Level Up!

By: ithamore

On: November 25th, 2009

Level Up! is a platformer with light RPG elements by Duncan Saunders that uses an interesting ability mechanic and is a good addition to the ranks of Flixel powered games.

This snippet from the game’s page at Newgrounds sums it up well:

“Inspired by Upgrade Complete, This game is a tribute to anyone who has ever sat there playing a game doing the same repeatable set of actions in order to get a arbitrary number to go up… You can gain levels in just about everything you do, from Jumping to Taking Damage to standing still and doing nothing at all… There is a catch though. Every night a re-occurring nightmare will rob you of everything if you can’t survive it.”

  • jack

    Just finished the game on NG, and saw this in here, great game and grafics, this game its about to turn epic.
    I also sugest a play to this.
    http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/518729

  • Malasdair

    Great game until you get to the unwinnable boss fight and lose everything.

  • ye, because it would be to much fun to upgrade everthing to lvl 5 in the first day and play til the end without leveling anymore.

  • jrjellybeans

    My type of game!

    I just wish there was a down loadable version so that I can play when I’m not online :(

  • http://0xdeadc0de.org Eclipse

    very nice game, the graphics is actually quite bad and the music a bit annoying but the gameplay is solid

  • mania

    The game music or the trailer music? The trailer music is awesome

  • huzzah

    atrocious graphics.

  • Jimmy Curbstomp

    What is the trailer music? It sounded really familiar but I can’t place it.

  • Ethan

    @Huzzah: I’d like to see you do better. I was fine with the pixel graphics. They reminded me a lot of Iji.

    The game itself was fantastic, and I loved the leveling up mechanic. You don’t lose your purchased skills after fighting the nightmare, which is an important thing to know.

  • Darkebrz

    @Malasdair
    Boss fight is definitely winnable.

  • Jad

    Ethan, Iji didn’t look so hot either.

    If duncan teamed up with some kind of graphic magician everything would be even more awesome, and dreaming of super awesome ain’t a crime now is it.

    .. yeah ok ‘atrocious graphics’ is a very blunt and insensitive remark but ‘I’d like to see you do better’ is a lame and overused retort. For the record I could do better but I don’t feel that changes whether or not I’d have the right to comment on a game’s graphics or not.

  • Jad

    Ooon the other hand being a dick isn’t a human right either so tut tut mr Huzzah, be nicer.

  • Malasdair

    Yeah it’s winnable but I didn’t catch the warning about it up front. Had to be a little bit of a pissant about it. Definitely going to give it another shot later!

  • smiggel

    I love the grafics how it is now, i think the pixaled feel its very nice.
    But i think the creators of this game would love to share the 15 bucks they made with the game with another person just to make worse shiny grafics.

  • MisterX

    I really liked playing this and I’ve just finished it, but haven’t quite completed it, yet.

    It started acting strangely since I defeated the nightmare, and now after 2 or 3 restarts of the game the skills are reset again, though nothing’s lost really. Strange..

  • Bob

    Beat it, liked it, completed it, had slight problems with it, and had fun.

    Overall, it was great except for the very weird and very annoying glitches I experienced (so many to the point where I think my save is broken).

  • MisterX

    Which glitches did you experience, Bob? Maybe the same as me? After I had defeated the nightmare, I got stuck when talking to the boy. I reloaded the page, bug couldn’t press “Play” anymore. After restarting the browser, I could go on playing, but I could hardly collect any gems, most just kept on floating around me, which looked rather messy. I then finished the game, and after coming back to it a bit later, it seemed to work normally again, but all skills were back to level 1.

  • Ethan

    @Jad
    I guess I did overreact a bit there. I loved the background art and the tile art, and I found that rather comparable to Iji, where the objects a background art were great, but the character art itself wasn’t.

    Despite this, I liked the graphical style of it, and just felt like Huzzah was being rude when he just said “atrocious graphics”. As proved with Runman, a game can have atrocious graphics and excellent gameplay.

  • Zmann

    Wow, that was an absolutely terrible story.

  • http://www.microwaving.net Alex

    it was fun but the story was pretty lame and losing your experience each day was annoying

    peace,
    m-wave

  • makosanders

    I was planning a game on the same subject.
    Plan was to juxtapose it with the style opposing level-up systems.
    I wasn’t going to treat it as a metaphor for personal growth though, oh no, I was going to reify it with a living master sword that needed to eat the green fluid in the brains of its enemies to grow stronger.
    Hahaha, it’s such an offense!

  • Bob

    @MisterX, yeah, that was one of the glitches I had (except I didn’t need to reset the browser and I didn’t lose my stats).
    I’ve also had the gems stay bright red (instead of chaining to dull, making it real hard to figure which ones you haven’t collected), “Day 6” staying on screen, having the rocks shadows stay (on the boss fight), and after making a new save, had a huge amount of those white particles come out after losing the boss fight.

    But that’s just graphical. The real annoying ones were the ones that forgot how many gems I collected (resulting in 115%, which I don’t think is possible), the water system breaking and never being able to activate again (not much of a problem at higher levels, but still), the door forgetting that I already paid, and slightly floaty controls and a clunky camera (resulting in serious collision detection breaking).
    There’s also a bug that allows you to level up without talking to “The Boy” (just restart after talking to him on the first day – you’ll also keep all the gems you’ve collected).
    Oh, and there’s an easy way to get the Heartbreaker medal. Just Dash towards the walls, and when you’re blinking, you’ll recover.

    And I won’t say anything about the story, because the sequel/prequel isn’t out yet (demo seemed nice), but as it stands, it’s admittedly a little hazy.

    As far as everything else goes, it’s all very nice.

  • Moose

    Hmm. For me, during and after the first nightmare, my character turns invisible, making the game pretty much unplayable. Has anyone else had that?

  • Neddo

    I got the “turning invisible” bug too. Made it pretty difficult to play. My character reappeared if I reloaded my game but it happened again the next time I fell asleep.

  • penis

    Won on the second day – ending was annoying.

  • cactus

    Music is from Rurouni Kenshin / Samurai X, right?

    Seems like a cool idea. I’d play it if I wasn’t just about to go to bed…

  • http://www.rsblsb.com Shawn

    Cactus: it actually originated with the The Andrew Oldham Orchestra, the original band manager for the Rolling Stones.The string melody was used in “The Last Time” by the stones. It’s been sampled like a billion times by like everyone.

  • lulzapricot

    I also get the turn invisible bug. Makes the game nigh unplayable.

    ._.

  • Cellulose Man

    Great fun. I was a little wary of trying the game out given the “lose all your progress” mechanic, and felt like I wasn’t doing a good job after losing the bossfight the first two days.

    However, I kept playing and came to see how enjoyable the leveling / loss mechanic was. I figured beating the boss was necessary to beat the game, and while preparing for another go later on I happened to stop at the you-know-what, resulting in the end of the game. The 100% completion period seemed to make up for that, though.

    Graphics were passable, animation (as separate from graphics) was quite nicely done, music and sound I didn’t notice which was a decently good sign, and story was (putting it bluntly) a bit reminiscent of high school creative writing club. But I won’t nock it for that. Gameplay design was solid and that’s where this one shines. Good luck on the sequel.

    Oh, and no bugs for me, Firefox 3, Flash version WIN 10,0,22,87 as reported by googling “what is my flash version” and clicking the first link. Don’t judge me for typing a full sentence into google.

    [/Drawn-out late-night comment]

  • meatsim

    is it just me that thinks this game looks like commander keen?

  • Captain Beefheart

    GOOD THING I’M INVISIBLE BECAUSE THAT MEANS YOU CAN’T SEE HOW GOD DAMN FURIOUS I AM

  • Ezuku

    Fun, but…

    The ending felt tacked on and disconnected from the main game.

    Also cliffhanger endings are annoying.

    For the gameplay itself, I enjoyed it a lot. I didn’t mind losing all my stats because of how fast they were restored using the learn gems later. The mechanic was fun. That said, I did find the controls a little floaty.

    Spoiler:

    I would have liked the sacred ground thing to need you to defeat your nightmare first. I never defeated it and the game ended (didn’t realise it would finish it) once I used the sacred ground thing, unexpected ending stealing me of my closure.

  • The Advisor

    I liked the game, and atfirst I had the invisibility bug, but a few hours later it was all fine. I am wondering though as to what codex entry #49 is because I’ve done everything I could(except win the nightmare) but still haven’t got it.

  • http://lumberingdream.com/ !CE-9

    this is like a Groundhog Day rip-off, right?

    there’s something appealing about the concept, the graphics and music are OK, at least they aren’t trying too hard. I felt some of the HUD solutions are really cool looking.

    the lever dialogue was funny, but a lot of the writing is a bit strained and annoying.

    no bugs so far under OS X, Safari v4.0.

    … and wow, that was a REALLY bad ending. shame.

  • MisterX

    [mild spoilers]

    Are you actually ment to use the dash to defeat the nightmare? I managed to stay pretty much invincible during the whole fight by just dashing back and forth, maybe dashjumping from one platform to another, and practically just waiting until it was over. It felt really lame, though, but it seemed to me that the fight is hardly winnable without it.

  • Neko_Baron

    Personally found it irritating and totally unoriginal unfortunately, though mainly feel that way after playing ‘Contact’ for the DS which is a testament to this kind of leveling.

  • CouldntPlay

    Looks really interesting. Refuses to play on Ubuntu 9.10 / Firefox 3.5.5 though- start screen appears, but you can’t start. A shame.

  • Guy

    Actually didn’t mind the pixel graphics, reminded me of playing commander keen and cosmo’s cosmic adventure.

    Unfortuntely the game is quite buggy – I was getting regular pauses during gameplay but updating to the latest flash fixed it (even though only going from 0.1 difference in version no).

    Still got the “turn invisible on Nightmare” bug. But still beat it – Hardiness, Regen and Relationship Lv.5 (max hearts), makes you nigh unkillable, just keep jumping left-right and watch him die.

    Seems to beat the game you just need 100 Gems to enter the computer room? I beat it without double-jump, radar or dash abilities on day 3.

  • SirNiko

    I liked the concept. It reminded me a lot of Majora’s Mask on the N64, where you had to differentiate between what you can and can’t take with you.

    One thing that isn’t clear is that filling up the codex thing increases the rate you gain XP. So, even though you lose most of your progress when you inevitably die to the boss the first time, the next day you keep your codex, and therefore, you level up way faster.

    I would have liked to see the game designed with more goals to accomplish than can be done in one day. That way, the player feels a sense of progress during each day even if you fail to defeat the nightmare.

    Pretty good game, I think. Hoping for some new stuff in the sequel.

    -SirNiko

  • Bob

    Last (hopefully) comment.
    I have no idea how to get entry #56.
    Also, maybe some day/night stuff (like in Majora’s Mask) would be nice, but that could be hard to weave in/be really frustrating.

  • MisterX

    Is the savestate saved in the cache or so? Well, turns out you can be unable to continue playing the next day. Bummer..

  • Oforf’sake

    It was fun at first. I bought all the items (dash sneakers, double-jump, regen, etc), I collected over 1000 gems, i gave gems to the boy until the boy/girl fell in love, got married and had kids.
    Then i gave him too many gems, he took them and ran off with another girl, and I felt cheated.

  • cm

    The 100% completion bonus is FANTASTIC.

    Also, I beat the boss by double jumping over his slash attack and standing still whenever possible. I never dashed because I hadn’t figured out a way to do it without running into walls.

  • maxer

    wow, yeah! the 100% bonus was kind of awe-inspiring! definitely worth getting all the gems.

    the main game was pretty awesome, too. i love it when rpg elements like skill growth find their way into more traditional genres like platformers. it felt and looked a little bit sloppy, like the content was an afterthought (art, story, world design), but great ideas and mechanics! excited for the sequel. :)

  • magallanes

    Ok, the author fixed the invisible bug.

  • MisterX

    I’ve also completed it. I just played through the whole game again, which turned out to still be very fun. I especially like that it isn’t about what some criticize, grinding. As was already pointed out, along with your progress each day, your overall learning speed increases (although not by collecting codex entries, but the big gems), so with every day you regain the levels much faster. Moreover, you likely won’t max out running or jumping on day 1, anyway.
    I find that this is a very original example of backtracking done right. I never felt that collecting the gems again was tedious, because even though their placement in the world is reset, your counter remains, so you still don’t exactly lose them. Also, with your limitations in skill levels and the repetition involved, you get to know the game world, without actually having to repeat the same task over and over again. And there is absolutely no need for jumping around on a spot or running for minutes just to get up to a certain level, it all flows naturally through normal gameplay.

    There are some more things I find outstanding about this game. It’s not a “top of the genre” game, and I won’t play through it another time, but it’s really good for several reasons and its frontpage placement here on TIGS is justified :)

  • so cash

    The game, in my mind, was cool in concept but flawed in execution for a few reasons:
    1, The art for the player and the npc’s profile picture wasn’t very good, making the romance become more awkward then it already was and
    2, If you lose to the nightmare guy all your levels drop to zero, and that’s stupid! He’s really hard to beat! I shouldn’t be that burdened that early on in the game! And it wasn’t even mentioned before that ALL MY LEVELS WOULD DROP TO ONE.

  • Leonardo Millan

    The game is brilliant. One of the best Flash games I’ve EVER played. All the elements fits perfectly on the game. There were a couple of bugs, but no big deal. If he ever goes commercial, I would totally purchase it. 10/10
    I’m waiting for the sequel. The demo is great, I loved how he used the Zelda-ish jumping style.

    Those complaining about the Nightmare, get REAL. If your levels wouldn’t drop, the game would be too easy. Plus, you would have no reason to try and defeat him. But as it is, you’ll feel like you have done something wrong, and will try to beat him. This, gentlemen, is a great example of a neat game design.

    @makosanders: you should do that, sounds wicked and awesome :)

  • anonymous

    @Leonardo Millan
    I am already real.