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Hey all,

Here's a game I've been working on for the DS, currently called Snowride. It's a sort of platformerish touchscreen controlled on-rails shooter, high score attack type thing.

It's still a WIP, at a fairly early stage (though it's the most finished thing i've ever made!).. It's all christmassy because I'm making it for a winter coding compo, but I am planning on making it into something new, with a more general theme, after the compo has ended.

It's very simple, and was inspired by the DS game Yoshi Touch & Go. The graphics aren't particularly finished.. drawing and animating sprites is by far the hardest thing for me. The sound effects are quick n dirty. I'm quite happy with the music so far though. The terrain layout of these first two zones isn't necessarily finished.. and I'm planning on eventually making it assemble terrains from randomly arranged (but pre-made) segments.

I am mainly after feedback about gameplay, but would love to hear what anyone reckons about any of it :)  Hopefully it isn't buggy. The only thing I can think of right now is that occasionally some enemies will just disappear if too many new enemies are spawned at once.. 128 sprites per screen max on the DS.

This demo ends after zone 1-B. I hope to add more kinds of enemies before the compo ends (15 days! eek!).. not sure if I'll get round to it or not. When I make it into a new game and don't have to stick to the christmas theme anymore I'll add more diverse stuff.

It is quite playable on the no$gba (http://nocash.emubase.de/gba.htm) emulator (Windows only) for anyone who doesn't have a DS+flashcart - the only thing is, the space between the two DS screens is accounted for in the game, and there isn't as large a gap on the emulator, so lining up shots onto the top screen can be hard..

(http://nyarla.gazaxian.com/sr10.jpg)(http://nyarla.gazaxian.com/sr13.jpg)(http://nyarla.gazaxian.com/sr14.jpg)

Touch the reindeer to jump (you can jump on the heads of enemies, of course). Touch anywhere else to shoot. If an enemy touches your deer, you die. Shooting those poor animals and eskimos raises the multiplier. If a shot misses, the multiplier is reset. Keep up the accuracy for a powerup. Oh and high accuracy gets you a nice star next to your name on the high scores.

Oh yeah, and tap the "display" button on the menu/title screen for instructions, high scores & credits.

and the game is here: link removed - old version!

new version: http://nyarla.gazaxian.com/Snowride_r2.zip (959kb)

:D

I just gave it a try and I liked it so far. New and actually fun DS homebrew is always appreciated, anyway ;)
I think your game is quite a solid foundation for something bigger, but is just too simple as it is right now. There's no problem with simplicity, but I think for that it's lacking a unique feature :) The way the birds fly on the upper screen actually reminded me a bit of Gradius, so maybe there could be something like an occasional transition between just sliding on the ground and flying in the air (although it looks like something like that is already in the game, at least I couldn't get my sleigh as high in the sky as you did in screen #2).
Oh and is it just a coincidence that the penguins jump when that one sound is played in the background music? I like it when games connect the music or its rhythm with the gameplay, maybe you could also make something out of that :)

By the way, I don't think the graphics are a problem. On the one hand DS homebrew rarely looks very good, on the other hand the simple graphics as usual have a charm of their own, for example when the reindeer opens its mouth to eat the fruit which has fallen from the sky ;D And, anyway, it looks like you could easily improve the graphics with some more time :)

Snowride, take it easy.

Hey..thanks for this. :) It's pretty much what I think as well. But I'm still in the state of having played it way too much recently while making it, so it's really hard to tell if it's at all fun, or even playable, or what..


Yeah there's a powerup which gives you invincibility, super speed and super high jumping. At the moment the powerup will appear when you keep the multiplier at x10 for 10 shots in a row.

Having flying sections would be cool. I want to stick to 100% touchscreen controls for this though, so movement would have to be limited to the bottom screen.. unless it's something like..you move yourself all over the bottom screen with the stylus and fling yourself up onto the top screen every now and then..ooh.   I'm looking forward to using the engine for a more traditional platformer type thing, with dpad controls instead.


It's not coincidence. ;D Keep an eye on the topscreen birds as well (purely a cosmetic effect in their case). Trying to think of more things to sync with the music. Actually i'm semi-planning a whole game based on this sort of thing..

Thanks for your comments!

When I played it I just shot everything without caring a lot for the multiplier. But I like that the rate of fire isn't limited and the player rather has to limit it for himself if he wants to keep the multiplier :)
I just tried it again and tried to get such a powerup, but I think it's too hard to keep the multiplier if you don't totally neglect shooting elves and birds. Maybe you shouldn't totally lose the multiplier if you miss, but rather decrease it or so. On the other hand maybe it just shouldn't be easier, so that such a powerup really is special, and it likely gets easier the more you play it :)

By the way, accurately shooting stuff on the topscreen is pretty hard when the sleigh is on a "hill", as the space on the touchscreen for shooting things above it gets very small.

I hope you don't intend to totally ditch touch controls. I mostly find it disappointing when a game is being developed exclusively for the DS, homebrew or not, and then actually doesn't even make use of its unique abilities. I'm okay if only really one screen is used, but at least I like using the touch controls for possibly everything that makes any sense :) Even very simple or just too "traditional" games I would find uninteresting otherwise are more fun if only they use proper touch controls, at least for me.

There's actually a similar DS homebrew game, which I think calculates the score you get for shooting an enemy based on how accurately you shot it in accordance to the background music's rhythm - or something else, I couldn't really figure it out, hehe. I can't recall the name now and it's rather a minigame, but maybe it serves as some inspiration :)

Hmm, cool, I wasn't sure if it was too easy or too hard..  I'll probably leave it about as hard as it is now. ;D A quick way to get the multiplier up is to shoot off a snowman's head and then rapid fire at it a few times as it rolls away.


Well I'm definitely keeping 100% touchscreen controls for this particular game.. But I would quite like to have a go at making a proper platformer (ie, not on rails).. I was thinking about touchscreen based control setups for that, but in the end I think dpad would work and feel better for player movement....although....

It could be interesting trying to come up with touchscreen only platformer controls which are actually fun. I like how DS games like Kirby Canvas Curse and the forthcoming The Chase do it, with their path-drawing mechanics.. I'd like to try to make *direct* character control with the touchscreen though.

I was thinking something like a sort of gesture-based virtual joystick (been done before, i'm sure) for movement.. so you touch (anywhere) and drag slightly to the left or right..player keeps moving in that direction until you let go. Then for jumping, you could flick the stylus upwards a bit. etc.  I'll have to try and make something like that to test and see if it's fun...

I like touch-only or button-only control schemes on the DS the most.. using a mixture of both isn't as comfortable as just one or the other to me..

Ok, this is "finished". ;)

The compo ends later today. I'm a lot happier with the current version of the game, though I didn't add all that much... A new kind of enemy.. tweaked some enemy behaviours a bit.. tweaked the levels a bit.. added some more music and prettified the title/menu screen.

I think it's a bit more difficult now, mainly because it throws more enemies at you.

Edited first post with the new link..or grab it from http://nyarla.gazaxian.com ;D