Fall for someone

Cute 2D platformer about falling for your someone!

Choose your characters and fight for them to be together, but watch out for broken hearts!

I didn't have a huge amoung of time over this weekend to work on this but I still wanted to get something together! Probably spend about 6 hours on it in total.

Falling for someone combos falling in love, with falling out the bottom of the screen and into the top! Master this mechanic and you'll master the game!
Show that love has no boundaries!
You can play with a controller but you have to navigate the menus using the mouse.

Let me know what you think! Which character is your favourite?

I made a small mistake where I included the jump command in FixedUpdate instead of Update which meant sometimes jumps weren't registering. I've fixed it and uploaded a new version to itch!

Voting results

Overall
14th
28%
6.450
Graphics
27th
57%
4.800
Gameplay
17th
35%
6.250
Originality
22nd
46%
6.500
Theme
21st
43%
7.400

This game entered in the Solo competition (46 entries).

Comments (29)

SeanOfWAR
 • 5 years ago • 

I really like the falling gameplay (mechanics?) and with some more additions to it, it will be pretty noice!
Horns all the way!!!!

Nanukk Luik
(@NanukkLuik) • 5 years ago • 

I'm not too sure but I think the jump mechanic might be broken? I kept pressing spacebar or Y on the Xbox controller and sometimes it will work but most of the time it really doesn't. Knowing unity, you might of put the input controls on a fixed update, I realized when I did that - sometimes the game doesn't respond to the controls on there.

I hope that helps.

Other than that small issue - the game has so much potential. I really love the teleportation from bottom to top. Would be cool to have the reverse for it as well!
Well done!

Ztuu
  • 5 years ago • 

@NanukkLuik Yeah the jump mechanic was really frustrating I've had that issue with unity before. I think it might have been in fixedupdate, I'll check later and see if I can fix it!

I'm glad you enjoyed, thanks for playing! :)

Prabh
 • 5 years ago • 

Really an issue of unity physics.
The game is very much connected to theme of falling.
Improve it as much as you can and if possible release post jam version.

Rardo
 • 5 years ago • 

So frustrating! I cant help but keep landing on the spikes. a real pain in the butt. I think that was the aim. So well done :D

Ztuu
  • 5 years ago • 

@Rardo I thought it was too easy at first so I tried to make bits that were more difficult. I ended up making it really hard ^^ Even I find it difficult and get frustrated when I'm testing it.

Ztuu
  • 5 years ago • 

@NanukkLuik You were totally right the jumping was in fixedupdate. I've changed it and it works so much better! Thank you <3

@Prabh I've uploaded a new version where I moved the jump from fixedupdate to update and it works much better.

Nanukk Luik
(@NanukkLuik) • 5 years ago • 

@Ztuu w00t! It's try it… … …

Jumping is fixed but still don't undertstand this area of the game:

I tried everything and nothing seems to get through. What is the answer to this part of the level?

Ztuu
  • 5 years ago • 

@NanukkLuik if you stand on the platform while it falls you should be able to jump across no problem. Just wait for it to get to the right height

Nanukk Luik
(@NanukkLuik) • 5 years ago • 

@Ztuu tried it out after viewing it on the stream, it worked better. I think I just had a small bug that rarely happens (Except it happened the first and second time I launched the game)

Ztuu
  • 5 years ago • 

@NanukkLuik Haha that doesn't sound good. Any more info so I can try to fix it?

Nanukk Luik
(@NanukkLuik) • 5 years ago • 

@Ztuu It might be in your jump code. Are you using rigidbodies and are you using velocity instand of transform?

Ztuu
  • 5 years ago • 

@NanukkLuik Yes and no. Not made a platformer since my very first game so wasn't sure how to get the best moment. I think jump uses addforce right now. Movement uses velocity. Originally I used addForce for movement and it felt awful.

Nanukk Luik
(@NanukkLuik) • 5 years ago • 

@Ztuu makes sense, using rigidBody2D.velocity works best though, it catches colliders and adds a constant force that might be more snappy but if you can understand Mathematical Tau (Which is the full rotation of a circle, which is literally 2π) and understanding Mathematical Sine. You can actually take movement to smooth out just like AddForce does. But using velocity instead. You can also use it for basic transform.Translation or position, but why reinvent the wheel, 2D unity physics is alright (At least to me :) )

Ztuu
  • 5 years ago • 

@NanukkLuik Thanks a lot for all the feedback :)

Takko
 • 5 years ago • 

I enjoyed a lot playing to your game, congratulations ! And even more knowing you did it alone in a so few time.
I loved the font, and the looking of the two main characters is really great (the little demon is my favourite)
Had some difficulies at some points to manage to understand how to not land on the spikes, but I think it was on purpose so again good job!
Also loved the "falling out the bottom of the screen and into the top" mechanic, but I don't understand why at some point I appear on the top when falling, and why at some times I die.
I'm impressed by what you've done, good job!

DrSkort
 • 5 years ago • 

Cool game. I liked the idea and how you executed it. The graphics were good, but a background could be maybe usefull. Still the animation was really great and I found a bug: While standing on the black platform, he would stuck in his run animation. All in all good game

Orionintheforest
 • 5 years ago • 

This is really cool! I never thought of falling downwards and popping up at the top, that's really creative!

Ztuu
  • 5 years ago • 

@Takko Thank you! I'm glad you liked the mechanic. If you died when you fell there are 2 possible options. 1. There were spikes at the top of the screen where you would have fallen so you hit them, 2. It's more uncommon but the enemies also fall from the bottom to the top so at some points you collide with an enemy mid-air off the top of the screen and it sends you back. It's not super common but it does happen.

@DrSkort I agree a background would've been nice but I'm glad you enjoyed it. Yeah that's a known bug, had to do a bit of a hack for part of the movement animation and unfortunately that bug came out of it.

@Orionintheforest Thank you very much! It's probably the best mechanic I've ever come up with haha, usually not that great at coming up with things!

Prabh
 • 5 years ago • 

Really nice game. It was really hard for me to play the game. Because of that difficulty level I was not able to advance up so I got bored up with it very easily. But it was really a nice idea and a challenging game

Ztuu
  • 5 years ago • 

@Prabh yeah the difficult style won't fit everyone's preference. I thought it was too easy so I tried to make it a bit harder but made it really hard!
I've made a few games before that were super easy and never really challenged the player much so wanted to do something different :)

Prabh
 • 5 years ago • 

@Ztuu yes difficulty of a game matters a lot.
Try to make it more equitable next so that everyone can play it

Fresh Food
(@Fresh-Food) • 5 years ago • 

I really like how you took a mecanic we have all seen before as a side thing(the falling on the bottom of the screen and then apearing on the top), but you used it in a very different way than I have ever seen before. Even to the point of making it the main mecanic, I really do like the idea of the game you have here. With some more polish and graphics this could be an even more amazing game, good work and I am excited to see what you have for the next alakajam!

Ztuu
  • 5 years ago • 

@Fresh-Food Thanks a lot! :)

Wan
 • 5 years ago • 

A good take on the theme! I felt its core mechanic was clever and well utilized in the level design.

On the negative side, I found jumping to quite frustrating! For a jump to register, the game seemed to expect the character to be 100% on the platform - which is more restrictive than what most games do. A variety of jumps was close to pixel-perfect so these strict hitboxes were difficult to get used to.

I think the hardest part was the ledge followed by a long platform then two short ones, all 3 full of spikes, with holes in-between. I think it took me ~15 attempts to beat it "^^

Other than these collision issues it was a tight and interesting platformer that reminded me of VVVVVV. Congrats :)

DaFluffyPotato
 • 5 years ago • 

The falling mechanic was kind of similar to this game: https://alakajam.com/4th-alakajam/448/portable-looping-machine/

I like how the mechanic was implemented, and horizontal movement felt pretty good. The one thing that drove me crazy was the weird jump. The fact that you had to press space a while before you reached the edge of the platform made me spend at least an extra 5 minutes falling off. I'd suggest that you start the jump with a certain upwards velocity and just wait for gravity's acceleration to counter it. This type of jump may have been more appropriate if you could use it midair. (since it feels kind of floaty)

I think that some of the level design was good and some of it was extremely frustrating. Making a bunch of almost perfectly timed inputs usually isn't what makes a platformer fun. You already had an interesting mechanic. I think you could've built the difficulty around that instead of just making really hard jumps/fall sections.

Aside from the jumping, the game's mechanics felt pretty good. Good work!

Ztuu
  • 5 years ago • 

@wan @dafluffypotato Yeah the jump issue is that I'm raycasting from the centre of the character to check for a platform. I know it's really frustrating, I'd never done raycast jumps before so didn't think of that behaviour. I should've used multiple rays to check either side of the character!
Thanks for the nice comments. The difficulty definitely needs tuned but I also think the game would be less frustrating if the inputs were fixed. It's annoying to repeatedly fail when you feel like it's the game's fault not yours! The tight sections would've been easier if the jumps worked right!

Thanks both of you for playing to the end! :)

Kleinzach
 • 5 years ago • 

Well done game, and I really like the use of the theme for vertical wrapping. It,s like the whole game is being played on the inside of a long tube. Changing topologies can always lead to neat mechanics, and I felt like you did some really cool things with it. I unfortunately got stuck on the section with spikes that you had to drop between, but I liked what I played!

Ztuu
  • 5 years ago • 

@Kleinzach Thanks, that's kind of you to say! Yeah the difficulty is an issue because of the bugged jumping but thanks for playing!

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Ztuu

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High scores Submit score

#UserTime
1@Bsinmais3'37"000 
2@Ztuu4'30"660 
3@KayZ4'40"140 
4@Wan5'49"420 
5@DaFluffyPotato10'01"780 
View all 5 scores