Lollipop Ninja (& Disappainted) tips 6

Wan • 5 years ago on 1st AKJ Tournament 

Lollipop Ninja is probably the hardest game to post a score on, as it seems to take around 30' for most people to beat the first time. After finishing it twice I finally feel like I have the hang of it. So, a couple tips:

  • The cooldown for Smoke bombs is super low, so use them A LOT. Since they can both be used on enemies and on yourself, you can basically advance through levels hiding behind smoke. The more confident you'll get, the less you'll have to use that.

  • Going invisible is mostly useful to advance tricky sections with lots of jumps/wall jumps, until you can finally reach either a safe spot, or a flat place to hide behind smoke again. The cooldown is quite high here, so if you run into trouble try to hide in smoke waiting for the skill to ready. Again, with more confidence you'll realize some enemies can be passed without using the skill at all, by just rushing through.

  • Sometimes it's hard to figure out where to go next, leading you to get lost a bit or end up in a hole. Some guy did a video speedrun of the game, so if you're getting too frustrated with the trial and error feel free to check that.

  • The very final jump of the game requires a specific wall jump technique. It took me a lot of practice so just smoke the guy below the jump before each attempt and you'll be able to try for as long as you need. Basically the idea is to hold Left after the ninja has jumped, and then immediately switch to Right to reach the opposite wall. Again when at the right wall, keep holding Right when you jump, then immediately switch to Left. After a couple back and forths you'll be on that sweet lollipop.

EDIT: Some more tips courtesy of @Raindrinker

  • You can walljump on top of a non-smoked enemy for a looong time because the sight line collides with the wall or something.
  • Also vertical shafts are super safe, so waiting there for your invisibility cooldown to restore is quite useful.
  • Going invisible resets your alert rate, so sometimes just running towards an enemy and pressing the skill in the last moment possible is enought to escape his gaze.

Bonus: On Disappainted, use white paint to leave a slightly visible mark on the canvas. It can help you put down the contour of your drawing before you fill it with actual paint.

Comments (6)

Raindrinker
 • 5 years ago • 

Some things I discovered:

  • You can walljump on top of a non-smoked enemy for a looong time because the sight line collides with the wall or something.
  • Also vertical shafts are super safe, so waiting there for your invisibility cooldown to restore is quite useful.
  • Going invisible resets your alert rate, so sometimes just running towards an enemy and pressing the skill in the last moment possible is enought to escape his gaze.
Raindrinker
 • 5 years ago • 

Also I actually didn't know you could hide yourself in smoke and I managed to beat the game anyway :D maybe that explains my 30 minutes? >.<

Wan
  • 5 years ago • 

@Raindrinker Thanks for the additional tips! I just added them to the post.

Also I actually didn't know you could hide yourself in smoke and I managed to beat the game anyway :D maybe that explains my 30 minutes? >.<

Wow quite impressive, then your second playthrough should be fast! My first win was 18' long, but that's because I had already played the game quite a bit during the jam voting phase. Otherwise I would have taken ~30' as well I think. 8 minutes is for my second playthrough, and I'm sure we can easily get under 5 minutes with a couple more attempts.

Raindrinker
 • 5 years ago • 

Yeah, a few levels I just wasn't sure where I needed to go. Knowing the layouts really help, and when you beat levels is because you're kinda desinging a strat for each section, even to the point of "when I reach the tree I throw grenade then at the next tree I become invisible". I'm sure we'll get great times, its a fun game to try to master :D
Does hiding in smoke reset your alert completely? That's broken,I don't know how I didn't notice.

DaFluffyPotato
 • 5 years ago • 

@Raindrinker smokes do reset the vision timer completely. If you repy on that for a speedrun, your time is going to be bad. :P

dollarone
 • 5 years ago • 

thanks for tips - I got stuck on one of the later(?) levels. In hindsight perhaps we should have used one level for the tournament instead of the whole game!

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