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[Kevin]

Almost exactly what the AWESOME game REX did on the Speccy. Spookily, it's a similar looking game, too:

Wow, that's awesome! I'll have to check it out.

Yes, but we all know everything was done first on the Spectrum.. 

haha And the branching paths were inspired by Section Z, so if the Speccy hasn't covered it, then the NES probably has.

[Kramlack]

Whaaaaaat. Get the fuck out, you're finally making a game?

[DrDerekDoctors]

Almost exactly what the AWESOME game REX did on the Speccy. Spookily, it's a similar looking game, too:

Wow, that's awesome! I'll have to check it out.

Yes, but we all know everything was done first on the Spectrum.. 

haha And the branching paths were inspired by Section Z, so if the Speccy hasn't covered it, then the NES probably has.

REX branches like your game, although generally it means missing weapons, rather than getting different ones. Although the restart points work identically to yours.

[Kevin]

Almost exactly what the AWESOME game REX did on the Speccy. Spookily, it's a similar looking game, too:

Wow, that's awesome! I'll have to check it out.

Yes, but we all know everything was done first on the Spectrum.. 

haha And the branching paths were inspired by Section Z, so if the Speccy hasn't covered it, then the NES probably has.

REX branches like your game, although generally it means missing weapons, rather than getting different ones. Although the restart points work identically to yours.

I'm watching some videos of REX right now and, yeah, it's pretty much what I'm going for. Should offer some good inspiration. Thanks for the tip!

[happymonster]

REX does look ahead of it's time for the Speccy.

[DrDerekDoctors]

The people who made it (The Light) only ever made that one game. It's a little-known classic of the Speccy.

And I can't wait to see how Exciting Sci-Fi Game (which I hope keeps that name... ) pans out. The retro vibe is really lovely. I hope that the lower graphical threshold to adding new features means you can add lotsa' them.

[Kevin]

I've added some instant-kill spike-type and moving hazards, and re-tooled some enemy behaviours. I'm still not pleased with how the bouncing frog guys work. Since they pause for a second upon landing (and don't chase the player), they're currently really easy to kill. I've also started working on map design. Right now, I need to tweak the checkpoint system as sometimes the player falls through the floor into infinity upon respawning.

Kramlack: haha I'm a shocked as anyone.

DrDerekDoctors: That's the other advantage to the low-fi stuff, yeah. Also, since everything's so small, I'm hoping to be able to give any bosses/set pieces a real sense of bigness by comparison.

[baconman]

Looking forward to this, too. And there's nothing wrong with encouraging exploration or level mastery by cutting backtracking methods and allowing only one-shot attempts at some nonvital upgrades. Gives the player some incentive to start over and try different possibilities.

[saint11]

I don't have anything useful to say, I honestly just wanna see more images. And play it. This is awesome.
(I love the palette btw)

[happymonster]

I'd be tempted to pick a palette totally different from the primary colours of the Spectrum, just to see how different the game would look (while keeping the 8 x 8 - 2 colour approach). 

[Jasper Byrne]

This has got the mood of the era down exactly.  So very much looking forward to it.

[Kevin]

Thanks for all the encouragement, everyone!

I've uploaded a new gameplay video showing pretty well all of the stuff I've implemented recently. Map designs here are far from final, but give a better sense of what I'm going for than the previous videos did.


happymonster: I think I might do this with the next game I work on to see what kind of results I can get with a really weird, garish palette. Lately, I;ve been working with predefined retro palettes (NES, C64, Speccy, etc.) and it's been a hard habit to break.

[DrDerekDoctors]

That's looking awesome! Although I suspect the trickiness of the platforming might mean I don't get too far into it (that arrangement of purple spinners the player gets kill by looks fierces!). Can't wait to see more of it.

[SolarLune]

That's looking awesome! Although I suspect the trickiness of the platforming might mean I don't get too far into it (that arrangement of purple spinners the player gets kill by looks fierces!). Can't wait to see more of it.

Same. It's looking good, but also looks REALLY difficult, almost to the point of being cheap (the missile guy at the bottom of the pit that pegged you in the video, for example). If that's what you're going for, then that's fine. Anyway, like the look of the game!

[Kevin]

That's looking awesome! Although I suspect the trickiness of the platforming might mean I don't get too far into it (that arrangement of purple spinners the player gets kill by looks fierces!). Can't wait to see more of it.

Same. It's looking good, but also looks REALLY difficult, almost to the point of being cheap (the missile guy at the bottom of the pit that pegged you in the video, for example). If that's what you're going for, then that's fine. Anyway, like the look of the game!

Nah, that was left in by accident. I want to remove as much cheap stuff like that as possible, but I got excited about posting a new video and some of the maps are a bit crap as a result . I've slowed the spinners in that same map down as well, and checkpoints now work on a per-room basis, so every time you die you re-spawn in the room you died in. Hopefully, that'll allow me to make things a bit more difficult without upping the frustration too much.