collider . Some tweaking would improve matters (on the post-jam list).

Currently, one solution is to crouch which halves the movement speed, and another, to use a gamepad which allows for finer control over said speed.

@TheKillerFly
Good to hear you liked it! Addicting even? I dare say it is down to the right amount of randomness this time. Not too predictable, not too unfair.

Originally I wished to make the audio assets myself, but there wasn't enough time in the two day period. These assets were made by others, links in the description, and, while great, their use is against the rules of the competition.

I did implement them of course, so thanks!

Nanukk Luik
(@NanukkLuik) • 6 years ago • 

I followed on your posts on the game's creation during the jam. I must say you guys outdid yourselves. Well done, on all catagories. Hit the nail on the head with the theme too!

SnowFox
 • 6 years ago • 

Loved the art in this game. Very fitting for the theme as well :) I played it normaly for a few rounds, but I must admit I was a bit of a dirty cheeser >.> I wanted to know if I could get away with jumping up to the top blocks and just ride them down to victory. And it worked! Though it was incredibly slow progress.

That's not really a critique on the game though. Just something I thought would be fun to mention.

HuvaaKoodia
  • 6 years ago • 

@NanukkLuik
Thanks! We had to cut a few assets due to time, I must admit. Those will be arriving in the inevitable post-jam version.

@SnowFox
Sure takes perseverance to embrace the cheese, but what an effective cheat it is! Will be easy to fix this (edit: with a constant spawner and an invisible wall).

Glad you liked it unfondued too.

Oat
(@OatMealPal) • 6 years ago • 

The game was really fun. It was kind of hard, but not too hard. The character animation reminds me of paper mario for some reason. Anyways, nice work! Looking forward to seeing more of your games in the future.

HuvaaKoodia
  • 6 years ago • 

@OatMealPal
Thanks!

It was kind of hard, but not too hard.

Hitting the sweet spot, great! The challenge doesn't actually ramp up at all, the same random rooms and drop rates through and through. Yet, failure is inescapable.

Paper Mario crossed my mind too. Obviously, here the idea for direction flipping and the animation style came from the 2D people of traditional egyptian drawings.

I will certainly be making more titles (jams or not) in the future, maybe even with the same partner.

Sammy6
 • 6 years ago • 

really cool game!

it was really addicting trying to get as high a score as I can!

I can't really think of much bad to sya, good job!

voxel
 • 6 years ago • 

Good bits:

  • Fun visuals. I sniggered at the character's flatness being revealed when you change direction.
  • When the randomness works out there's some really fun situations. I had one very fun playthrough that totally made up for all the times where the gods chose to crush me in stupid ways
    *Tap S to flex!

Annoyances:

  • The RNG is cruel and capricious, a little intervention by the designers would make this a lot more enjoyable
  • You haven't credited Kevin MacLeod in the way he asks you to when you use his music.

Overall one of the strongest entries I've played this jam, I actually had fun :)

HuvaaKoodia
  • 6 years ago • 

@voxel
Thanks for the words.

The random generator picks the next floor from a set of about 10. I think the latest additions, from the last few hours of the jam, were more traps than corridors… That might explain the frustration. Something to tweak in the post-jam version.

The video tricked me into using incompetent music! It seemed to have no credit on first glance, but actually had them hidden in the video attribution segment. Shame on me!

I've added the required credits to the description.

maartene
 • 6 years ago • 

Very cool game, looks terrific. The "flip" to look left/right is perfect for the Egyptian aesthetic. (10/10 in my book). And great use of the theme. Albeit a little difficult to control: especially trying to position precisely.

BTW: don't egyptians walk differently? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv6tuzHUuuk

HuvaaKoodia
  • 6 years ago • 

@maartene
Thanks!

A fix for higher precision positioning is already implemented, but not yet released. Making the collider smaller is all it took.

Yes, despite very accurate reference material (you hit the nail in the head), something was lost in translation.
Let's just say even egyptians lose their cool when running for their lives.

euske
 • 6 years ago • 

This is my favorite entry so far. Simple and addicting! The mechanic fits the theme perfectly well too. Is there any way to predict what's gonna happen and strategize your move? That would have been super cool! My strategy was to defer falling as much as possible and always land at the place where maximum room was available. Still it was hard for me to get 15 points as sometimes walls came with a very nasty configuration. Either way, great job!

HuvaaKoodia
  • 6 years ago • 

@euske
Thanks a lot!

The blocks fall utterly randomly. Blocks higher up fall more often, that is the only difference between them. This does incentivize the exact behaviour you are describing, looking ahead for maximal space.

The post-jam version (releasing it next week) will have different sorts of rooms, for instance, ones with crawl spaces, facilitating movement despite the randomness.

thomastc
 • 6 years ago • 

Getting stuck is the worst. Maybe if you had a little more field-of-view, or could hold the down arrow to look down further, the player could avoid it without you having to adjust the levels?

Great graphics, really feels Egyptian. The particles and sounds add a lot to the sense of threat.

It's sometimes tricky to fall through a single-block hole. Maybe the character (or just its hitbox) needs to be slightly smaller.

duel_05
 • 6 years ago • 

Can you make a Windows 32-bit version?

HuvaaKoodia
  • 5 years ago • 

@duel_05

Sure? I've added desktop builds to the post-jam (Itch.io) site.

duel_05
 • 5 years ago • 

Okay @HuvaaKoodia. Thanks!

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Links

WebGL (jam)WebGL (post-jam)Source (GitHub)

Authors

HuvaaKoodia
SUOMAR

Details

High scores Submit score

#UserScore
1@Thrainsa137 
2@Tegu121 
3@voxel106 
4@dollarone95 
5@Wan89 
6@toasty66 
7@SnowFox66 
8@M2tias61 
9@jcochet50 
10@Rardo45 
Total submitted scores: 11
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