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[TRONMAXIMUM]

hey y'all, my name's tj, and i'm the creator of The Joylancer: Legendary Motor Knight, an upcoming high-speed action game with a low-color Game Boy Color-inspired base aesthetic, but takes it a step further with really detailed animation and over-the-top action!

we've been hard at work on this game for a couple months, and after some long, hard work, we've finally deemed this game ready to be presented to the world proper-- in fact, it's coming very soon on Steam!

you can play a demo of the game on our itch.io page-- it's not up to date just yet, but will be once we get the Early Access version ready!

WHAT'S IT ABOUT?

in short, it's all about using your Joylance, the extreme lance-motor-drill hybrid, to blast through everything that stands in your way of your goal. the lance part does the damage, the motor part does the movement, and the drill part does the destruction. it does everything you need!

*GIFs are indicative of WIP content. the green hue isn't final (and is also customizable in-game!!!)

as part of its Game Boy-style visual aesthetic, it also takes a similar "simple" approach by using only 2 core buttons, making it feel right at home with handheld titles-- but these two buttons also host a variety of special techniques that are performed with directional inputs, sequenced button presses, and proper timing, greatly expanding the ways to approach levels and enemies!

charge up the Joylance to the MAXIMUM LEVEL by holding down and mashing the Attack button, and then use that same button to blast off across the screen! because who needs to run places when a giant motorized lance will do the job for you?
you can also perform a huge variety of cancels, which you can use to speed through levels in record time! fire off a level 4 lance attack, cancel it into charging your motor, cancel that into a high-speed slide, and then cancel into that by blasting off into the air! THERE IS TRUE JOY IN CANCELING!

*a sample of some of the huge boss fights we have planned-- all in-game footage!



*original artwork by Greg Goodson

---

for the curious: a Joylancer timeline
i'm currently preparing a new update (with more animations, of course) to show off some more stuff that we're working on with this game, but for the time being, here are some of the videos we've posted! keep in mind that these videos are from an old version of the game and the GIFs are a more accurate representation of the full game:

Joylancer in its baby steps! (December 2013):




version 1.x of Joylancer, demonstrated at IndieCade East 2014 (February):




the first launch of "The Hero's Gauntlet" (April):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABV2mAyEcUw

an older trailer showcasing the Gauntlet Mode, multiplayer, & Gracelancer (May):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16cqcP9zHYM

the most up-to-date trailer (August):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynJ0WI7wyNw

===


Joylancer review on Destructoid on February:
http://www.destructoid.com/joylancer-is-more-than-just-a-game-boy-aesthetic-270360.phtml

When you look at Joylancer, what do you see? A monochromatic Game Boy visual style, no doubt. But when you start to peel back the layers and actually play the game for yourself, it becomes so much more than that. Even though it only has two buttons to its name, it somehow manages to capture the spirit of some of the best 2D action games on the market.

Joylancer - "Watch Us Play" on Kotaku:
http://kotaku.com/as-close-to-a-new-game-boy-game-as-were-going-to-get-1520138789

I miss the days of dash attacks, the platformers of yesteryear. I miss Rocket Knight Adventure, and Mischief Makers. Lucky for me, The Joylancer: Legendary Motor Knight scratches that itch.

Joylancer - February Demo, Stage 1 on Haptic Feedback
http://hapticfeedbackgames.blogspot.com/2014/02/on-joylancer-lv-1.html

There’s a lot going on in level 1 of JOYLANCER. When I first booted the game up and started looking at all the tightly packed details it was like a Snickers bar of game design: a satisfying initial taste that you’ll soon realize is full of depth.

IndieStatik Preview on March:
http://indiestatik.com/2014/03/03/the-joylancer-legendary-motor-knight/

The Joylancer is one of those action games where the player is given full control over the range of platforming and combat moves available to them. Every movement, no matter how subtle, must be planned and pulled off with relative speed and skill. Nothing is automated, so the player is able to revel in every stunt, every combo, every accomplishment.

----


i tweet about the game and our various other projects at @_a6productions, and my "main" twitter is at @TRONMAXIMUM, where i occasionally talk details about stuff i'm working on (although mostly garbage).

our main site is at http://motorknightcoaliton.org, which we're going to start updating alongside this dev log now that we're reaching a point of strong progress!

----


and finally-- we're running a FundRazr in order to get house bills paid over here, so we can continue to make Joylancer, and other games, uninterrupted by bills and landlords! please consider pitching something our way if you like what you see and wanna see more!

*a preview of "DX Mode"-- which renders everything with its own color!



*original artwork by Greg Goodson


get hype, folks! it's gonna be a wild ride for the next month!

[TRONMAXIMUM]

~~~ BACKSTORY ~~~

[STILL FINISHING THE FORUM VERSION]

~~~ CONTROLS ~~~

Joylancer uses 2 core buttons: Jump and Attack. as mentioned above, putting in certain commands, holding directions, and other types of inputs, will change the type of technique that you perform.

by holding DOWN and pressing the Jump button, you can perform a high-speed slide on the ground! this move can be used to slide under obstacles, avoid certain attacks, and trip standing enemies!

by holding DOWN and repeatedly tapping the Attack button, you'll hold your lance face-first and start charging energy into it; this technique also defends you from enemy attack as long as you're facing the right way!

...and depending on the amount of power you have filled up in your meter when you attack, you can perform one of four majorly powerful lance attacks! these launch you forward at high speed, letting you fly into and smash your enemies into oblivion!

while charging, you have access to a powerful launching technique called the Burst-Jump! at any time during the charging animation, you can tap the Jump button to launch into the sky, drilling into anything above you!

while in the air, hold DOWN and press the Attack button to perform the Lance-Drop, smashing into everything under you!



using these techniques, you can easily handle any threat that can come your way, if you can master them!


THE COUNTERING SYSTEM
Joylancer has an extremely robust defensive system tucked inside its mechanics! as mentioned above, you can block most attacks by charging your lance in their general direction. doing this will briefly stun enemies, which will allow you to counter-attack in a variety of ways! there's a different type of counter for every enemy, and all of them have some kind of usefulness in-game!
check out this Vine to see some of the awesome counters you can do:
https://vine.co/v/ObbQeFFeLMP

[Pandara_RA!]

The cancelling sorta reminds me of devil may cry. neat.

[Shawny]

Looks nice but I think it would look better of the colour palette was just... more layered? As it is now, it feels as if the limited palette is strictly an aesthetic, and has no real reason or significance to be this way, aside from it's cheaper than doing full colour.

I don't mean this as an insult but it really is much more difficult to portray a mood or a setting, or distinguish layers and objects when you limit yourself in such a way, it's simply a matter of cost vs expression. But if your initial intention was to have it be limited colour than all power to you, feel free to do what you want but don't feel obligated to lower the colour count. It's your creation and either direction is both right and wrong, depending on who you ask.

Also, those boss gifs(which look fantastic btw) say "Behold the Tricor" but then the boss meter refers to it as a "Tritor."

[mushbuh]

hi this game is cool but i think the ui and colors could be better that is my #feedback when i played the demo i couldnt get into it at all because of this ok love u

like basically if mario land had the same ui issues it would look like this

[ｍａｓｏｎ]

not really a fan of the green/grey/etcscale. everything being the same hue makes it really hard to read, especially with all the detail on the screen. if you insist on keeping the constraints tho, you should at least make sure the pixels are aligned and the same size.





as it is, I think it could use more contrast. tinting everything green will def lower the perceptual contrast.
(DX mode looks the best to me tho)

[TRONMAXIMUM]

Looks nice but I think it would look better of the colour palette was just... more layered? As it is now, it feels as if the limited palette is strictly an aesthetic, and has no real reason or significance to be this way, aside from it's cheaper than doing full colour.

there's a 2-layer mode available as well; the colors can be adjusted  when the game starts up (ala GBC), or you can also change them any time in a custom menu, where you can also customize exactly what color you want the 2 layers to show up as.
there's also a fun little Invert mode ala GBC-- we've been having a lot of fun with the color system, and a lot of why i started this project was because i wanted to practice doing low-color stuff again. i don't even really find low-color stuff "cheaper" or "easier"-- it's just something that i wanted to try doing for a little game that ended up getting bigger and more outrageous when it turned out people thought it was Really Awesome instead of Just A Neat Little Thing

Also, those boss gifs(which look fantastic btw) say "Behold the Tricor" but then the boss meter refers to it as a "Tritor."

yeah, they were recorded from an older version-- it's been fixed by now!

hi this game is cool but i think the ui and colors could be better that is my #feedback when i played the demo i couldnt get into it at all because of this ok love u

yeah, the UI isn't 100% final, but i got a lot of the ideas (like the second panel) from other games. the idea behind the other panel is that when there's an enemy on-screen, or an important mission, bonus mode, boss, etc, it shows a meter or that message instead. no real "practical" reason aside from i wanted to have it, but there'll be customizable HUDs also-- i want to have HUD styles that have smaller borders, no borders, all-numbers version, mix-and-match, etc

not really a fan of the green/grey/etcscale. everything being the same hue makes it really hard to read, especially with all the detail on the screen. if you insist on keeping the constraints tho, you should at least make sure the pixels are aligned and the same size.

as it is, I think it could use more contrast. tinting everything green will def lower the perceptual contrast.
(DX mode looks the best to me tho)

honestly, i'm aware of the pixels being misaligned sometimes and it might take a bit of work (which we'll be looking into of course) before it's "fully" working-- we have the game bumping the size of the sprites up so we can have better control over the game's physics (i originally didn't want to do it, actually, because of said problem, but i got convinced after i played it for a few minutes), and having the pixels stay aligned all the time is probably gonna require some major pixel science that we won't be able to look into until after Early Access launch; right now we want to make sure we can get all the enemies, bosses, and game modes in before going through with full polishing. i will probably play with the contrast more though, since i haven't really been satisfied with how the colors render over the monochrome artwork.



also, i finally updated the second post! i'm still working on some of the other graphical stuff i want to include in the backstory part, but i added some GIFs and explained mechanics very briefly, and posted a Vine of how the counter system looks in full-speed combat. we're really satisfied with how all the counter throws feel so far!


and here's another Vine, showing that you can also counter bosses:
https://vine.co/v/ObbUhtDHJ5L


i'll be posting more GIFs and stuff soon after we do some more clean-up and get some more enemy types in!

[TRONMAXIMUM]

so i was gonna post some GIFs here, but we needed to get a new trailer put together, so maybe this will suffice for now:





full demonstration of DX Mode, and shows off every counter in the game so far and the Tricor boss fight!

[TRONMAXIMUM]

hey everyone! well, we've been putting in lots of time over the last few weeks (so much that we've neglected to update the dev log), so i'm gonna post some things and talk about some of the stuff we've added / have in the game!

(click the pictures for full resolution)

BORDERS + ASPECT RATIOS
a while back in the first + 2nd versions of Joylancer, we had a border system that i came up with, where little "Game Boy" style borders would draw around the game. these caused some issues with readability since the drew inside of the window, so for a while we had taken it out.

when we started implementing the updated drawing systems in Studio (while we were developing the game we went through a few Studio updates, some of them that changed some functions around and added some; we also like to experiment with the kind of visual effects we can do within the engine), Jesse figured out a scaling system and a system that fills in the empty space on different aspect ratios with a border:

the border system in effect! any space where there's nothing in the view is filled in with a variety of selectable borders

so now we have cute little things like this! i'm going to design a variety of borders (and probably get rid of all of the GAME TRON ones since the gimmick is GAME JOY DX now) and probably fill 'em with a bunch of art too. it might be cool if we figure out how to get different borders to draw in different modes or different maps, but that'll be something we play around with AFTER we launch on Early Access next week!


also this, which we're really excited about:

THERE IS TRUE JOY IN LANCING LOCALLY!

MULTIPLAYER
we got multiplayer working again! this is still an early version, but it supports 4 players, you can tag in AI players if you're solo or just don't have (at least) 3 controllers to do 4 human fighters, and there are three modes:

• Time: Most knockouts at the end of the clock wins
• Combat: Last warrior standing
• Crystal: Player / team with most crystals at the end of the clock wins

the Rosello Knight proving that it can handle TWO Joylancers by itself

as you can see, most of the enemies are selectable as characters, and many of them are actually extremely formidable enemies, despite that they can't perform Drive-Counters like Joy can. each enemy generally plays significantly different from each other, as they have their own unique move sets, health levels, attack and defense. multiplayer settings are fairly customizable, letting you determine each player's maximum health level and Divine Tank amount. (you can even set the Max Health to 0%, making fights one-touch death! you can combine this with the D-Tanks to make battles based on getting hit instead of using health, which, as you can imagine, has a significantly different pacing from normal fights.)

the game locks to the default zoom level when every fighter is on the screen, and progressively zooms out as players go farther from each other, an effect borrowed from the likes of Samurai Shodown and Super Smash Bros. it feels great and works awesome, with the only sacrifice being that the resolution looks a little goofy sometimes at different zoom levels, but we have to make sacrifices when necessary.


and of course, there will be multiple stages that the player can pick, some of them including a bunch of different objects that players can interact with to get a strategic advantage (or just to have fun)!


we're going to be updating again soon; with Early Access coming up, we're going into overdrive with adding and finishing up new additions, so we can make the launch for this game as awesome as we can.

if you haven't yet, check out our Steam page! it's going to be updating with some new screenshots soon:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/315540/

[TRONMAXIMUM]

and now, finally, we go live on Steam!
http://store.steampowered.com/app/315540

there's a free demo available on the Steam page now! we've added a new boss, made the AI a little smarter, and did a couple other various tweaks. next week we're going to be adding in some more enemies and building lots more levels, as well as finally getting a roll on showing off some of the other stages we have planned!

[SolarLune]

OK, so the good:

The animations and gameplay look fast, fluid, and frenetic as heck (which looks really great to me), and the spritework itself is really well-done (AFAICT).

The bad:

Readability is a major issue, I think. None of the screenshots in the Steam store have a clear picture of what's going on - they're all full of particle effects and dashing and stuff. You might want to take more static, standing screenshots with less going on so the players can fully understand what they're seeing.

While the spritework's really great, the graphics lack readability. The background fights with the foreground - something that could have been (and still can be) alleviated by altering it to use darker colors (or lighter colors, depending on which colors your main sprites are using).

I think it's too late to change the sprites themselves to improve readability (although, doing something pretty easy like adding an extra "white" outline around each sprite might help considerably). In any case, I would recommend against changing the enemy color when one gets grabbed in DX mode. It's easy to confuse the player when stuff like that happens.

Game looks really action-packed and interesting, for sure!

[Alec S.]

Played through the demo and the first level.

Really loving this so far.  Feels a even better than the old itch.io demo.  The combat is fantastic (I think I did a Gunstar Heroes-esque throw at one point, but I couldn't recreate it.)

A few issues I ran into:
-I got stuck in the second hole in the tutorial and couldn't jump out
-My instinct when dialogue is coming on the screen is to press the jump button to get the dialogue to finish more quickly, but then, of course, I just end up jumping and missing the dialogue.  Maybe stop NPCs from moving on to the next piece of dialogue unless you've actually completed the current piece of dialogue
-When I dash, a white square flashes around my character
-I dashed into a wall and ended up stuck flashing rapidly between two animation frames
-Is there a way to get back to the main menu from the game.  I got to the end of the tutorial, and didn't realize there was more I could do until I closed the game and started it again.
-When I played Demo 1, the palette that was used for the UI and some of the background elements was really dark.  This is what the score screen looked like:


-I went into the menu to check my movelist, and some how came out controlling two joylancers.
-As a sidenote to that, if I got them far enough apart, the zoom effect went past the bounds of the level, and I could see past where the tilemap ended.


Anyway, aside from those issues, I'm really enjoying the game.  Will play some more later.

[SolarLune]

OK, after playing it, here's some extra CC:

1) After running through the tutorial to the point where you use the lance to jump the gaps, in the last hole before the door, there's no visible block to jump on to escape, though there is one there.

2) You have jump mapped to B and A on the joystick, but only down and A will slide. Similarly, you have movement mapped to the left analog stick and the D-Pad, but only up on the D-pad will interact with objects (read signs, go through doors, etc).

3) The parallax on the background is super-duper strong (to the point of it almost not mattering). I'd recommend dialing it back some.

4) Please enable an option for vibration for gamepads - I'm sure you will, but it's kinda heavy at the moment, especially since it vibrates constantly while revved up fully.

5) At one point in the forest level of the demo, I attacked so much that the Rozello Lancer disappeared in the room with the boulders.

6) You can spam attack and jump repeatedly to fly. While this is cool, I'm not sure if this is how the game is intended to play, haha.

[TRONMAXIMUM]

-I got stuck in the second hole in the tutorial and couldn't jump out

yeah there are a lot of things in the tutorial that is either broken or doesn't exactly work right? a new set of tutorial stages is one of the updates we hope to send out with the Monday build update (our distributor doesn't operate on weekends ).

-When I dash, a white square flashes around my character

that's a bug with exporting and that should also be fixed by the next build update. my laptop and GM haven't been getting along lately.

-Is there a way to get back to the main menu from the game.  I got to the end of the tutorial, and didn't realize there was more I could do until I closed the game and started it again.

you should just have to pause and hit "return to menu." the tutorial does have a definite end point but it's not where you found it at, likely. (i'm bad at tutorials, i guess)

-When I played Demo 1, the palette that was used for the UI and some of the background elements was really dark.  This is what the score screen looked like:

you might have pressed a button and changed the UI colors. we have a thing where at the start of the game, you can choose between pre-sets (ala GBC) by pressing buttons, but we accidentally left that in some of the status screens and title cards and such.

-I went into the menu to check my movelist, and some how came out controlling two joylancers.
-As a sidenote to that, if I got them far enough apart, the zoom effect went past the bounds of the level, and I could see past where the tilemap ended.

the in-game multiplayer system that we have planned is still super early and we forgot to take it out of the levels for this release. we should be resolving that problem within the week too.

2) You have jump mapped to B and A on the joystick, but only down and A will slide. Similarly, you have movement mapped to the left analog stick and the D-Pad, but only up on the D-pad will interact with objects (read signs, go through doors, etc).

thanks for picking this up for us. we put joystick support in super late because we realized it was missing, so one of the things we have to do is clean that up and make it all actually work. (we prefer the game on the D-Pad, but we also want the player to have as many options as possible.)

OK, after playing it, here's some extra CC:
4) Please enable an option for vibration for gamepads - I'm sure you will, but it's kinda heavy at the moment, especially since it vibrates constantly while revved up fully.

the Rumble on / off setting is in the Control Wizard in the Game Settings. that's also where you'll find some of our other customizable options, although not all of them are functional yet.

5) At one point in the forest level of the demo, I attacked so much that the Rozello Lancer disappeared in the room with the boulders.

that is actually a glitch in the Drive-Counter system; it's been reported to us a few times. we're working on a fix since it renders some rooms unwinnable.

6) You can spam attack and jump repeatedly to fly. While this is cool, I'm not sure if this is how the game is intended to play, haha.

it's not intended to play, but it's one of those things where the absolute worst thing that's going to happen is that a player's going to use it for speedrunning... and this game's all about speedrunning, so i actually encourage it sometimes! that being said i'm sure we'll come up with a way to balance it out when the time comes, or maybe the game will end up being so difficult with its full roster that you might end up needing to be able to fly out of there when the going gets tough


thanks for the crits, everyone! we're going to keep it all in mind as we get our next update ready to ship out.

oh, and for the record, if you ever need to find the latest demo (since Steam isn't always up to date, and we have no control over there), you can find them on our itch.io page; the demo on the itch.io page is more recent than the one that's on Steam right now (since there's no upload queue or distributors) and it has stuff like the Game / Display options menus that the Steam demo doesn't feature. so if you've got some beefs with the game's Steam demo, try that!
http://a6productions.itch.io/

[Storsorgen]

I liked the gameplay, it felt really fast a nice.
Some drawbacks I found is that the enemies have tons of hitpoints and take quite awhile to kill, and that there seem to be alot of key-combinations to memorize.

[TRONMAXIMUM]

version 1.0.4 is now LIVE on itch.io!
http://a6productions.itch.io/joylancer

it's a very small update, but here's what's been done:

• demo build updated to latest version (previous demo was 2 months outdated)
     
• blinking sprites glitch should be solved
• menus are fixed for all builds
• tutorial exit door now leads to the title properly (proper tutorial coming this week)

we plan on doing many more fixes this week (vanishing Drive-Counter glitch, for one) and getting some of the other stuff cleaned up. we're also going to be building a completely new set of tutorials that will be a little bit more detailed in the game's mechanics, as well as having more areas to traverse as you warm up to the controls. look forward to seeing another update sometime this week!


the builds on Steam should be updating today as well, and anyone who bought the game on itch.io or Desura should be receiving Steam keys today.

[SolarLune]

Cool. I played it, and it was indeed fairly fun. I remember getting a ton of slow-down in the forest area - not sure what exactly was the cause, though, since there wasn't even a ton of enemies on screen or anything like that. Anyway, keep up development!

[blekdar]

This game reminds me of Rocket Knight Adventures so much, in the best way possible. Not the look or anything, but the ability to vault yourself around gives me the same joy it did in rocket knight.

Cheers guys, this is looking pretty awesome.

[TRONMAXIMUM]

version 1.0.5 of Joylancer is now LIVE on itch.io!
http://a6productions.itch.io/joylancer


we noticed that our Control Wizard system wasn't really jiving with a lot of folks (extremely not-jiving in some cases), and so over the last few days, my man Jesse developed an alternative for the time being. now, when you go in to the Game Settings -> Controls options, there's a "Control Presets" switch at the bottom of the menu, which shows you your controls, and allows you to map them in four different ways!
(doing this should also let you find our handy Rumble On / Off option)

there's a new set of tutorial levels too! i whipped these up last night, so if there are any issues with them, let me know; but i wanted to make sure i put together a little better of a tutorial than the one that shipped with the game. (launch nerves and all that)

we've also gone through, cleaned up some stuff, did some bugfixing... full list below!

• Controls settings updated
• "Control Wizard" removed, replaced with "Control Presets"
• Original tutorial levels removed
• Tutorial now split into 3 "classes"
• Difficulty system now 100% functional; change the difficulty in the Game Options menu
• Fixed Vanishing Drive-Counter glitch (if it comes back please let us know)
• "Blinking Box" glitches fixed
• Fixed a goof where Joy could turn around mid-slide, causing her graphic to slide backwards
• Adjusted vertical hop for mid-air LV4 lance attack
• Small adjustments in animation speeds

things that we still need to work on:

• a more "complete"-feeling tutorial
• improved analog support for players who don't like the D-Pad
• "Numbers" FX switch still doesn't work

[TRONMAXIMUM]

we just launched v1.0.6 of Joylancer -- the itch.io and Steam versions are both live!
http://a6productions.itch.io/joylancer


after using the week to clean up some of the code, we used the weekend to focus on making cool stuff! so i decided to replace all the crappy old levels (except the last one-- still need to work on that) with brand new ones! these maps are bigger and have more going on, so there might be a bit of a loading time in maps. this is mostly because the color system needs to draw every tile's color settings again).

we also added some new enemies to the game-- introducing the Pakratt and the Axe Knight! the Axe Knight is a variant of the Rosello Knight that hits harder and is generally a little more dangerous! its attack is also unblockable, but a well-timed Clash-Counter will let you get in some extra hits!
and the Pakratt is a brand new enemy type that throws a variety of weapons! we haven't finished balancing the weapons out yet so they're a little too difficult, but that'll be what we do over the week!

here's the general list of what we've done:

• Motor-Dash now consumes 1 meter in the air to balance out "flying" a bit (we like the flying effect with consecutive button presses but it rendered a lot of level design useless)
• Completely re-done Area 1 - Stage 1 + Stage 2 levels
• New enemies: Pakratt and Axe Knight
• Soundtrack option is now functional, with 2 options: "Joylancer" and "Long Live the Axe"
• Score / Style system updated, distribution of points revised
• 3 new Motor Combat maps
• Tag in AI opponents by hitting the Confirm button again after picking your character -- only player 1 can do this right now until we figure out a good system for it
• New "Zoom" feature; adjust the field of view in the Display Options menu
• "Zoom" buttons added to LB / RB for on-the-fly view adjustment
• HUD elements now draw in color in DX Mode

things that we still need to work on:

• Pakratt weapon balancing
• A full Area 1 scenario (4 stages)
• Finalizing the Armuros boss fight
• a more "complete"-feeling tutorial
• improved analog support for players who don't like the D-Pad