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[circuiton]

Screenshot Saturday update:

New tutorial level:


Updated some tiles and colours in Ruins:


Updated tiles in Desert, and sort of explanation of how the Desert's gimmick works.

When one player moves, his whole layer scrolls with him, but does not affect the other player.

This means that blocks that interact with both layers can be seen twice:


Update to the demo version will go up soon too, with updated tiles, slightly updated layout, and with slightly closer to true fullscreen mode (will detect if your screen is big enough for 3x or 4x zoom and adjust accordingly).

[circuiton]

Which of these two looks better?



Or, what about this? Entertaining the idea of having the background layer tiles with blacked out center to make it completely and totally unmistakable.



Any opinions? I've been staring at this game for so long I can't tell what's confusing and what isn't anymore. It's second-nature to me.

[rickardwestman]

Hey man. I really like the gameplay idea behind the desert world. Kind of reminds me of the mindset of Braid where each world has a specific rule/law of nature. If you haven't listened to the Jonathan Blow talk on Braid I would strongly recommend it.

Otherwise. I am sorry for butchering your graphics, but it felt easier to show it than explain it. Maybe you have tried it something similar to what I have done. I basically just chose two different colors for the levels and then had the more saturated colours in the foreground. Maybe this test could give you a fresh view or some good ideas.
 

[circuiton]

Hey man. I really like the gameplay idea behind the desert world. Kind of reminds me of the mindset of Braid where each world has a specific rule/law of nature. If you haven't listened to the Jonathan Blow talk on Braid I would strongly recommend it.

Otherwise. I am sorry for butchering your graphics, but it felt easier to show it than explain it. Maybe you have tried it something similar to what I have done. I basically just chose two different colors for the levels and then had the more saturated colours in the foreground. Maybe this test could give you a fresh view or some good ideas.
 

I guess it is a bit like Braid in that each world has its own mechanic, but I don't know if it's quite as extreme as some of Braid's.

Your edit with the much more strongly contrasting colours looks pretty cool actually. Maybe it's time to experiment with each level not being quite so monochromatic.

Thanks!

[editmode]

The switching mechanic is cool, but when I'm playing as Gewalt I still find myself aiming for the foreground Grimmer platforms when jumping. That's a sticky point with this mechanic, as players have to retrain their brains to aim for the background elements when playing as Gewalt. Then when I switch back to Grimmer, my first jump is to the background layer sometimes. There's a bit of spatial reasoning gymnastics going on which creates friction, at least for me.

Here's an idea to mitigate that:

What about when you switch to Gewalt, the foreground elements (the Grimmer layer) change tiles to the background set, and the background tileset switches to the foreground tile set, so the player is always aiming for the foreground elements when platforming. This could also prove confusing, but maybe worth a shot.

[Belimoth]

Good idea but it eliminates the option of 2-player mode.

[editmode]

Good idea but it eliminates the option of 2-player mode.

Fair enough, I didn't see that there was a two player option.

Another thing, and this is very minor right now - Grimmer's idle pose doesn't fit the sword swinging anim, he's leaning back too much in the former, his upper body should be leaning forward more. Shifting his upper body, or even just his head a few pixels over would help with this.

Looking forward to seeing how this continues to develop, good work.

[circuiton]

We decided to use a sort of blacked-out background layer to both make it much more obvious and feel like Gewalt is on the back-side of the ruins.



What do you guys think?

[Belimoth]

What do the ladders look like? Blocks? Looks good, but I think the background layer in that example could use a little more green or something to separate it hue-wise.

[agumaster]

I LOVE THIS GAME! the retro graphics are really nice, and the gameplay is great

[absolute8]

Looks amazing! Keep up the good work! I was surprised to see you switch from the gameboy palette but the color is looking amazing.

[Connor]

whats with the girrafes?