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Dethrone is a short, hardcore platformer featuring tight controls and a lot of deaths. Each death passes the current king's crown onto the next. Who will you have become king? There can only be one! 

Music by Joel C (@lenkalamari)

StatusReleased
PlatformsHTML5, Windows
Rating
Rated 4.1 out of 5 stars
(24 total ratings)
AuthorCasePortman
GenrePlatformer
Made withGameMaker
Tagschiptune, Difficult, hardcore, low-res, Pixel Art, Retro

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Dethrone.zip 11 MB

Development log

Comments

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A very nice platformer game. Simple, challenging and fun to play.

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I'm enjoying running this game so far! I started a few days ago and I'm close to getting under a minute. There are a couple interesting skips and optimizations

Here's my PB! I'm gonna chip away at it and hopefully get a good time soon lol

(also the video's kinda loud bc I didn't level it right)


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you can actually speedrun it this way 

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I love this kind of games, and I loved dethrone. I'm not going to talk about what's good, though, I'll just leave some (hopefully helpful) criticism.

  • The wall jump doesn't feel great. I think the height you gain is too little to feel impactful.
  • Upon landing, the character slides too much IMHO. Although it adds to the difficulty of the game (which is a plus for me), it feels like you don't control it at all.
  • It was extremely bold of you to implement moving platforms in a game jam. I clap you for that. However, the expected behaviour upon jumping while on a moving platform should be, IMHO, a jump with some side speed.
  • Also, regarding moving platforms, I encountered a small bug. On the last level (IIRC), there's this moving platform at the bottom of a vertical corridor. Strange things happen if you jump against the right (i.e. in the direction of the movement of the platform) wall, like getting stuck to the platform.
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Thank you for these brilliant points of critique Leonardo! Definitely will take everything you said/suggested on board with my future games. :)

This game is pretty solid especially considering it was made in a gamejam. I think the only thing I'd change would be the friction in air (it's not snappy),  obviously it's up to you but I think considering it's a skill based platformer I think acceleration should be low and friction should be high. Also I'm not a huge fan of how the character kind of snaps to the wall. I think it would be better if it would only slide down the wall if you were pushing towards the wall. Other than that awesome work. I like the music too!

Thanks for the thorough and helpful feedback Will! I'll definitely take these points on board developing future platformers for sure! :) 

Hey, Dethrone made it on my GMTK Game Jam 2019 Best Of video:  

Keep up the great work!

-QE

Thank you so much!!

Was this game made in Unity? Controls feel a little wonky,  tighten those up and I think you have a pretty standard platformer here! Great work.

Game Maker Studio! Thanks for the feedback, anything in particular you think feels wonky? I've had varying opinions on controls, a lot really like them and others feel it could be improved, would be great to get an insight on what people prefer. :) 

Hey, the game crashed on the level with the moving platform and the 3 spikes + disappearing blocks. It crashed when i landed on the moving platform right when hitting the first spike + moving platform at the same time. Great game, though. I enjoyed it :)

Hey! Thanks for the comment. Sorry to hear about the crash, was it Browser or Windows version?

Just found the problem, thanks for pointing it out!!

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beat the game! kinda tricky 10/10

however the controls, 5/10 why cant i jump with up arrow or w key?

Thanks! Update coming soon with more control options :)

Made a video

I made an account to say that this game is super awesome and really impressive for such a short game jam. I'm looking forward to your next projects if there end up being any. :D

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Thank  you! That means a lot!! <3 

Tough game but I still enjoyed it in the end.

Absolutely loved this! I had a big grin on my face throughout! Thank you so much for the great energy video and I hope you didn't have to see councilling afterwards! Thanks again! :D 

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should add some coyote time for the wall jump as well. the squash and stretch is pulled off nicely

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That's a great shout, I shall do this! Thanks! 

A fun, tight platformer with a simplistic artstyle. Distortion effects happen too frequently and its jarring. I wish the "Only one" theme was more prevalent within the mechanics of the game.

this game plays like celeste at a slower pace .also it feels like the dev team made the game's art monocrome and simplistic so they can focus on polishing the mechanics and levels ,which is nice , i wish more devs did that.

the performance is horrible , i can feel the game slowing down when the distortion effect is being applied.

i noticed the kayote time, it helped me finish a level once and it propbly saved me from frustration multple times without me noticing ,so thanks for adding that.but , i sometimes find myself falling of edges of platforms even after decelerating which is frustrating .

anyways , thanks whoever made this game , its fun engaging and impressively long for a game made in 24 hours

Hey! Thanks for the thorough comments, I appreciate it a lot!
I'm not entirely sure what you mean with the distortion though? Also what specs are your PC? I've not had anyone talk about a slow performance as of yet.

This is super fun, but completely unforgiving from a very early on. Some of the precision required is insane.

A level number/counter system would be a fun addition so folks could talk about how far they got - if we had one, I'd tell you where the game got too hard for me and I quit.

i know im being entitled but can you compile this game for linux ?

Sorry Karim but I have no way to test on Linux currently, I do have a HTML version working though and I'll be uploading that after the Jam voting ends. 

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Great game and interesting use of shapes due to the colour choice.  Unfortunately the level pictured below was too difficult for me. Something that could be improved are the controls. Everyone is used to different controls. So just always let people jump using W, arrow up and space.


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I found that you're able to clear the spikes by just staying left.  

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Yeah thanks man! Just holding down left and quickly releasing after landing did the trick. I also tried the game with a controller and it was a lot easier.

Hey, really liked this game!  I share some of my thoughts in this video: 

Though the tie to the theme seems like a bit of a stretch, I'm glad you posted it because it's definitely a good time. Great job!

Hey there! I've got to say man, this video was incredibly well done and put together. I'm so impressed with the presentation and had a smile on my face throughout the vid! Thank you for putting this together and capturing/converting my thought process into words perfectly! The final 2 points to improve on were great too, I completely agree with the wall stickiness and the respawning of object on death is something that didn't even cross my mind, that's a great suggestion! Thanks again my friend. P.S. Are you on Twitter?

Oh nevermind! I just saw you posted this there too! 

Thank you for the kind words : )

The game looks really great, but it is really hard when jump is bound to.

Why couldn't you just make the jump button to space?

How did you put in so much polish? This was a 48-hour jam!

Nice entry, though I also feel like the link to the theme of the gamejam is a little weak. I didn't finish it, but played for a little while. Here is something of note though:

In general, i had a few parts where moving the king felt a bit... off. Fall speed feels a little too fast, your jump just a little too short. Moving platforms only start moving when you walk on a specific part of them, etc. Usually, these are minor inconvenient things that aren't that bad, but they add up in some levels, leading to them becoming extremely frustrating.
I remember one level had a platform you can only reach on the literal peak of your jump, giving the player 0 leniency. If feel like failing such a jump is just plain frustrating instead of challenging.

Overall, these issues are solved by the fact that you respawn quickly, giving the player little time to feel frustrated. It sometimes felt a bit like a rage game, which isn't bad. Just be aware that often, in a normal game, such mechanics end up more frustrating to players than fun.

Very nice controls and game feel, I love the little squash and stretch when he jumps. My only complaint would be that the wall jump is a bit hard to control.

Really cool game! Couldn't make it to the finish because I suck at it but the controls feel great, the level design is really good as well as the difficulty curve which isn't too hard nor too easy! Good job, keep up the good work!

addictive and very fun... I think I purposely died too many times to brush up on my King names bahahaha

Hah perfect! I wish I was a bit more creative with the names but I added that feature so late. (I think there's also a bug if you get to something like IX but shhhh!!)

Really amazing level design, the difficulty curve is designed excellently. I'm not convinced it fits the theme however. Regardless I had a blast playing it!

Thanks!! I appreciate the play. The theme is Only One and the game uses only one stage/screen that evolves as you reach each goal.