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[Tyro]

Blink the Bulb on Steam Greenlight

Blink the Bulb - Playable Demo

Hi TIGSource! This is the official devlog for Blink the Bulb, a platform game I've been working on for some time. I thought documenting its progress and getting feedback from others might help it along.

The Story:

Everything was once peaceful in the Jubilee Realm - a distant universe formed from individuals' fond memories of the holidays. Here, humanity's composite recollections were weaved into brilliant landscapes and simple, kindly beings. However, ages have passed and the thoughts that shaped the realm have been tainted by a dark force - people's spiteful memories of their special occasions. The Holidaemon, six ruthless beings born from this negative energy, have begun taking over the Jubilee Realm and threaten to infect all its inhabitants with their influence.

Thankfully, all is not lost. Blink the Bulb, a lone resident of Winter Land, has set off to defeat the Holidaemon before they conquer his entire world. Looking skyward, he vows to vanquish their evil and restore the inhabitants of the Jubilee Realm to their former selves.

Gameplay:

At its core, Blink the Bulb is a 2d platformer. You can run, jump, double jump (which also functions as a way to attack enemies), and charge/shoot bolts of electricity. To make the game more unique and increase its replay value, it also has a number of fake random elements. Here's a few of the planned/implemented features:

Consumable Items/Equippable Heads/Passive Items

In every stage, you'll find lots of chests that can be unlocked either with a sum of collectible sparks or instantly with keys. They contain various items, though the ones you'll likely be making the most use of are different heads based on various sources of light. Each equipped head will give Blink a new basic attack, a new double jump, and a special ability. Here's a preview of two I've got in the game so far: a star light and a lamppost.



Other than heads, you'll find consumable items that do things like restore health and grant invincibility. Lastly, you can find passive items which aren't directly usable but have percentage-based chances of causing beneficial effects. Passive items are stackable, meaning you can collect a bunch of a certain type to maximize your chances of its effect occurring. In all, you'll be able to hold 8 heads/consumable items at once and 16 passive items at once.

Day/Night System:

Each of the game's stages can be played during the day or night (barring the final world, which is perpetually night.) The time of day you play through a stage will affect a number of things, including:

• The appearance of the level
  
• The stage's music
• The types of items you can find in chests
• The stage's gimmicks
• The type/behavior patterns of the stage's enemies you'll encounter
• The stage's minibosses/bosses (if any) and/or their attack patterns
• The available paths you can take through the level

Random stage effects

When selecting levels from the stage select, there's a chance they'll be affected by certain conditions... think the Nightmare effects from Megaman X6? Though these aren't implemented yet, here's a few I've thought of off the top of my head:

• Some collectibles will be infected by darkness, becoming hostile
• A portal to a treasure trove will be opened within the level
• Enemies deal bonus damage of a certain type

Development

All the graphics, sound, music, and code is being done by yours truly. Current plans are for the game to be done Summer 2015 and available on PC, Mac, and Linux.

Content Preview

Lastly, here's some assorted content from the game for your viewing/listening pleasure.

Day/Night system illustration (as seen in Winter Land, the game's Christmas-themed world.)




A snapshot of Love Land, the Valentine's Day-themed world.



I should have some .gifs and/or gameplay videos soon to better demonstrate the gameplay. I'm also aiming for a playable demo release sometime in December. Wish me luck.

[rj]

it's like megaman 8 fucked ristar slowly and lovingly

and, you know, the story is really rayman-esque.

i'm actually really interested here because i'm making a 16-bit inspired platformer with pseudorandomness (and some real randomness) as well. i'm both jealous and amazed that you made the whole thing (code inclusive!) yourself; i needed someone to program my game, because i know nothing about that at all

the music is the least interesting thing you've shown here, but that shouldn't be taken as a huge criticism; it's not bad! assuming you're using fl studio, because this...sounds like it was made in fl studio. it's happy and jaunty even if it's compositionally all over the place. i'd recc listening to a lot of classic sonic tunes and grabbing how their structure works to get more of a sense of melody/form down.

even if you don't bother with that, though, this looks like it will turn out well. reminds me kind of lyle in cube sector, actually, even though i don't know why!

how long have you been working on this for, out of curiosity?

i do wish blink had a little more width to him; his hyper-thinness feels wrong, somehow, to me, but this could just be me! maybe in motion it works out better. i feel like if he had a slightly bigger/wider head (note how he has what appears to be hair in the love land pic because of the background; that actually feels a lot more satisfying, weirdly!) it'd be awesome.

43

[Tyro]

Thanks for the feedback/compliments! A little off topic, but I checked out your game and it looks really interesting. I'm looking forward to playing it when it comes out.

I especially appreciate the criticism of the music. I expect to rework that particular tune in the future, since it and the game's soundtrack as a whole has been redone a lot. I'll check out some old Sonic tunes like you said for inspiration. And yes, it's done in FL Studio. I'm still a bit inexperienced with the software and hope to improve.

To answer your other question, I think this game has been a project of mine on and off for 2-3 years. It wasn't until this year that I've started working on it more constantly. I've probably made more progress on it since February 2014 than I did in the years prior.

If you wanted to see Blink in motion, I went ahead and recorded a short gameplay video of the first level of Winter Land during the day. Hopefully there's some more stuff it shows off to comment on as well.

Here's the link -



I had a busy weekend but should start working on the game some more this week. One last little tidbit for anyone who's interested: the game is going to have six world each based on a holiday. Here are the ones planned:

• Winter Land (Christmas)
• Egg Land (Easter)
• Fright Land (Halloween)
• Terra Land (Earth Day)
• Love Land (Valentine's Day)
• Soirée Land (New Year's Eve)

That's it for now. I'll have some more updates soon!

[Bob_STE]

I recommend you keep a current gameplay video link displayed prominently in the topic post.  The link you have represents your game well, but it is too easy to miss down in a response post.

The gameplay video doesn't feature any sound.  If you can do a video with sound, please post it.  I know you know important sound is to the experience.

The first thing I thought of when I saw the video was speed runs. They're fun to watch and add a lot of replay value for some players.  For starters, all you would have to do is display a timer and show it off at the end.  The game's flow seems pretty well suited for this.

Thanks for sharing,
Bob

[Tyro]

Thanks for the advice, Bob! I went ahead and made a new section for gameplay videos in the title post.

Though I disabled the audio for that gameplay video, I can put it in future ones. Everything is still a work in progress in that department, so I wasn't sure if it should feature music at this point. I do want to continue to post tunes from the game and get feedback on them though.

I really appreciate the speedrun suggestion and think that'd be a great addition.

This week I've mostly been doing a lot of spritework and adjusting the level layout for Terra Land. I don't even have the backgrounds drawn for it, but here's picture of the area so far:



Here's a tune for this world I've been tinkering with as well.

Terra Land's daytime theme:
https://soundcloud.com/blastprocessing-1/terra-land-day

[Tyro]

Still making progress on Terra Land. I prettified the tiles a bit and should have the world's level layouts done by the end of the week.

Here's a preview of the miniboss for Winter Land... well, at least the one you'll fight during the night. The time of day will determine what kind miniboss you'll face for each world or their attack patterns.

[Tyro]

Here's a preview of one of Love Land's main gimmicks that I've been working on. These colorful tubes can take you to different parts of the level, but may be closed off during the nighttime.

[Savick]

Is that boss the lamp from a Christmas Story O_o? It's probably your own design or something, but look up that reference if you don't know what I mean, heh.

[Tyro]

Is that boss the lamp from a Christmas Story O_o? It's probably your own design or something, but look up that reference if you don't know what I mean, heh.

Nice job catching the reference. Yep, it's intentional.

I've got the stage selection screen in the works. It'll display your progress throughout the game and inform you if there's a certain random effect going on in a particular stage. Check it out:

[Tyro]

I've been polishing up the game for the past week or so. Today I plan to make sure the passive objects are properly working/stacking and add some additional head powerups for the Valentine's themed world: a firework head and a moodlight/heart-shaped head. I plan to have a playable demo posted before Christmas that should include two fully playable levels with night/day variations. If I hustle, I can get some random level effects in the demo as well.

Here's a screenie of the menu that you can access to equip new powerups, view your items, throw away items, etc.

[The Translocator]

Here's a screenie of the menu that you can access to equip new powerups, view your items, throw away items

What!? You can willingly give up your possessions? Are you sure this game is fit for todays society?
/onlyhalfserious

[Tyro]

What!? You can willingly give up your possessions? Are you sure this game is fit for todays society?
/onlyhalfserious

Here's hoping people will find the that whole 'selflessness' thing charmingly retro.

Sorry I've been away from my devlog, fellow TIG-ers. I was sick for a bit of my Christmas break and didn't meet the pre-Christmas demo deadline I had hoped for. However, I'm feeling much better now and trying to get something playable done by Wednesday at earliest... early January otherwise.

In the meantime, here's a few exciting screenshots of the stuff I worked on today, including: polishing/preparing the boss encounters, developing/testing out some of Blink's abilities, and sprucing up the graphics. Enjoy!

The Love Land Holidaemon, in all his creepiness



The mid-boss for Winter Land's first area differs depending on the time of day.



This guy can't hold a candle to Blink, seeing how he is one.

[Quicksand-T]

Someone mentioned Ristar but this also looks like the old Zool games to me.

I want to see more of that stiletto lamp-shade enemy.

[Quicksand-S]

I agree about the Zool look. It also reminds me of James Pond for some reason.

Seeing something Zool-ish is great, though. Any retro game that reminds me more of DOS than the NES is refreshing.

[Tyro]

Thanks for the comments, guys! I grew up with a Sega Genesis, so the art style is probably influenced by that.

Without further ado, I've got a demo of the game ready.

Blink the Bulb - early demo

It's still unpolished in a lot of ways, but perfectly playable in this state. A lot of the art assets are works in progress, so I expect them to change as the game develops. The title screen and stage select screens are going to get overhauls as well.

So here's the current content of the demo:

• 2 fully playable stages with day/night variations (Winter Land 1, Love Land 1)
• 2 minibosses (both in Winter Land; I wanted to code one for Love Land but decided it'd be better to meet my deadline and finish it up later. Getting to the cutscene for that level with just warp you back to the stage select screen.)
• 4 powerups (though they're not fully implemented; currently, they just change your head and attack type. Eventually, each will alter your double jump and give you a unique ability as well.)
• 8 passive items

I've already documented a bunch of glitches, but I'd love to hear from anyone who tries out the demo what they find. Also, I believe the controls are changeable from the main menu, but I don't believe they'll save between additional plays. One final thing - the game should have controller support (I've been testing it with an XBOX 360 one.)

Here are the default controls:

Keyboard:
arrow keys - move/navigate items and passives menus/navigate to stage from stage select menu
up arrow - open chests when standing near them
down arrow - enter pipes
Z - jump/double jump/use item (head, health pickup, etc.) on item menu/choose stage on stage select menu
X - hold to charge/fire weapon (your weapon flies farther and does more damage when charged)
enter - pause/access items and passives menu
F - delete selected item or passive on items and passives menu

Controller:
left analog - move/navigate items and passives menus/navigate to stage from stage select menu
left analog up - open chests when standing near them
left analog down - enter pipes
A button - jump/double jump/use item (head, health pickup, etc.) on item menu/choose stage on stage select menu
X button - hold to charge/fire weapon (your weapon flies farther and does more damage when charged)
start - pause/access items and passives menu
B button - delete selected item or passive on items and passives menu

Enjoy! Comments and questions are welcome!

[Quicksand-T]

This was quite fun to play.

- The enemies turning cute after being defeated was a nice touch.

- At one point in the first stage the music suddenly stopped, and didn't come back.

- What's the green bar in the corner? At first I thought that was my health.

- I found the jumping a little hard to get used to. I kept feeling like I was flying forward either too much, or too fast. I did get used to it by the end of the second level though.

[Tyro]

Thanks for the feedback!

- At one point in the first stage the music suddenly stopped, and didn't come back.

The stage music was last minute addition, so I think there are still some issues with it fading in and out at inappropriate times. It should be fairly easy to fix though.

- What's the green bar in the corner? At first I thought that was my health.

The green bar is going to be used for a specific ability that each head powerup gives you. Right now, the different heads just change your appearance and weapon behavior, but I would like them each to also alter your double jump and give you a specific ability. For example, the starlight might let you dash left and right, the moodlight might let you float, etc. The green bar will deplete as you use abilities to prevent you from spamming them, but will gradually refill over time.

- I found the jumping a little hard to get used to. I kept feeling like I was flying forward either too much, or too fast. I did get used to it by the end of the second level though.

For the double jumping, I could adjust the player's acceleration/deceleration if people think it's too slippery. Was getting used to it an exercise in frustration for you, or just something that happened naturally while playing?

[Quicksand-T]

The stage music was last minute addition, so I think there are still some issues with it fading in and out at inappropriate times. It should be fairly easy to fix though.

Alright. Good music though.

The green bar is going to be used for a specific ability that each head powerup gives you. Right now, the different heads just change your appearance and weapon behavior, but I would like them each to also alter your double jump and give you a specific ability. For example, the starlight might let you dash left and right, the moodlight might let you float, etc. The green bar will deplete as you use abilities to prevent you from spamming them, but will gradually refill over time.

Oh, I see. I feel like the health should maybe be a bar too.

For the double jumping, I could adjust the player's acceleration/deceleration if people think it's too slippery. Was getting used to it an exercise in frustration for you, or just something that happened naturally while playing?

It wasn't annoying enough to make me want to quit playing (I enjoyed the aesthetic too much), but it was pretty frustrating at first.

I almost wanted a ground pound move, like in Yoshi's Island, to allow myself to fall directly down wherever I wanted. Maybe that could be one of the special head abilities?

[Tyro]

Alright. Good music though.

Much appreciated!

Oh, I see. I feel like the health should maybe be a bar too.

I'll see what I can do about that. Some of the passive items you get give you added defense against the game's four damage types: fire, light/energy, physical, and spike. When you take a hit, your HP can drop to a fractional value (from 10 to 9.2, for example.) Still, I think I could represent that with another bar fairly easily.

It wasn't annoying enough to make me want to quit playing (I enjoyed the aesthetic too much), but it was pretty frustrating at first.

I almost wanted a ground pound move, like in Yoshi's Island, to allow myself to fall directly down wherever I wanted. Maybe that could be one of the special head abilities?

I definitely have a ground pound move planned for one of the heads, so you're in luck. Hopefully that will make double jumping easier.

I've been applying a new, crisper palette to the game's graphics this week. Here's how it looks on Terra Land, the Earth Day-themed stage I've been working on simultaneously:

[Tyro]

Still working on the enemies and obstacles for Terra land.

I've also implemented an in-game mechanic where your equipped head can be lost when taking damage - kind of like losing a copy ability in Kirby games. There will be a passive item to reduce the likelihood of it occurring if you're prone to taking damage and not a fan of losing your head (pun intended? You be the judge.)

Also, here's a preview of the music for The Halloween-themed stage: Fright Land.

https://soundcloud.com/blastprocessing-1/fright-land-1-redone