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[alessandroLino]

Name is pretty stupid, i know. (now both of them are)

Some of you might remember this thing from the mockups thread, this is the first game i'm happy to say it's finished enough to be played by other people. The plan was to be a short game, since im using Construct2 free edition and it's limited to 100 events.
It was quite fun to fight the event count tho.

Anyway, here's some screens




As you can see, it's a platformer, it has aliens and miners, and your goal is to rescue miners from the aliens. There's also some secrets to be found. And that's pretty much it.

And here's the game
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/78939062/C2Platformer/index.html

I probably won't touch it anymore, since i don't think i can fix bugs or add more stuff having no events left. I might be able to expand the map a bit the way i coded everything, but it will only be a huge level, with no new challenges/enemies, and that would be pretty boring. But i still want to know what you guys think so i can take the feedback to future games

Also, point out any english mistakes if i had made any ingame, me br.

---

Miner Defense! I'm adding it on this thread because recycling stuff is cool.

This one probably happens after the first one, aliens are mad because you killed all of them (probably) and sent reinforcements. You play as the archer that was on the tower, the tower got partially destroyed and a mad UFO is shooting your mining village, or something.

Basically, it's kind of a boss fight that would follow up the game, and i'm not any happy with it. I kind of got mad at the limits and stopped working on it. Anyway, i think it's still a bit presentable, so here it is.
It wasn't fun to fight the event limit the second time



and as usual, game:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/78939062/C2MDefense/index.html

[JDM]

Okay, this is really cool.  Aesthetically, you've nailed this.  It feels and looks really cool.  Your use of black and gray with limited color is striking.  The color is meaningful, creating contrasts and uniting elements.  Really neat.  Jumping and moving around feels good, too.

My biggest complaint is the shield.  I think your fighting might be better than it feels, but it's hard to tell, because you're asking me to use Z, X, and S and I'm not used to using different fingers for X and S.  I tried to use three fingers, but it felt really awkward, and I was disoriented.  I'd prefer it if you replaced S with C or allowed C as an alternative.

As it is, the fighting is difficult (until you get the sword you receive for completing the game), and I either ran through or jumped through most of the alien encounters, since the only effective strategy I found was to wail on them repeatedly and hope their life bar fell before mine did.  The fighting might could use a little more tweaking beyond the controls, but I think the controls would go a long way to making it feel  better.

Bugs:  When using the elevator, you can tell it to switch directions while on it, so if you press X too early or too late.  When you swing the sword and you're on a moving platform, your character's animation lags.  when I was over the lava, this actually killed me as after my animation I appeared off the platform and died.

Level design is really cool and smart.  I like it.

I was hoping there might be a second postgame quest that opened up, allowing me to do some sort of something with the overworld.  However, with working with those limitations, that is, I suppose, not possible in this same game.  I would actually really like to see a sequel of sorts where you have to defend the tower somehow (against aliens flying in?), perhaps as an archer.  You could reuse a lot of assets and make it like episode 2 of a shareware game!

Your English seemed fine (I didn't notice anything too odd, but I also wasn't spending a lot of time looking at the dialog--sorry), though it was kind of jarring seeing "fuck" censored as "f**k." 

Really cool.  Looking forward to what you do in the future.

[alessandroLino]

Thanks for the feedback!

I think i'll replace S with C, since it was the most asked thing until now. I was using S while making the game, so maybe i just got used to it XD

The fighting mechanics didn't turn out the way i wanted, maybe it's not worth it for it being so difficult, not rewarding enough i mean. I'll also look into those bugs you mentioned, should be easy to fix i hope.

I actually ought to remove the fork word before releasing but it seems i have forgot to do it. *removing* It's really not needed to have it

And i actually loved your idea of defending the tower It may happen in the next weeks  

-Edit- bugs got poorly fixed, you can play sword swipes while on the elevator and break the animation while on the moving platform, but i guess its better than descending infinitely or falling into lava, blocking was moved to C, and aliens are a bit weaker now. version is 1.07a so press f5 until it changes!

I have some plans to add some achievements and throw the game into one of those gaming sites, i'm not sure if i'll be able to do it, but it will probably be related with doing speedruns. I'll post news here if i have some!

[JDM]

By the way, I got really excited when I saw that I had a sword and shield.  Sword and shield combat is one of my favorite things in games, especially old platformers like Zelda II.  If you make the change from S to C, be sure to update the thread so I'll see it.  Really wanna try it out with reworked controls.

Further thoughts on the shield combat: it might be more "worth it" if you didn't take damage through your shield.  Or an even more minimal amount of damage than it is (though it was hard in the heat of battle to tell exactly how much damage I was taking).  Also, having the enemies always drop some health recovery (maybe a smaller one than the big pickups) might be useful, as I might choose to take on an enemy I can avoid in order to get more health.

One other thought: As I was making my way back from the lava section, it occurred to me that it might be faster to kill myself and respawn than climb back up and over to the next section.  Not sure how you could incentivize keeping yourself alive, but just thought I'd apss that along.

That'd be way cool if you made the tower game.  I saw the little windows for the arrows and really thought it'd be cool if that was going to be part of the game at some point.  I might make such a game myself, I'm enjoying the idea so much!  But more than that, I want to see your take on it, as I'm sure we'd have different ways of implementing it.

[alessandroLino]

Good point about suiciding on the deeper caves, tho im not sure what to do about it, will think about something later.

Controls are updated and the aliens attack a little bit slower so you have more time to block, they also hit nothing if you block normal hits, and deal a bit of damage if you block the uppercut, but theres another way to avoid it so you take no damage at all

[JDM]

Fantastic.  I actually enjoy the fighting in this now, like I suspected I would.  Good job (and my, you work fast!).  Hope others check it out. 

It would be fun to see you play with and expand these basic fighting ideas in future games.  Looking forward to where you go from here!

[louroboros]

This is great! Reminds me a little of La-Mulana. The combat is especially fun. I think if you just added some more enemy types you'd have a really fully-featured game.

What did you make this in? I love HTML5 games.

[alessandroLino]

Using Construct2 free edition which is kinda limited and didn't allow for more enemies or spiders that are able to die.

I'm really considering buying it anytime and going for HTML5 games. I'm not too fond of playing on browsers, but the paid edition has some wizardry to export to exes, so that won't be much of an issue.

[VictorGrunn]

I gave this a shot. Really impressed! I don't quite get how to save the miners - I probably missed some instructions. Also, I think having some kind of background behind text popups would help a bit.

I'll have to give Construct2d a look.

[louroboros]

Using Construct2 free edition which is kinda limited and didn't allow for more enemies or spiders that are able to die.

I'm really considering buying it anytime and going for HTML5 games. I'm not too fond of playing on browsers, but the paid edition has some wizardry to export to exes, so that won't be much of an issue.

Ah. Well, if you like the free version and want to make more games, it's probably a good investment. Even if it doesn't immediately pay for itself with cash, you'll have the ability to create more/better games (that target more platforms), which may lead to more exposure. And who doesn't want more people to play their games? 

[diegzumillo]

It's a really cool game!

I think you're missing an opportunity to make a fun combat system though. Right now the shield is almost useless, you never know when the enemy is going to attack and even then you take some damage, thus it becomes a button masher combat. Make the attacks in a way that the player can see it coming a moment before the strike, that way you give him a chance to defend. Make the enemy defend himself occasionally too. There, now it's more of a reflex system, almost like ping pong (maybe prince of persia would be a better analogy)

[alessandroLino]

Infact, i had tought about going for a prince of persia like combat system, but a bit faster and more free(as in movement), but i kind of failed to execute it. I guess the limitations i had hurt the idea, but it's still on my mind. Let's consider this as a prototype. It actually has a small effect before the alien does the uppercut combo, but since it hurts you anyway, it's kinda useless. I guess i can solve some issues tweaking the system i have now, but i think it would be more wise to move on, and make a better overall combat system and apply it in a proper game.

I also guess too much freedom actually hurts the combat system, as in, if im able to jump over them and take no hits, why would i fight them? Maybe button mashing is more appropriate to this short game, since theres not much i can reward the player with

I was watching a Prince of Persia longplay right before i saw your post, and i've been thinking about it, it would be really awesome if each fight felt a bit unique, and the player felt he was moving foward into the game, and not just killing stuff on his way. Wondering how a "Prince of Metroidavania" would work

Fun fact, it all started with close to no combat at all (the lost vikings ripoff).


Anyway, thanks for the feedback so far everyone, really appreciating it!

[diegzumillo]

Button mashers can be fun too Then I'd make the enemy stagger with each hit (think about all beat'em ups in existence!) and make them die after a full combo (it's 3 slashes if I recall correctly)

I don'y know if that would require any tweaks on the enemies attacks... hmmm. Only testing could say

[alessandroLino]

Updated the game a bit so things make more sense now!

Stuff changed:
 - music, still by Ultrasyd
 - aliens will block some attacks
 - aliens will display a small flash before attacking
 - last hit of the combo deals more damage
 - spiders are gone
 - theres now a weird alien plant thing dripping acid (classic obstacle is classic)
 - potions turned into fruits
 - some more stuff i can't remember
 - but if i do remember i'll edit this post

I think it got more solid overall after switching the unkillable spiders to an obstacle thats pretty obvious that you can't kill

Anyway, this is the last update the game is getting, otherwise i'll go on forever changing little things, which ultimately lead into nothing since i'm still stuck with 100 events.

And another link just incase
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/78939062/C2Platformer/index.html

[alessandroLino]

Bumping this thread because i added another game to it. Please dont get mad at me and check the first post

screenshot:


and link to game if you don't want to go all the way to the thread start
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/78939062/C2MDefense/index.html