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[Soulliard]

This is the first game I've released in quite some time, and I think it's my my best work yet. I hope you enjoy playing it as much as I enjoyed making it.



Trailer

Site and Download Links

The goal of The Ultimate Celebration is to find all your friends so you can invite them to a party. There is no death in the game. There are obstacles, but they only temporarily hinder you.

The heart of the experience is exploring the miniature world that the game takes place in. The different locations can be explored in any order, but you will need to navigate them all to find every friend.

After you beat the game once, you can challenge yourself by playing again and seeing how quickly you can reach the end. The game was designed for speed-running.

Features music by Filippo Beck Peccoz.

[Ghidorah]

Looks good. Cant wait to get home and play it! 

[eigenbom]

The pink dude is so angry! I'll play this soon!

[Alec S.]

Awesome game!  Really enjoyed the variety of environments.  All of the graphics were very charming.

[Soulliard]

The pink dude is so angry! I'll play this soon!

You'd be angry, too, if you were an enemy who couldn't even kill the main character.

Awesome game!  Really enjoyed the variety of environments.  All of the graphics were very charming.

Thanks! I had a lot of fun practicing my pixeling.

[Glyph]

This is really cool. The music was awesome, and I liked the no-health thing (reminds me of Wario Land). I only got ten friends, though. I'll have to try it out again some time.

[Soulliard]

The music is one of the best parts. I was amazed at how well it fit the mood of the game.

Wario Land is one of the game's biggest influences. In a way, this game is a tribute to them, since they were some of my favorite games growing up. Surprisingly, there aren't many other no-health platformers out there.

10 friends is actually quite good. Finding all 20 in a single playthrough is a real challenge.

[AlexRamallo]

I really like this game, its quick and simple, and the graphics/music worked together perfectly. The varying environments were nice, and I would imagine that it took you a really long time to make it all. Also, I really enjoyed the level design, especially in the water.

I just had one problem with it:
How. The. HELL are you supposed to win? The world is huge, there are 20 friends, and you only get a few minutes to do it 


anyways, great game

[Soulliard]

How. The. HELL are you supposed to win? The world is huge, there are 20 friends, and you only get a few minutes to do it 

This is an important question, so I'll start by answering it directly, and then I'll explain my motivation.


SPOILERS below


If you want to find all 20 friends, here's how you do it:
1- Locate all 20 friends over the course of several playthroughs. Some are a little challenging to find, but with some critical thinking you should be able to find them all.

2- Plan your route. Some routes are quicker than others.

3- Practice the route until you can make it through with few mistakes. There's a little room for error here. You have 5:40, and it is possible to find all friends in under 4 minutes.


Finding all 20 friends in a single playthrough is very difficult, so you'll probably want to focus on finding as many as possible, rather than shooting for 100% completion. This is intentional, and here's why:

- What is winning, really? Sure, The Ultimate Celebration directs you to find all of your friends, but will that really change anything? Finding your friends isn't going to stop the meteors from falling...

- You don't need to find all 20 friends to experience most of what the game has to offer. The entire world can still be explored over the course of multiple playthroughs, and you don't need to win to understand any message the game contains.

- If you want a truly difficult challenge, the game gives you that option.

[Glyph]

I did it! In 5:09. My path was not very good, and I messed up some big chunks, but still...
I'm not much for speedrunning, yet this still managed to appeal to me. I wanted to win. I cared about those little pixelated people, dangit! Thanks for making such a cool game

[Soulliard]

To be honest, I wouldn't have been surprised if I was the only person who ever found all 20 friends on a single play-through. The fact that someone else put the time into accomplishing the feat means a lot to me as a game designer. I'm glad that I made something worth caring about. 

[Soulliard]

I got a nice surprise today. Jay is Games gave the game a wonderful write-up, and I'm seeing the biggest spike in traffic since it was posted on indiegames.com.

[contra]

Wanted to share my impressions of the game:

Love the graphics, really great job here. The world and it's inhabitants feels charmingly indie-retro and at the same time full of detail. Even though the world is pretty small each area manages to have a distinct look.

Gameplay and leveldesign is also top-notch. The no death mechanics allows for fast gameplay that encourages exploration with very little frustration (while most other retro-plattformers seems to be designed to create frustration). The difficulty for each specific jumps are on the easy side but as you said the challenge lies more in finding a good overall speedrun. Great design!

SPOILERS below

Story and concept, now here's where my only complaint lies.

 On one hand I really like how things gets turned around from one extreme to the other, first it's super happy friendly about finding your friends for a party and a couple of minutes later everyone is panicing and ultimately just dies. It's a great idea. However I cant help but to feel a little unsatisfied by how it all ends and by reading your comments on it here just dosent make me care enough to try to find them all in a perfect run.

I think I would have cared more if the premises was to infact rescue people from the end of the world from the get-go with a proper game over scene were the ones you do rescue gets to live on while the ones you missed do in fact die. That would have motivated me more to try to perfect the game.
 As it stands now I sortof get the feeling of "oh...it was an artsy game afterall" and its all just futile.
Now this might be a good statement in itself, but honestly I think this game's core gameplay is too good to just come down to a nihilistic message.

However this is a very personal opinion and I'm not saying that this is how it *should* have been done. Just that *I* would probably have enjoyed it more. I should also point out that I've only managed to rescue 12/20 from 3 goes, so I might not have the full picture.

All in all though, great job on the game! 

[Soulliard]

*Spoilers*

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. As you said, the ending isn't going to appeal to everyone, and I can completely understand your opinion. I'm glad you still enjoyed the other aspects of the game, though.

The game design started with the ending, and everything else was based around that. I understood that the end wouldn't appeal to everyone, but I couldn't change the ending and still express the message I wanted to. The message isn't completely nihilistic, though - the end doesn't matter so much if you enjoyed the journey, and surrounded yourself with friends.

In retrospect, I could have improved the experience by spending more time on the ending screen. Ah well.