I Made a Hard Speedrunning Game

➤Play the Game - lazyalarm.itch.io/the-time-tower
I joined the Ludum Dare 51 Game Jam with the intent of turning one of my favourite Mario Party DS minigames into a 2D Platformer Speedrunning Game. I soon discovered that this was perhaps the hardest game I had made yet.
The Time Tower
made with:
Blender,
Asperite,
Godot,
Photoshop Elements 2018,
Paint,
PureRef,
Freesound,
SFXR,
Audacity,
OpenGameArt
Music:
"Airship Fortress" by Shinobu Tanaka
"The Pressure's On" by Hironobu Yahata, Shinya Ohtouge
"Lifted Upward" by Shogo Sakai
"Lovely Oasis" by Shogo Sakai
"Space Explorer" by Shogo Sakai
"Wiggler's Garden" by Hironobu Yahata, Shinya Ohtouge
"Options" by Hironobu Yahata, Shinya Ohtouge
"They're Neck & Neck" by Hironobu Yahata, Shinya Ohtouge
"Woods Wayfarer" by Shogo Sakai
"Forest Dwellers" by Mahito Yokota
"Contemplation" by Hironobu Yahata, Shinya Ohtouge
"Icy Realm (Frozen Hillside)" by Shogo Sakai

[@AlexTWO22]

I use something called tilesetter to make my tile sets. It automatically makes every variation of tile for you based on one base tile, it speeds up the process a lot. I use it all the time and it's definitely worth checking out if you're struggling with tile sets.

[@findot777]

Yes I use it it is so good

[@intangiblematter_misc]

Can confirm! Tilesetter is a life saver

[@tylerfox6754]

Fun Fact: every ten seconds was a gamechamp competition theme for the game that inspired hollow knight which the gamechamp game was apple knight

[@findot777]

@@tylerfox6754 which means "the knights" name in that game is hungry knight

[@beatfromjetsetradio8239]

@@tylerfox6754 Warn me next time you drop an AoE Stroke spell.

[@ImmacHn]

A serious speedrunner here! A niche one though, it was fun, a couple of things to take into account. 1 -> Have pad support, even if you can't rebind it, throw in a sensible controller binding. 2 -> Allow resetting quickly, I had to close the game each time I wanted to retry, make the death animation quicker as well. 3 -> For future games consider not using a global timer. This sometimes creates places where you have to wait and prevents some kinds of optimizations. 4-> Many jumps require the use of coyote time, which is why many people probably will have issues when jumping. Also you might have added a little too much coyote time. Finally here is my run of your game! I apologize I messed up and didn't record the audio, had to improvise. kzbin.info/www/bejne/r6a0hWlpn99lobM

[@LazyAlarm]

That's awesome! I'll definitely keep all of this in mind moving forward. Thanks for the video of the run, it was really cool seeing the tricks you used to improve the time!

[@bogged5672]

You can kind of skip the second last part with the vertical cogs. At the very start you can wait a little bit on the ground cog to gain just enough hight so that you can jump to the right+wall jump and skip the left part of this section completely. Hopefully i explained it goood enough so you can understand. Still amazing run obviously.

[@fugue91]

The missing reset option is triggering me... otherwise I got a 1:21 time by now. Nice game :)

[@NotAndrewIGuess]

1

[@macawls]

Small tip for the "if statement hell" and movement. You can instead make a state machine using code (jumping, wall sliding, running, walking) etc. It makes things much more manageable and less error prone.

[@jurekmc]

can you splain a basic wsy of how to inplement a state machine and the basic idea of one?

[@clouddev8733]

@@jurekmc basically the state decided which code runs so if you're in a run state none of the attack code would even be looked at until the state was passed over to attack

[@piratesephiroth]

@@jurekmc kzbin.info/www/bejne/fJXSnq2vbdSeorM

[@TGameDev]

@@jurekmc there are multiple ways to approach this but the most visual way to explain it in code is this. You make a switch statement, and each case is one "state." So only in case #1 can you be idle, but if you start to move that changes to case #2 where you'll be running. None of the code from the other sections gets ran so you can isolate things nicely in that way. Managing which state is also pretty simple in that you'd only have one variable for which state is current, and maybe setup an Enum to tell them apart at a glance (e.c. State.Jump). Not that this is even a good or the best way to setup a finite state machine, but thats the gist of how it works.

[@NathanOnline]

This game is already better than pretty much any game I’ve made, you are cracked at this lmao

[@NotExplosive]

Keep doing game jams and you too will be cracked at this! I made my first "good" game on my fifth game jam. And even then it wasn't that good lol

[@ItsKevin183]

@@NotExplosive I entered the Game Off 2022 gamejam and it will be my first gamejam ever. Got a sick idea in mind and its gonna be a ragegame sort of like Jump King. (got till end December to make it :) )

[@ManOfDuck]

Fun game! Controls were fun, but the running felt disproportionately slow compared to the much more satisfying walljump. Also felt weird that landing with the jump button held did a second jump. That caused me a few deaths when I was trying to do high jumps. Last level also felt like a huge difficulty spike, it took me 15 minutes to beat the game and I'd say 8-10 of those were spent on the last level. Resetting the cycles when you die or hit a clock would help immensely with that, most of my deaths felt completely random and determined by the cycle.

[@solidsnakedred]

I think it is probably the perfect start to a speedrun game. Personally I loved the background it reminded me of being at the arcade and seeing the grungy backgrounds almost 8-bit. I agree with you that there does need to be almost a bit of freedom to a speedrun game. You could infuture add split paths that one might be a little harder but you save alot of time for. Giving the option of choice even if by illusion helps a game feel more like you are making the choices. Absolutely loved the video and I hope to see more games from you.

[@tommygarson8592]

dude the background and gear sprites are very fitting if you ask me. there's this pleasing sort of pixelly grit to it that has a nostalgic quality in my eyes. I'm having trouble describing it but, I like it

[@susobamna]

Flash vibes

[@TSUKI-games]

Crazy how you can make so much progress in so little time! This video and the story telling is so inspiring! Learnt so much from it, thanks for making this video!

[@TGameDev]

Awesome video, thanks for sharing and grats on finishing, looks pretty fun! Actually, I also made a platformer for a game jam the other month, so it was pretty cool seeing the differences between how we approached things from a design perspective. Interestingly, despite the theme being wildly different (ours was "nothing is explained") we had a similar idea in that the level itself teaches them.

[@Pixels4Games]

What a great result for a Game Jam game. All the games I made were never in such time crunches so congrats to you. Great job. - Dan

[@1actose]

ALL of the comments by the people who tested it, as well as the style of the game reminds me SO MUCH of Knight And Mourning. Good work! Loved the video!

[@SkyanUltra]

i'd like to remind you that The World's Hardest Game, a game where you move at a fixed speed using WASD and has NO other special mechanics other than a checkpoint, enemies, and walls, has had its fair share of tricks used to break levels and get just enough of an edge ahead of other runners. wall clips that save but a SINGLE frame, mechanics of the game which allow for immunity due to a slightly botched collision system, and a whole world of route changes. there is no doubt in my mind that, at least compared to a game like The World's Hardest Game, that The Time Tower ABSOLUTELY has speedrun potential. wall jumps could open up a whole new world of routes to take that you never intended, the botched "is stuck" check could potentially lead to the discovery of a way to exploit the collision system of the game, thus allowing for skipping through the slew of waiting you have to do at gears and platforms, waiting to get through them. there's a bunch of other stuff i could list off, but i would be here for way longer than i realistically should.

[@Helmshot]

love the Kirby Mass Attack music, it just fits so well

[@Saas_1]

I'm a simple man: I see a new lazy alarm video, I click it

[@pliinkploonk]

seeing that mario party ds minigame as inspiration made me so happy! super cool work :)

[@JadonBarnes]

Dude, I love your videos.

[@greennitrogen8850]

Great Video! But what's really bringing me back into nostalgia is the Kirby Mass Attack music!! much love

[@user-jn8eh1sq9g]

I can't stress it enough, but *I LOVE THE ART STYLE OF THE GAME*, pretty different technique for creating the gears but they are simply the most beautiful thing in the world and should be protected at all costs! Kudos!!

[@gameguysd]

Just got a 57.67!! Great game, dude. Really interesting watching your creative process at work here.

[@PhenoPhyre]

thats not possible even with tas nice try though

[@PhenoPhyre]

nevermind sorry

[@gameguysd]

@@PhenoPhyre No sweat, I take that as a complement :D

[@NoahTheGuyy]

Wtf tho i play 1-2 hours a day and cant even get a pb

[@noatmeal8969]

really good video, i wish there was an easier way to learn game design because it's something i'm super interested in and i'm currently limited to only watching people like you. thank you for keeping me inspired ❤

[@kierakmusic7193]

you were right about this game being fun to race against yourself! I played it 3 times immediately after watching, my first time was in 23 minutes, second time in 7 minutes, and third time in 3 minutes. So much fun!

[@JakeWolven]

This is honestly pretty inspiring to learn how to make a game. I'm not the best at coding but I love level design and story telling. I feel like you and I could help each other a lot.

[@meisterooni9040]

As you mentioned, the lack of multiple movement options really hinders the speedrunning aspect of the game. I think adding some sort of dash would be a cool change. Also, everything is on a cycle. This means instead of getting a world record by 1 second, you would need to cut of a whole 3 seconds to get the new "cycle". It's a really cool game, and way better than anything I could've done, so great job!

[@BobbyTheBest]

The game looks great! Keep up the great work.

[@coolgelliegamer9825]

The fact that it resets you back to the checkpoint every 10 seconds prevents softlocks, smart!

[@Yipper64]

10:17 I say that speedrunners will figure that out for themselves. Its kind of something that happens to a game, its not something you necessarily build into a game. Its not like old games *meant* for you to speedrun them, take maybe Metroid for those special endings.

[@tommb.8578]

i am not in the mood for a speedrun but it took me 4 minutes to beat it, it's preatty fun tbh, the movement feels smooth to be coded in such a short time. nice work

[@LaynaStambaugh]

I'm gonna take a lot of tips from how you built the movement system; not getting used to the systems in my game for as long as possible is definitely a unique and potentially incredibly useful development methodology!

[@solarpellets]

My first attempt was 6:22, the difficulty of that last room was a huge spike, but I liked it for making you properly master the movement before letting you finish.

[@rangy77]

its rly fun! Good job

[@RosaliaEmerald]

In your tutorial there is a great opportunity to actually forgo giving the player any tutorial instructions. Your introductory level design is enough to teach the player. I'm certain most players would appreciate that level of trust and feel more excited at having figured it out without having it spelt out for them. Great work as usual though! I love seeing how far your game Dev journey is coming along. Can't wait for the next one!

[@Buglin_Burger7878]

I'd rather trust someone who wants to make sure I understand the basics then a person who doesn't. It is better to have a tutorial then not. It is better yet to have an option for the tutorial. Everyone could win. Being aware there is always a first time player as new humans are being born and can play games shows foresight. Just to use Dishonored as a reference, they added an non-lethal combat option in the 2nd game one which you'd never know about without an tutorial if you played like the first game. There is a tutorial for even drop assassinations which mentions you can also do a non-lethal version. Something you'd never try if you play like the first game. Some of the most frustrating things are an "I assumed the player would" moment which often lead to game breaking glitches or even making things impossible forcing you to replay the entire game.

[@1Chitus]

I love the artstyle. That crunchy style reminds me back when you needed to 3D model stuff on your own then turn it into 2D sprites for your game, because high tech computers could handle 3D but consoles couldn't, like donkey kong country. Make the character fit the style and I think everything, even the background, is way cool.

[@FaeTheMf]

Definitely one of the most gaming games of all gaming time

[@pitifulrock630]

the art in this game is amazing

[@PokeNebula]

i ADORE your background image though. gives me kirby superstar vibes.

[@sscutoid]

ngl I really like the artstyle, I wish you went all in on the crunchy compressed images for the tileset and player

[@woopslap]

Really good storytelling.

[@ritchcraft1]

simple and yet fun, good game design

[@williamtpenningtonart]

Your subtle sense of humor always gets me.

[@ericbielsaprio3766]

loved your game, very fun. I did 14:56 at my first attempt and 2:52 at the second, it's actually really entretaining, you got a new follower🤗

[@arnwaz]

I love speed running small games, maybe I'll give this one a try.

[@pitori.]

Holy shit all geared up is one of my favorite mini games I’m honna love this video

[@zomeone4507]

personally i quite enjoy the disjointed feeling of the art, it feels unique & fun

[@Jann75]

Got an N64 look mixed with classic pixel art

[@smugsenko]

somewhat offended when he said he really wasnt a fan of the background, i thought that was the best part!

[@ToriKo_]

@@smugsenkohaha same!!

[@youwerethere]

The cog artstyle is cool, it reminds me of Yoshis Island sprites.

[@Hollowdude15]

This game he created was so cool and increadible video man :]

[@kristianwells8830]

As someone who also recently made a platformer for a game jam recently, I can very much relate to you being able to clear the game, but none of your friends can. Didn't think my game was a rage one, but Die Rise has only been beaten by me.

[@RexReality]

Omg you have 12k subscribers, I thought you’d have 100k at least. Love the grind bro! ❤

[@cerastes3661]

This was sick man! The abyss yearns for us all

[@terrierdeveloper]

Wow! great video man

[@legoboy7107]

Nice! My first playthrough clocked in (pun intended) at about 7 minutes and 35 seconds, and almost all of that was on the last level. The last level is a sudden significant spike in difficulty compared to all the previous ones, which were all pretty easy in my opinion (though I do play a LOT of platformers, and SMB Lost Levels is actually my second favorite of the NES Mario games and I don't find it nearly as hard as most people seem to, so maybe I'm not the best person to say whether a level was easy or not. But the last level was rather hard even for me). Maybe smoothing out the difficulty curve so the last level's difficulty doesn't come out of nowhere could be an improvement, but with such a short game it really doesn't matter much. As for the controls, in my opinion they were very tight and felt really nice. My only problem is the wall jump sometimes wasn't very responsive, sometimes my character just wouldn't wall jump for some reason, but it didn't happen that much and wasn't an issue until the last level. But quite enjoyable for such a short and simple game!

[@wolfie-_-ranger7932]

It's got a good gimmick to it, and you could definitely make a "Time Tower 2" with taking what you learned from this game and improving on it. Such as making multiple Levels, Improved sprites and faster animation, some more interesting Level design, and a Sprint option (Since the way the character moves is kinda unbearable). If you're able to improve on what you have and add some extra "oomph" to it, it has the potential to be a popular game in the Speedrunning Community.

[@_gamma.]

It only took me ~19 minutes, fun game! Even if I wanted to DESTROY MY KEYBOARD on that last level

[@itr-dev]

Pretty cool! When it's important for items not to get out of sync, you might rather want to use [current time % animation length], as that is less susceptible to variable frame-rates and floating point imprecision.

[@Tim_flips]

Interesting perspective on the game creation process! My runthrough took me about 10 minutes. As a player, my only real frustration was that wall jumping felt like I had to avoid pressing any directional keys, because if I was moving towards the wall when jumping then my character would sort of just fail the jump and not go very far, but if I try to hold the opposite directional key then I have to time it perfectly or else the wall jump doesn't go off. Perhaps a coyote time equivalent where you can wall jump within a couple pixels of the wall? Not really a flaw with the movement, just something I personally disliked. The last level was like 3 times harder then the rest of the game too haha.

[@grRossi]

Nice game! It took me 11 minutes and 54 seconds to beat. The controls are great, but the wall jumping feels a bit off. I ended up pushing the opposite direction after touching the wall and not getting a wall jump because of it a bunch of times, even after realizing the problem it just feels natural to push the direction you want to go so it was hard to adjust. The last level was by far the hardest, but after I realized I could wall jump from the piston it made it a lot easier. If there was a level teaching the player to wall jump from the pistons before it would have made the last level easier to beat I think.

[@lavapuppydog1109]

I actually love the design of the game specifically the art design the abstraction between the art

I love the style, it reminds me of old nostalgic flash games

[@ToriKo_]

I actually really really like the background image, and thought it would look cool if the rest of the game was in that style

[@MrScorpianwarrior]

As a novice game developer and a novice KZbinr, this video is brilliant. Well put together, organized, and extremely informative. You need more subscribers. People say that a lot, but I truly mean it.

[@PoorPescado]

the crushers and gears are the best-looking parts of the game. imagine a game entirely in that style

[@foggydude]

I was wondering if you're gonna make a video about it, rated it when the jam was still going!

[@downest1]

I got this in my recommended, and I started watching it. I realized how high quality the video was, and expected that you had at least 50k subs and this video had 10k views. At the end of the video, I realized how many subs you have! Keep up the great work, you deserve more subs!

[@zombiechicken1530]

Actually I think the background, and gears look amazing! It would look cool if everything looked like the background and gears.

[@EricSchles]

got to the last level. Way too hard. Good job!

[@dustinzacharias8227]

The airship theme from Mario kart 7, AND a theme from Kirby mass attack? You had a good childhood my friend.

[@vortockcity6283]

You're such an underrated youtuber.

[@FlorissMusic]

got it down to 2:56 then gave up, what an annoying game. loved it!

[@chefj523]

Bro I had this idea for Super Mario Maker. Basically there's a 10second timer and 10 sections with a checkpoint right before time runs out and you just have to get through them all until you get to the flagpole

[@redacted8913]

The way the gears and crushers look reminds me of original DS games

[@wazaDev]

Awesome video really cool game. For your gears you can check out this tutorial by CG matter where you can render 3D models into somehow convincing Pixel art without reducing the output resolution

[@Comedy_haha]

All Geared Up is definitely one of my top 5 mario party ds minigames.

[@mrlucidss]

Honestly I really enjoy this game. one nice thing would be a reset button to reset time and start you from the first area

[@mrdollyman5675]

I love how the ability to jump for an additional second after leaving a platform is called “coyote”

[@KryyssTV]

I too found that for bizarre reasons we become experts at the games we make. My first ever game was released last year in summer as a beta with most of the content, I knew it was tough so I wanted to await feedback before finishing it up. Most players were getting absolutely hammered yet others were cake walking it. I found the issue was based upon people being super aggressive in a game where there is no incentive to defeat enemies who are constantly respawning anyway. 6 months were spent adding systems to mitigate the difficulty for psychotic players who were basically playing the game in a way contrary to how it was intended. The lesson? Playtest early and frequently get fresh eyes on the game because difficulty is very hard to predict.

[@kikolektrique1737]

this channel is gold

[@liber2350]

I really hope that someone manages to make a level editor for this, it looks really promising!

[@grabooba]

I find it funny how I speedrun your other games but hate the one you made for speedrunning

[@Povilaz]

Very interesting!

[@puzzlick7088]

I like the art style, it kind of reminds me of flash games, but in a good way

[@johnsimpsen5]

I loved that mini game in mpds

[@xenon3759]

The mario party ds music in the background is really nostalgic lol

[@DangerDurians]

The art style is rather reminiscent of some ds games I’ve played

[@Gmeare]

this looks like a really cool gam. I haven't played it (yet) but it looks good and I think It could work well as a 'foddian' . A foddian is a game where no amount of progress is guaranteed and you can fall down very far. If that's not what you wanted out of the game then that makes sense but personally I think that it could be good.

[@church_c_urchin]

I personally really liked the background and it’s motion, very contrasting, but in a good way in my opinion.

[@sebastianwardana1527]

tell me its prerendered art! i love this! dude... duuuude!

[@fabian01fava]

i loved the graphics

[@brickofthebattling]

Amazing job on the game you deserve it! Btw what drawing software are you using?

[@mqgawario8722]

Imagine if there was a reward for completing the game in under two minutes, like a sort of Za Warudo time stop, and there were extra levels (10 - 20 bonus levels) that revolved around this

[@catsul94]

The mario party ds musics on background hits different

[@celestialTangle]

Ah, I see you are a man of culture as well.

[@gigawooper2733]

Your outlining on the character makes me cry

[@mdbgamer556]

I think for such a simple isea of "10 seconds", Time Tower is a very interesting idea for a game based around that. Perhaps you could create a sort of sequel that fixes a lot of the problems of the original, and maybe fleshes it out a lot more since you'd have more time to hammer away at it.

[@xaius4348]

8 minutes 27 seconds first run, and probably 7+ of that was the last section. It's hard to navigate the end when you aren't given time to observe the level cycle or extended vision. As a lover of platformer games, the controls felt solid, though something was bothering me slightly... It might be the animations or sounds, and not the controls themselves. Either that or how the initial movement to the side and turning directions feels. And yes, I do actually like the background, it's nice. The tileset isn't distracting at all, but the player character and checkpoints do stand out a bit. I guess it's sort of a good thing to have the player character stand out from the rest of the art though. I would say that overall the art is rather good, all things considered. What I would change? Very minor thing, but despite re-touching a checkpoint resetting the clock, standing at the clock doesn't stall the timer after your initial respawn. Also, I'm not positive that this is a good idea, but a way to examine levels would be nice, perhaps a button that allows you to stop time and plan out your approach (Perhaps that adds to the time aesthetic, or perhaps it detracts from the frantic motivation the game creates, unsure)

[@howthehell3891]

4:52 goku just casually chilling between gears

[@Pleasant_duck]

I had this idea for a game but I can’t program so I’m putting it here. It is a 2d platform with no checkpoints just constantly going up/left to right and if you don’t get to a certain point fast enough you get sent back to the beginning. There is also a fun feature where the controls are changed to random different keys every 20 seconds and every key does something different! May it be jumping, grappling, teleporting in the direction your holding, swapping gravity, instantly resetting you, or giving you more time. It would be a really hard rage game and if you want you could make it so that there are platforms you can jump on that all have different timers for when you can go on them or when you cant but not show you when they go off so you just have to guess! Just make it as annoying and infuriating as possible! (Ps if you make this I want 30% of the profit 🙃)

[@vamosqsepuede_4622]

Cool vid :D

[@conradolosada7835]

i actually like that background

[@a_a0911]

I like the way you use godot

[@MongoGamer]

yeah i gave up fast when i realized that you can hold space to jump and leads to a lot of accidental jumping.

[@longyiuchen1837]

Let us just appreciate how much this man worked on the game