Hola! We're currently integrating retina display, so I tought I'd share a couple of menu pictures (in game is not completed yet). It will be possible to change the appearance of the main character: As well as upgrading skills from a list of 8 branches of 4 skills each: For now, the skill branches are: Health Sword Jump Slide Dash Dive Alien Knowledge Powered Shoes. We might add more skill types if some great suggestions are tossed our way though
Awesome! Retina support is a must so I'm glad you are getting that done. Also the upgrades and whatnot are great. Customization really adds to the replay value of any game so make sure you are constantly adding more of that stuff
Agreed. In future updates, it is always possible to add a bunch of little things, but it would be nice to add bigger concepts like a 'collectibles room' where you can check unlocked art assets or include extra levels, perhaps featuring different game mechanics. For instance we could have a 'hook' mechanic where you have to anchor yourself to the roof and swing, or even having something even closer to a platformer, since our system is already quite close to that.
Those all sound like great ideas. The hook would be cool because it would completely switch up the gameplay and add some variety.
I'd like it if the art were more retro/pixel art. Kind of like Hook Champ + lightsabers - grappling hook unless you end up adding the grappling hook later.
I'd like it better if he kept the art the way it was and then added an unlockable or something that made it pixel art style.
Oh it is pixel art (at least characters and platforms). When drawing objects so small, you don't have much of a choice. This tileset is one of the few assets I drew myself, and I can assure you that I had to place every pixel one by one But I get what you're saying. We could have went for a more retro art style, with assets more pixelited. I can't say I disagree, I like retro style a lot myself, it reminds me of my childhood. We still went for retro, though a bit differently. We aimed at a retro-futuristic art direction, trying to depict how people where seeing future 60 years ago. That's what can be seen on the city BG pic posted earlier in this thread. That's also why we inspired ourselves from monsters appearing in old sci-fi movies Soo yeah we went for a mixed lot. Will people like it better like that? Hard to tell but we're trying our best . That's a very nice idea! It would be interesting to figure out the ratio of people interest vs work to do to implement that option.
Yeah I understood what you meant. Retro style pixel art with large pixels mimicking the times when screen resulotion were much lower. I wonder if we'd be able to reproduce that by just applying some sort of filter over our assets, in order to include the style as an option.
A quick test, but my first impression is that we'd have to re-draw entirely the most part of hundreds of assets to come up with an interesting retro look.
Oh well...perhaps I can't provide you with retro style graphics in the short term, but at least I can provide you with the plasma sword instructions of the day
Speaking of retro-futurism, here's the background which has been used to create the underground environment (Normal difficulty) And a few in-game screenshots for this level
Nice screens but to me the floor doesn't really match the background. I think it'd look better if the checker parts were more like marble tiling with Peach/brownish color. And also I think the walls of the floor segments should be a little different color. Maybe brownish and without the yellow stripe. But I understand doing that might take up some extra memory if you are using the same floor assets in each level and just changing the background.
Thanks, I appreciate the comment. We'll definitly consider that suggestion during the beta/polish phase, where we hope to gather a lot more of comments like this. For the memory, it is not a problem, since we have a unique tileset per Level.
Here's a preview of another boss (Easy Level) Hopefully we'll be able to make a video preview of the boss fights in about 1 week or so. Shortly after the bosses are done, the beta will start. What do you think of this potential game icon? Thank you all for you precious feedback, we appreciate it a lot!
Yeah, the yellow one looks better, but neither of them are very eye-catching if you know what I mean. They need some more contrast. Maybe a dark and dingy background with the character running out of it. Or have a swarm of monsters in the bottom right corner and have the character running at them with the plasma sword from the top left. I can post a pic later maybe.
Test mockups are more than welcomed, but crowded icons tends to not work very well in 57x57. Our initial tests were not convincing. Our first idea was to work out a polished version of the yellow icon, perhaps tweaking the character a bit. Unless we get feedback sending us in another direction .
