To keep better track of progress on the game, I'll start posting smaller day-to-day updates on my Twitter. Any achieved milestones and bigger updates can be found on this thread.

Or are you simply able to beat any enemy if you have full health?

You can beat any enemy as long as you have more HP than their strength.

What I meant was, is there a possibility to encounter an enemy with more strength than player's full HP? Which would obviously always result in death.

The new view with parallax scrolling looks way better.

Nice work! I'm a fan of simplicity and the mechanics interest me from a design point of view.

Would there be bounce back if you hit an enemy that was stronger than you? I'm curious to know how tougher enemies that require more than one hit to kill will be handled.

Me too. Or are you simply able to beat any enemy if you have full health?

Any progress?

Hi there and thanks for asking. Yes, this game is still being made! I've gone back and forth with different ideas, how to execute them, including them into the game and playtesting. The reason I've not posted any updates is that an idea I have may or may not work in the game, so I've become hesitant to publish them here in the first place. But now that someone asked I may as well post on the recent development.

One of the major changes is how the areas work, or how the game flows from an area to the next. Earlier there was this key that would open an exit, and once the exit was reached the game would load a new area with fadeout/fadein transition. While areas are still randomized on each game, the transition between areas has changed completely.

First of all, there can be directional exits on each side of an area. These exits are activated and pointed out by a flashing arrow after last enemy on an area is killed. Upon reaching an exit of this type, a new area will be loaded and the map will scroll like in the old Zelda games. There are two ways the next area is selected: if the exit tile has a map filename as a property, we use that. Otherwise the next area will be randomly selected. By setting the filename on the map during map design, we can have larger pre-determined areas joined together that fit into the natural flow of randomly selected maps.

Next, there is an exit that takes you to a new area but with a fade transition instead of scrolling. For example, an overworld map with a dungeon entrance could have an exit of this type.

Finally there is an exit which can lead to a sub-area such as a bonus stage with lots of coins for example. These sub-areas are single rooms that return back to the main area.

Maps can also be set as 'consumable'. These could be special areas that should not appear more than once in a single game.

...

In other news I have a title for the game: 'Power Heroes'. What do you think? I think it describes the game quite nicely. 'Power coins' are essential part of the game, and 'heroes', well there are a couple of them...

@i-kari are you still working on your iOS RPG? I hope so.

Yes sir I am.

The shadow for your character sprites is also breaking the 3-colors-per-sprite rule by the way (not saying this is wrong, just an observation).

This game is for PC, right?

Looking lovely as always and I really like the simplicity of it all. I will be following this for inspiration. I recognize some of the assets from your previous projects.

Good luck!

I'm working on a new layout of the book in one resolution and it's looking better already.

Why is the thief black, you racist or something!?

Absolutely not. I like black thiefs.

On a more serious note his face is shadowed by his hood.

That's really good! The voice at 0:11 mark in the demo reel is actually pretty close to what I'm looking for. I might get back to you for my small project when the time is right.

Just wanted to say I'm a fan of your work on SoundCloud and have listened to the songs on loop at work.

Are you able to do sound effects in that chip/8-bit style? How about voices? I might be in need of a couple of anime voices in style of some wacky japanese video games. In addition to game music of course...

I think you really, really should think hard about if you absolutely need to abandon double pixels for the descriptions. Is there no other way you can represent the information with? Play with the layout and I'm sure you will find a way to keep everything double sized, for consistency's sake.

I totally understand what you are saying, and believe it or not the perfectionist in me doesn't like mixing resolutions either. I thought that it didn't look too bad here, but I'll see if I can improve it further.

In other news I think I've figured out how to add a bit more depth to the combat mechanism. More on that later...

Thanks for the kind words you guys!

Ok, here's a quick mockup of the new menu layout. Item categories are now split into tabs and the right page that was previously for item details is now available for more items. Actual upgrade/purchase will be confirmed on a separate popup screen once an item is selected.

As an added bonus I can now easily have multiple pages if needed.

Hmm, now I see a potential problem with that upgrade menu: you can't get a quick overview of upgrade levels nor upgrade prices of all the items, because in order to see this data you have to select an item first. I can't think of a way to display levels and costs in the current layout as there simply is not enough space. Blah. I hate UI design. Of course I could redesign the menu completely and put the items on a scrollable list, but that's not as good looking in my opinion.

It's been a while since last update, but the game is still coming along nicely considering I'm working on this part-time.

Here's a screen shot of the upgrade menu of the game (still WIP). You have your power-ups, items and character specific upgrades on the left, and then you will have a description of a selected item on the right. The exclamation mark on an item indicates that there is an upgrade available that you can afford. As you can see, I haven't decided on all power-ups and items yet.

Here's what I have planned now:

Power-ups:

Power Coin - Increase multiplier
Mushroom - Invincibility for a short period of time
Feather - Warp ahead X areas

Items:

Heart - Start the game with an additional heart
The character with the white outline - To be honest I don't remember what this was. Probably a resurrect?

All these are still likely to change.

Levels now support floor spikes that hurt the player:



Levels also support cannons that shoot fireballs:





My concern is that the game might be too easy. The only factor affecting difficulty is the number of enemies on screen. One way to vary this is with different type of enemies. Like the fireball there, killing it will cost 1 power coin, but the fireball won't drop any items once killed. Another enemy that I have is a ghost that, once hit, will respawn randomly on the level, and permanently die after 3 hits.

Also the upgrades need some thought. As all combat is resolved in one hit there is no need for more powerful weapons, so that limits the upgrade paths.

Oh, and another game that has been my inspiration recently: Power Stone.

This is great!

Another month has passed and I thought I'll make a post on the progress.

The special skill for knight works now. For now it's just a smart bomb that kills all enemies on the screen and is overly powerful. This skill depends on the selected character class and is upgradeable in the store.

I tested a different kind of enemy: a blatant ripoff of the turtle from Super Mario. Hitting it once costs 1 power coin and turns the turtle into a shell. Hitting the shell sends it off killing everything on its path. Destroying the moving shell costs another power coin. Not sure if I like it.

New enemy idea: ghost. It takes 3 hits to kill, after each hit it teleports to a random location.

Another new enemy idea: fireball. It could be an environmental hazard of sorts, but you could alter its move direction by hitting it (direct it at your enemies).

Implemented a score multiplier which increases after each subsequent kill. The multiplier resets after set time if no kills are made.

There is a 3-star rating after each area.

I'm currently putting the menu system in so that power-up/character upgrades can be done.

Visual effects: clouds passing by during "summer" and snowfall during "winter" areas.

I set up the sprites differently and achieved a performance boost.

Added more map tiles, especially to the dungeon tile set.

I have this idea of an endless runner / rpg hybrid (an 'endless quest'?) and I think I like it.

Still holding on to this idea. I've studied a couple of endless runners and picked up a few things from them.