Ladders are Built to Be Scaled 2: Scaled Together

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  Third Level

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  Opening Level

Inspiration

Ladders are Built to be Scaled 2: Ladders are Built to be Scaled Together is a sequel to a game that I made for a game jam over the summer, Ladders are Built to be Scaled, which tasked the plan with contorting their body to navigate a series of ladders and reach the heavens.

What it does

Unlike the original, in this game, the player controls two characters connected through a red string of fate. Moving the mouse near one of them will cause their currently selected limb to move toward the mouse, and their counterpart will respond in a similar fashion, mirroring the movement of the selected character.

When the selected limb turns green, the player is securely over a ladder rung (or bird), and they may lock that limb in place by clicking. Afterward, another limb will be selected to move toward the next rung on the ladder, and this will continue until the player's character has reached the star at the top of the screen.

However, the player is controlling two characters, not one, and each click has the possibility to lock one, both, or none of their limbs onto the next rung. Thus, the player must keep a close eye on both characters before clicking.

Additional Controls

R: Restart the current level (Useful in case you become stuck)

N: Skip the current level (Useful if you don't have 10-15 minutes to play the entire game)

How I built it

This game was built in Vanilla Javascript and uses a custom engine that I have been working on for the last year, which I have dubbed The GT Engine as many people have compared the look of characters made in it to graph theory. This engine represents each object, character, and text in the world as a series of nodes and edges connecting them.

Challenges I ran into

One of the biggest challenges I ran into was deciding on an idea to make. I spent most of the first night prototyping various ideas, with my favorite of the bunch centering on connecting people together to create larger shapes that could be used to reach farther and grab more people. Ultimately, I decided that this wasn't feasible in such a brief amount of time. Once I had decided on the concept, my next major challenge was deciding how to design the levels. The first two were simple enough, with the first warming the player up and the second highlighting the importance of controlling two separate characters simultaneously. From there, I spent a significant amount of time workshopping different ideas for levels (one character upside down, inverted controls, sliding platforms that one player had to hold down, etc.) before deciding on the birds.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

In the original game, the birds that flew across the screen were no more than set-dressing, designed to tell the player that as they progressed through the levels, they were gradually getting higher. However, in this game, I decided to use them as a platform that the player could grab onto and ride across the map, with the second character being dragged along until they grabbed onto something to brace themself. This decision solved my level design problem by substantially increasing what I could do in the game and how I could move the characters across the map independently.

What I learned

This jam once more emphasized the importance of sitting down and thinking through a plan before starting. A significant amount of time was wasted during this process while I waited for inspiration or worked on a system that I ultimately ended up scrapping.

What's next for Ladders are Built to Be Scaled 2: Scaled Together

The most significant bug that remains in the game relates to how birds move across the screen. After they pass a certain threshold, they are teleported beyond the opposite end of the screen and begin the process of moving across the screen again. This system works perfectly for the birds and when a climber is attached to a bird as they go with them. However, the second climber can create issues as the first climber is dragging them, and thus, they must also be teleported, but if the distance between them is far enough, the second climber may teleport away before he is fully offscreen. Aside from that, I mainly plan to polish this game and combine it with the original to create a single piece for my portfolio.

Built With

• javascript