Up To You

A little love story about an earthbound robot and a satellite. His goal is to reach her by jumping into space.

Minimalist in controls and mechanics, Up to You features 1 button gameplay (spacebar) with a focus on timing.

Made in 48 hours for Ludum Dare 26.

Play it here: http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/18734

Minimal but clever. Were you intending this to be a mobile game down the road? (the resolution certainly matches)

This is my favorite so far from Jam!
Very clever gameplay and realy good atmosphere.

Awesome game!!

Thanks, glad you like it!

Jon: Yes, going mobile is the plan sometime in the future. Adding longevity without sacrificing the simplicity is the next step.

Great game - I enjoyed playing it and (inexplicably) it made put a huge grin on my face!

There's a lot of potential here, whilst maintaining minimalism! Some suggestions:

• Show the player the target at the start of the game. e.g. show the satellite and the scroll down to the ground.
• Provide mid-game incentives, even if they're just simple visuals. I nearly gave up, because I didn't really know how well I was doing. e.g. A minimalist change in scenery or some hearts displaying as Robot gets closer to Satellite (maybe larger, redder or more hearts nearer the top).
• The in-game comments (Awesome, Perfect, etc.) are helpful, but at first, I didn't realise that they referred to my jumping skills - I thought it was referring to my height (because I didn't know what my target was).
• How about a mini-map, so the player can see how well they are doing?
  
• Allow the player to click to continue when the game ends; I felt that I had to wait a long time, and wasn't sure if the game had crashed (maybe I'm too impatient)!
• Sometimes I exploded in mid-air (way above the ground). I don't know why that happened!

Is this an original concept? I don't recall seeing a game like this before.

My favourite so far.

Awesome, great to hear you enjoyed it.

Thanks for the great feedback and suggestions as well.

The concept is original, though there are other games that make great use of verticality (Winterbells, Gravity Hook), but are very different mechanically. Hopefully there isn't anything like it!

Oh, and while it is not explained in-game, Robot explodes if you fail to pass your previous height or press spacebar after hitting the ground.

nice, fun core mechanic that you can build upon!

Congrats on being an honorable mention. In terms of the scope of the game to the actual impact, this was the most "efficient" in that respect. Hope you can figure out a way to expand it, without compromising on the simplicity of the original mechanic.

Very cool! Thanks for the honorable mention.

Looking forward to testing out some ideas with an expanded version soon!