Slimy Scales

                                                                                                                                  

Defeat as many slimes as possible in this 2d platforming arena battler!
It's up to you to make sure The Grand Scale remains balanced, but can you balance this task and your own survival as well?

About

In this arcade-style 2d platforming arena battler, your goal is to defeat as many slimes as possible, however, it won't be easy. Getting hit by slimes diminishes your health, and allowing The Grand Scale to tilt too far to one side will cause your balance meter to slowly drain. If either your health or your balance meter reaches zero, it's game over and time to try again.

This game was originally made in 13 days for the 2025 Gamedev.js game jam, where the goal was to create a web game within the time frame that fit a specific theme. The theme was "Balance," which inspired a core aspect of the game: the scale (which is quite literally half of the title). The scale obviously makes balance an inherent part of the gameplay, but I also wanted the experience to relate to the theme somehow. To do this, I decided to make a frantic arcade-style game, where everything ramps up quickly, forcing the player to balance their own survival and the maintenance of the scale's physical balance. I know that's kind of abstract, but that's generally the decision making process that went into the game.

All of the core mechanics and slimes were fully implemented by day five, the polishing, final artwork, bugfixing, music, and sound effects by day ten, and the final two days were spent getting playtesters and implementing feedback. The only exception to this was that the "Slime Timer" and warning arrows, two of the core mechanics, were implemented in the final 5 hours of the jam as the ideas came from one of my playtesters. With that said, I hope you enjoy this game, as I did the best I could to make it the wonderful balance of enjoyability, panic, and silliness that it is.

Special thanks to all my wonderful playtesters: Logan, Charlie, Nathan, Josh, Greyson, Daniel, Caden, and all the others who I forced to play a few rounds in their free time.

The "Update An Existing Game, Jam"

As a part of this game jam, I returned to this project in hopes of implementing some of the amazing feedback I had received after its initial release. The new features include brand new player sprites, reworked movement and attacking, some additional health, three new slimes, a proper tutorial, an additional easy mode, and various other small tweaks and changes to things.

Gamemodes

You can choose to play in either Slow, Normal, or Frantic mode. Slow and normal mode are the same, except slow mode, effectively an easy mode, is designed for the difficulty to scale slower, allowing for newer or less skilled players to still enjoy the game. The only difference between normal and frantic mode is that frantic mode has an additional meter: the "Slime Timer," which causes a game over if it runs out. You must keep the timer from reaching zero by defeating slimes, which gives you more time. Frantic mode may be designed to be the full experience, but I strongly encourage you to play whichever mode you find most fun.

Controls

I recommend playing through the tutorial, as it teaches you a lot ore than just the controls. Various controls can be used to match whatever's most comfortable. WASD and arrow keys are supported for movement, as well as SHIFT, SPACE, and E for actions.
Z, X, and C are also supported action buttons for those who find control schemes similar to that of PICO-8 more convenient.

Action	Buttons
Move Left	A, Left Arrow Key
Move Right	D, Right Arrow Key
Jump	W, Up Arrow Key, SPACE, X, K
Fall Through A Platform	S, Down Arrow Key
Dash	E, SHIFT, Z, C, J, L
Pause	P, ESC

Challenges

As a part of the Gamedev.js game jam, I took part in a couple additional challenges. First of all, I participated in "Build it with Phaser," a challenge to make a game using the Phaser.js game engine. Luckily, that's the game engine I've been using for the past 3 years or so, which meant it wasn't too much of a challenge.

The second challenge I took part in was the "Open Source" challenge by GitHub, a challenge to make your game's code open source via GitHub. If you want to check out the code for the original Jam Version of the game, you can do so at https://github.com/LiminalDirectory/Slimy-Scales.

Tools Used

Programming: Visual Studio Code and Phaser.js

Sprites & Artwork: GIMP

Music: FL Studio

Sound Effects: SFXR