A downloadable game for Windows and Linux

Away From Keyboard (a. k. a. The Long Way Back)

A person got hired as a playtester for this brand new game. However, all they seem to do is move in a straight line, fall off the same cliff over and over, respawn, and it's the same story all over again. Perhaps they're just AFK? 

Naturally, the game tiles are bored. Very bored. No one has platformed on them for a long time. However, the tiniest bit of hope suddenly catches their glimpse. A cursor, not meant to exist in the game, appears right before them. Is it the playtester, or someone entirely different? That's a mystery for another time, but one thing's for sure: the days of endless boredom are finally over for the game tiles.

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Controls: LEFT CLICK to select game tile and give it the ability to move. You can select up to five tiles at once, and every tile's movement is constrained to a circle. RIGHT CLICK to deselect all tiles. R to restart. WASD/arrow keys to move selected tiles. Good luck and have fun playing! ^_^

Selectable tiles and their mechanics: brick, bouncy block (small jump/changes movement direction), stop sign (not a solid object/stops player movement), gravity block (changes direction of gravity), small spike.

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Music  track used: "8 Bit Adventure" by David Renda.

The game might be a bit too small to fully show off its mechanics, but I hope you enjoy its concept nevertheless!

WARNING: also, since this is a submission to a game jam, I didn't have much time to playtest. Some areas might be excruciatingly difficult or outright impossible. If you can still beat the game despite that,  congrats! Clearly, you're better than the original playtester  :)


Download

Download
Post-jam v1.1 [Windows] 18 MB
Download
Post-jam v1.1 [Linux] 31 MB
Download
Jam Version 18 MB

Install instructions

Download Instructions:

1. Click "Download" on one of the versions. The download shouldn't take too long.

2. Open the zip archive (extracting the files is optional). You can now play the game by opening the file "Away From Keyboard.exe".

Development log

Comments

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(+1)

What a fun idea! You have to build the level around the character and make it work with the game elements you’re given, and this dynamically changes as you progress through the world. I think it works quite well, especially in the initial introduction bit where you have to build a bridge out of blocks that are clearly initially out of place. The main thing I struggled with was the lack of direction in the level. At times I’m not sure where I am supposed to take the AFK playtester and it sometimes led to a bit of frustration… accentuated by the few times I got softlocked at a checkpoint. If you moved a block to the wrong position, then respawning at a checkpoint with the button still won’t let you reach it, and you get completely stuck. I do like that the world doesn’t reset on death, so you can keep working on your masterpiece of a level, so instead I would opt for an option to un-get the last checkpoint. Or maybe a voluntary world reset while keeping checkpoint progress. Thankfully, restarting the game was an okay workaround, though I did not get to the later levels. I liked the way you control blocks by just using WASD, and can move multiple things at once. It led to creative solutions such as slowly moving a stop sign from in front of the player to slow down their movement while traversing a particularly tricky chasm, or moving a bouncy block under the player and encasing them with bricks to prevent them from bouncing away. One small nitpick is that it looks like the player’s collision is changing with their animation of scaling up and down. This causes the camera to move slightly when it should be idle, which was a bit confusing to me.

I will keep trying as I did not get very far (just past the first gravity block), but wanted to write down my fresh thoughts. Congrats on completing & submitting your game!

Thanks for sharing your experience with the game! Glad you liked the concept :) I'll definitely consider implementing your suggestions in future updates!