I loved this game so much next time i'll speed run this game
Author Comments
This is a game I made for the Devcember Game Jam. It is based off of the five stages of grief: Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The story is conveyed both in traditional storytelling sense with the text directly on the screen, and in the level design.
Source code is here: https://github.com/DucksAreMammals/I-Will-Recover
Controls:
Arrow keys or WASD to move
Up arrow, W, space, or C to jump
Esc or backspace to pause
Arrow keys, WASD, or mouse to navigate menus
Enter or space to select
Controllers are also supported.
Dpad or left stick to move
XBox A to jump
Attribution:
Melancholy Trumpet by spinningmerkaba (c) copyright 2019 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license. http://dig.ccmixter.org/files/jlbrock44/59747 Ft: Javolenus
Short and fun game that definitely was worth my time.
Good controls and gameplay, although some of the jumps are a bit tight.
What is most impressive about the game his how surprisingly fitting the stages are to the stages of grief they represent.
Although the music is pleasant, I think having some variance to fit the stages of grief further would have improved it further.
Works fine for denial and acceptance, and somewhat for bargaining and depression. But there i no way it can represent anger.
Also a bit too many impossible results on the leaderboard.
Very sad
Generally, I thought this was an engaging way to walk through the stages of grief!
I like the music choice, but it might have been nice to have some variety between the stages. The existing track suits the purposes well enough though and I know you didn't make it or partner with someone for the soundtrack, so it's not really a huge sticking point.
Re: gameplay, I appreciated the incorporation of each stage into the level design. I thought it was particularly clever how you changed the mechanics during Depression (I could go on about this, but this is already too long)! I wanted to like the Bargaining one because the concept fits perfectly, but it felt pretty difficult (edit: during the first playthrough). I hammered the space bar to catch it at times, a key which was unfortunately also mapped to "close text box," and so I accidentally skipped a few lines of dialogue. As a side note, I think choosing to avoid a "death" screen was a good idea, but the respawn animation felt a little over-long for this game.
Regarding the story, I liked the presentation of it and how each level gave a different way of engaging with it. I wish you could get the text boxes to appear more than once, though, or possibly read them all back-to-back once finished. Lastly, the amount of dialogue for each stage was great, but I've got to admit that Anger's almost seemed silly. I know that anger can cause those grieving to not think clearly, but it didn't feel like the dialogue chosen fit with the overall tone of the game and other text and I couldn't take it seriously. A missed opportunity, but not a deal-breaker.
Overall, this was just thoughtful enough and just fun enough that I'm glad I played it (edit: twice!). I sincerely hope the story was not personal to you; if so, I'm sorry, but either way, good work!
A neat little platformer that controls decently. A couple of the jumps are *really* annoying. But nice job. I enjoyed it.