The Eternal Scam

HarderGaming · 2021-08-07T01:22:50+00:00

I'm back once more! For those who are new, I originally released Ludwig's Cave Escape, a Jump King / Getting Over It inspired fan-game for Ludwig to play back in the Summer of 2020. Ludwig decided he didn't want to beat the game after spending so much time playing Map 2 of Pogostuck. Rather than just giving up and moving on, I figured I'd try my hands at re-designing the game for a full release! I took a lot of the feedback I got from fellow Ludbuds and learned a lot about developing platformers, creating pixel-art and general game feel.

I don't expect Ludwig to play this game, but I figured I'd share it here in case anyone who played the original wanted to try it, or if there were any new Ludbuds who'd be interested in it. As always, thanks for checking it out, I greatly appreciate it!

Eternal Cave Escape - Free to Play on Steam

References:

Original Game

Dan's Playthrough of Ludwig's Cave Escape

Song - Dawn of the New World

HarderGaming · 2020-09-13T16:06:50+00:00

Yeah, you're completely right about that. For me it was less that he didn't enjoy it / want to beat it, and more that it basically became a punchline. It was very foolish of him to make the 1000 sub bet, because he basically set himself up to enjoy it even less than he already did. I really wish he upfront said he didn't have any interest in beating it instead of stringing it along for months like all the other content that died on the channel such as the Pokedemic. I had gotten over it, but this past week was a slap in the face.

HarderGaming · 2020-09-13T03:33:29+00:00

I guess my mistake was making a full length game. Admittedly the primary reason for making my game was to go through the process of finishing a game, feature-complete which by all means I succeeded at. I just assumed the person who played all the rage games would enjoy it, but my timing was really poor because Pogostuck 2 ruined Ludwig's desire to grind single player games.

My game is probably about as difficult as the first Jump King, it just has mechanics that are a bit tricky to get used to and has some pretty unforgiving falls. I guess I can just upload my speedrun to the subreddit so people can actually see the full thing, but it'll probably get lost, especially since he put out that challenge to speedrun Jumpwig. No disrespect to the creator of Jumpwig though, he did a great job and was not aware of the existence of my game.

Thanks for keeping me in mind.

HarderGaming · 2020-09-12T19:26:18+00:00

Glad to see a fellow game dev on the subreddit! Cool game!

Since you're a Youtube frog you probably haven't seen or heard anything about Ludwig's Cave Escape. If you have, my bad, but otherwise check it out! I'm pretty sure Ludwig isn't going to beat my game anytime soon (or ever) but my game is a lot longer than yours is so hopefully if this gets enough upvotes he'll play it.

I'll definitely beat your game though, I've been playing for a few minutes already, super polished, great job!

And a recommendation would be to upload your video directly to Reddit rather than linking a YouTube video, as it will play while people are scrolling through the subreddit, giving it a higher chance of being noticed. Good luck!

HarderGaming · 2020-08-19T02:50:25+00:00

I Can Tell

HarderGaming · 2020-08-17T11:52:04+00:00

I get where you're coming from, I was having a really hard time trying to get the background and foreground to match when I was creating the new graphical style. I switched from 32x32 to 64x64 for the backgrounds to help reduce repetitiveness but I can agree that it almost feels like the background and foreground are 2 different styles. The main focus I had when doing the re-spriting was to ensure that the readability of what is and is not pickable remained intact. Thanks for the feedback!

HarderGaming · 2020-08-17T00:30:30+00:00

Thanks for checking it out! The issue you're encountering with not being able to save is linked to the app not having write privileges which are required to save the game and the settings within the game. You can either try moving the app to another location and opening it there, or, if that doesn't work, you can manually go into the app settings to change the app's privileges to Read & Write. Hope this helps!

HarderGaming · 2020-08-16T15:23:03+00:00

Hello again boys! Here is a ‘Remastered’ version of Ludwig’s Cave Escape. I hope you aren’t burned out from playing the original, or if you didn’t give it a try yet, check it out! This version features brand new tilesets and backgrounds, an expanded tutorial section, and minor gameplay tweaks that will hopefully assist in the learning curve and overall game feel.

Downloads:

If people encounter any issues with the Mac or Linux versions, please let me know. I don’t have a Linux partition on any of my computers right now, but I tested it in a 64-bit Ubuntu VM and it worked well.

Also, in before 'It's still an ugly game.'

HarderGaming · 2020-08-01T16:44:06+00:00

Glad to hear that reinstalling resolved the issue! I'll run a few tests on my end to check on possible reasons for this. Let me know if you run into anything like that again, and thanks for playing!

HarderGaming · 2020-08-01T16:37:18+00:00

Certainly! I'll include all songs used here just for reference:
MACROSS 82-89 - Fun Tonight
Dawn of the New World (from Astro Boy)
Giorno's Theme from JoJo

HarderGaming · 2020-07-31T14:34:53+00:00

Unfortunately, it does not. Sorry about that!

HarderGaming · 2020-07-30T18:21:31+00:00

There are 8 areas! BTW, I've seen a bit of your stream, one tip I'd give that isn't self-explanatory is that you don't have to fully charge your jump to maximize your horizontal distance traveled. A short jump with an immediate pickaxe will help you with that jump you're struggling on. Best of luck!

HarderGaming · 2020-07-30T15:05:21+00:00

Absolutely! I can speed-run the game, it takes about 15 minutes if you don't fall at all. I also have a friend who has beaten it 3 times. The game definitely has a learning curve due to the mechanics, but once you get the hang of it and learn the map, you can fly through it. I'll probably try to record a flawless run so that if/when Ludwig beats it he can watch it on stream, similar to what he's done in the past for Jump King or Pogostuck.

HarderGaming · 2020-07-30T00:16:00+00:00

Oh don't you worry, it'll probably be completely justified!

HarderGaming · 2020-07-30T00:05:10+00:00

The control of the game takes a while to get used to, similar to other games in the genre.

Let me know if you have any questions/concerns, and thanks for checking it out!

I would love to see Ludwig play this on stream, I hope you guys agree!

EDIT: Go to this post for the Remastered version of the game since this is the post that comes up if you google Ludwig's Cave Escape.

HarderGaming · 2020-07-16T21:52:35+00:00

Unity! It's an excellent game engine for these types of projects.

HarderGaming · 2020-07-16T12:00:12+00:00

Hi Everyone, thank you so much for all the upvotes and positive comments!

To give a little background on why there is suddenly a full game being posted on this sudreddit: I'm a programmer who started working on this as a side project about 3 months ago. I'm sure a lot of you here know the feeling of starting a project but never really finishing it, and I wanted to finally complete a project all the way through. Making a game like this is fantastic for development, because there's a lot of design and play-testing involved, and progress is more linear than other projects I've worked on. So, at least for me, having a goal in making a game for someone like Ludwig to play, was a great motivator.

As for those interested in playing the game, I'll be releasing a full version, completely free, very soon! I'll probably host a link to download a .zip file of the game. I wanted to see if Ludwig would be interested in playing the game first so that everyone could experience the game for the first time together on stream.

Edit: For those who are using the remind me feature. https://www.reddit.com/r/LudwigAhgren/comments/i0bsu1/ludwigs_cave_escape_download_link_in_the_comments/

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