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[Destral]

SWORD SURFER

What is it? The ungodly spawn of an infinite runner(surfer?) and a shmup where you don't actually shoot anything.

What's the story? I haven't finalised anything yet, but it will likely involve an evil scientist called Meggan* R. LoMania, PHD who is intent on recreating the world in his image, and dudes** flying through the skies on giant swords intent on stopping him.

How does it play? You surf up and down on the screen, stabbing things with your giant sword, and trying to avoid the dude on the sword getting stabbed, shot, sliced, poked, or explodinated by the things you are trying to stab. Collect money and earn EXP to unlock new swords, surfers, and other stuff, and to level up your surfers. There will also be a number of alternate gameplay modes like Minefield, Hydra Onslaught, and Juggle.

What inspired you to make this? I realised that Spellflinger was way too ambitious for just me and my GM and spriting skills, so around Christmas last year I decided to start something else with a much less ambitious scope that I could finish by myself in a few months. The idea for the game came to me one day when I was remembering Tao Pai Pai from Dragonball flying through the air on a giant tree trunk.

Is it playable? The game is still very much in progress, (see devlog icon), but by the power of the intertubes, you can play the latest version in your broswer here.

But enough talk! Have screenshots at thee!



*If Tracy can be a dude's name, Meggan can totally be a dude's name too.
**'Dudes' in this context includes guys, girls, sentient magical animals, aliens, and robots, all taken from a bunch of other game ideas I have.

[Chris Pavia]

Glad to finally see this up here 

[Franklins Ghost]

Fun little game 

[Zaphos]

Neat   Maybe the dude should go faster when he's doing well.  Also it's a bit hard to see the text right now and to process what's going on with exp/coins/ingots/etc ... could perhaps help to make the text bigger and the score stuff more prominent during play.  (Actually it's kind of unclear what all the different score metrics do at this point; I guess it will be more clear later though).

[Destral]

@Zaphos: The game does get faster, but right now that variable is set way too low. I have yet to implement pretty much all the stuff you unlock with coins/exp/distance and the shop screen where you unlock it. I will also probably replace the scoring text with icons that are instantly recognizable, along the lines of the kill icons from TF2.

[Destral]

Added some placeholder backgrounds and 6 new characters

[tha_Chiller]

I seen this & was like "..i gotta fucking play this". Hope this is coming to Google Play.

[kinoko]

I really like the idea of the character surfing and balancing on his sword, really unique way of wielding a sword. And the feeling of the steering being like that of a rudder on a boat makes it tricky to master, in a good way! Great job.

[Destral]

Hey, thanks I've been working on it on and off in between sorting some stuff out, I'll hopefully have a meaningful update for the devlog this weekend.

[Jackson31]

pretty enjoyable game,
I'll like the deadly mines to be a different color/look to the killable/collectable enemies, it got really confusing having them look so similar

[trurkowski]

This game is actually pretty fun! I can't wait to see the finished version!

[Destral]

Thanks for the comment, we're still working on it, we should have a more meaningful update very soon

[Destral]

It's been quite a while, but now it's time for a major update!

Work on the browser version of the game went on an extended hiatus due to a rough few months around April, but in the last couple of months I recruited some excellent folks to work on an iOS version of the game. And since the IGF submission deadline is in just over 2 weeks, I've been working on the browser version some more - here's a WIP of the updated menu screen:



And you can listen to a sample of the iOS soundtrack here.

I plan on spending the next couple of weeks crunching to get the game into shape to submit to the IGF, and will be updating the thread a lot more regularly going forward, for both the web and iOS versions.

[Destral]

Spent most of yesterday and today working on implementing assorted UI stuff. Here's a character select screen:



Mouse controls are currently working to highlight all the buttons, and you can cycle between screens by clicking on the sidebar things.

[Destral]

More assorted menu screen work, both the character select and weapon select screens are functional and have neat little highlight behaviour when you mouse over them.

Character Select screen:



Weapon Select screen:



Also implemented cycling through characters and weapons from the menu screen, in case the player doesn't feel like going into the menus to do it.

Next up will be gameplay work. I'll be implementing a series of levels for a Story Mode, as well as expanding the current infinite mode. Which, of course, will require more menus.