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[Nikas]

Hello my friends!
I Would like to show You my newest game called "Top Hat". It's 2D classic platformer, just like old NES games. It will be hard, fun,with lots of collectibles and enemies to avoid, or kill.
One day, to our hero house came strange guy. He said, that he can buy from us speciall golden top hat, which is really, really rare. Unfortunately, stranger poisoning us, and we wake up in dungeons, with a... GUN! We want payback, and of course our golden TOP HAT!
 
Download Link: http://gmclan.org/up1486_4_Top_Hat_Beta.html Game is hosted on gmclan.org - the biggest Polish site about game maker!

Game is created by N94 Games, which include only me. Music is made by Jakim ( http://jakim.org.pl/pl/index.html ) special for TOP HAT game!

Screens:






Movie:





You can also watch more about game here:
http://www.indiedb.com/games/top-hat

I hope You will like it.

[Quicksand-S]

I would've really liked the ability to go fullscreen (scaled). Even if you just kept the window the same size and had black around it, that'd be better than normal windowed mode. I don't like seeing other windows and icons in the background when I play a game.

Some sort of custom loading bar would be nice, even in the beta stage. It makes it look like you're taking this seriously. Another thing that's good for testing is giving players settings to mess with. I made a game before that had this weird bug that made some weapons not fire if the sound was off. I only noticed it because I gave testers control over sound.

I found the text speed incredibly slow. Ideally, it would show up fast enough that I wouldn't feel the need to rush it by pressing Enter.

Once the game started, text was a little difficult to read. The darkness at the edges of the screens "hides" the edges of the text a bit too. I'd recommend making the text white, or the dialogue box brighter for more contrast.

I didn't really like the character telling me the controls that way, but that's a "style" thing I guess.

Pillars look like they're solid even though they aren't. Stalactites fall even when there's a ceiling between my character and them. Enemies should probably react to me shooting them (ex. turn around to face me or something). Shooting while on a ladder looks strange without the gun.

I found that it was very easy to hit my head on the ceiling near the second pit of acid. That was a bit annoying. It felt like I had to step off the cliff before jumping in order to have any chance of making it across. This might be intentional, though. I don't know.

Typo: "So I wil take it on my own" should be "will"

I really like the look of the game. It feels a little bit like certain old DOS games. Character designs are pretty good. The little details in the maps are great. Music has a great sound to it. Not sure about the weapon sound effect, but everything else is decent.

The story is all right, but as they were talking, I was just thinking "His hat isn't gold. Why are they saying it's gold?". Only when I looked at the screenshots more did I see it on the shelf. It should probably stand out more (maybe in a fancy case or something that has a higher-contrast background).

...Uh...the game just crashed when I died. I was hit by an explosion in level 1 (even though I wasn't that close to it - does distance affect damage amount?), and the game just closed. No error message.


Edit: When I went to play a second time, there was no music at all in the title screen or the game.

[Nikas]

The game closed because you did'nt have a life. I uploaded new version which repair parallax, closing game after u have no life and one more thing. W will make an loading bar soon. Thanks for advices

[Nikas]

Here's some new and faster gameplay of Top Hat. As you can see there are many changes.

[Nikas]

Hello everyone!
I would like to introduce You Top Hat half-demo 1! Why half demo? Because it's pre released demo, and game will be in that stage of produce almost to the end. There are many, many changes from lates version which was uploaded more than 2 months ago. If You didn't saw the newest gameplay yet, you can watch this on top.

What's new?

    new A.I. of enemies
    new graphic effects
    2 new levels from third stage
    many bugs was fixed
    new quests and many secrets
    new enemies
    new sound effects, which are made by Jakim

Maybe i forgot something, because there was so many changes in the game.

There is also my new site, where You can find more informations about the game:
http://n94games.tumblr.com

gmclan.org/up1486_4_Top_Hat_Half_Demo_1.html
Hope You will like it!

[Quicksand-S]

Writing as I play:

-The swirl on the titlescreen bugs me because it's not low-res like the rest of the graphics
-The low rate-of-fire makes fighting these enemies frustrating
-I shouldn't stick to ladders when I try to jump in front of them, only when I press up or down
-I should "release" from ladders when I climb to the bottom
-Why can enemies see me with their backs? They should probably only turn around when I do something like shoot them
-Ladders block enemy bullets
-At the end of level 2, there's a railing that clear shows a depth issue. Bullets go behind it, but the player is in front of it
-In level two, above the first spike-ball, I find that my character often won't jump from that block even if his feet are obviously still touching the ground (ie. there's no reason he shouldn't be able to push off of it).

Many of my old issues are still there, and the lack of a start-of-level save really makes the game less enjoyable for me. I don't mind the level design. The graphics and sounds are good. The music is kind of catchy. None of that matters, though, if the combat and lack of checkpoints make the game frustrating to play.

...This seems really negative. Sorry about that. I still think this game has a lot of potential and only requires relatively small adjustments to make it really good. Also, keep in mind that my statement about frustrating gameplay is only my opinion and may not be shared by many. Don't let it discourage you.

[Nikas]

Hello dear players!
Maybe you forgot about "Top Hat", maybe You just thought the game is dead... but no!
"Top Hat" is alive, and it's very well!
So, I didn't add nothing new for about month, because there was too much of everything. Too many screens, too many videos... now will be more secretly, i will add 1-2 screens per month or something.
So, what's new?
Of course, i finished 3rd stage and stared fourth!
There are many new enemies, graphics, musics and more!
I hope it looks good, and you are waiting for game more.
So, see you later, Nikas!

[Nikas]

How about this?

[Udderdude]

Looks pretty cool, I'll try the test/beta in a bit.

[Udderdude]

Right at the start of the game, the player is in a dark corner and it's hard to even tell he's there.

Pressing escape should bring up a menu, not insta-quit the game.

I put this image together to help explain some visual design decisions I think you should look at.

Basically, you need to put more effort into distinguishing foreground and background objects, and make some objects clearer in what they do.

[Nikas]

But there's no actual version of the game on the internet. Last update was 24 November 2012, and all bugs were repaired.

[Udderdude]

So you're saying you fixed everything already?

[Nikas]

yep :3

[louisdeb]

Hey, this looks like a fun game :D
I playtest live on twitch and if you wanna do a session on it (finding bugs and talking about improvements) together then let's do it because this is a game I wanna play but wanna help you out as much as possible

Original thread for the playtest stream

Thanks

[GameRoom]

It looks nice, but it needs a bit of polish. Firstly, the menu controls badly by having the selector move at the release instead of the press of a key. I then get into the opening cutscene. The way the type moves moves at the beginning is annoying and you're just mashing the enter button anyway. Why make the type move so slow? The dialogue is cheesy as well. And the last line: "HERO: Use the arrow keys to move around..." That seems a bit fourth-wall breakish. You should also make the people in the cutscenes bob their heads a bit to make things more lively, and do the same for the player when he's idle. And it would be better if the home-dungeon transition was better than fade-to-black without sound, shaking, or anything. Make it flashy when things interact.

Checkpoint placement is also bad. You start back way too far when you do die, and the gameplay isn't interesting enough for me to want to go through it again, at least on the easier levels. Your gun shoots slowly and doesn't feel like it packs a punch on boring enemies. And what is with level naming? It starts with 2-3 and goes to 3-3. What? Honestly, that transition breaks the immersion and I think it should just be removed. The slow fade-in transition is ugly as well.

However, the game has solid graphics. You just need, as Udderdude said, better differentiation between things you can interact with and things you can't.

I also at one point quit the game on the first level. I returned and loaded only to get an error reading byte error and found a blank savefile.

[Nikas]

Yeah, thanks for all advices, but I've told you that the last version of the game is really old and almost all bugs were repaired, but I will remember that advice with cutscene, thanks!

[Nikas]

Hello!
Here's the newest gameplay ( and latest before trailer ) from "Top Hat".
I hope you will like it. :3

HERE



HERE

[Jupitron]

Hi!

It would be great to have feedback when hitting an enemy, besides blood, maybe a glance, to be clearer that has been hit.

Control is great, love scanlines!

Music and sound fx are awesome!

Shot disappears very quickly, maybe a fade?

Text and story progression like going from a level to another is awesome!

I pressed escape key to pause but took me back to main menu, just wanted to pause.

I´ll keep playing, its a very good game!

[Nikas]

Hmmm... where did u download the game? Because on internet there are only very old versions, if you want to play current version, please send me an email to [email protected]

[Nikas]

Yay! Finally you will can play Top Hat on gamepad!