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[Daid]

For about a month now I've been working on a platform game in the style of Castlevania. You could call it a Castlevania tribute.
All the music, game design and graphics are done by a guy called Ezekiel Rage. I "only" handle the code.

Our main target is the Wii, but there is also a Windows version (and I could compile it for Linux if needed, but the Windows version uses SDL with OpenGL and should run fine in Wine). And we released this demo two weeks ago.

We are looking for a bit more feedback, things that you enjoyed about it, things that are not that enjoyable. As we are working hard towards the next demo release with stage 2.


Image to show what you get

Controls are the arrow keys to walk, double tap to run, 'ctrl'/'alt' for attack/jump, and 'x' for discard current powerup.

You just walk from the beginning to the end of the stage, just as in the classic castlevania games. There is no backtracking and there are checkpoints where you will be put back after you die. You have unlimited lives, so the only drawback of dieing is time. At the end of the stage there is a boss fight.

Yellow crystals are whip powerups, every powerup costs mana on each use and is used every time you attack. Discard a powerup you don't need to conserve mana. Blue crystals give mana, red give health, purple give random health or mana. Different powerups do different amounts of damage to enemies.

Stage 1 is pretty easy, and you should be able to finish it quite quick (I speedrun trough it in 3 minutes). Every stage will feature at least 2 paths you can take, both paths should be pretty obvious in stage 1.

The windows version can be found at: http://www.mediafire.com/?0e461yh8yjo40x8 (about 10mb)
For information about the Wii version: http://wiibrew.org/wiki/The_Prophecy

As the demo is 2 weeks old already there is already a small list of things that will change:

• Working options menu (selection options in the main menu just returns you to the intro)
• Customizable controls
• Full screen mode for the PC version
• Story, with ingame dialogs to explain what is going on. Without disrupting the flow of the game to much.
• The powerup icon (top left corner) is not clear about what power you have. Next version should be better.
• Tweaks to stage 1 to make it a bit tougher
• Stage 2 which is 1.5x as large in just walking distance. With about 6 new enemies, more z-action, and will be a lot harder.
• Maybe a hint to a secret mode hidden in the game.

(This is one of the first games that I'm releasing here, so tips on how to structure my post better are also welcome)

[RichMakeGame!]

hi!

my thoughts: I got annoyed at the birds.. they always seem to move just out of reach, and often come at me from an angle which is just above or below my weapons hit area. I always resort to just running away from them as I didn't find them enjoyable to fight..

I know you're not the art guy, but I was wondering about the character rez: why did you choose to make some characters half rez? (I noticed the ghosts are regular resolution, but other enemies and main character are lower). It looks a bit odd to me?

I can see a lot of work has gone into this though- well done!

[ANtY]

Why background is clearer than foreground?

[Daid]

my thoughts: I got annoyed at the birds.. they always seem to move just out of reach, and often come at me from an angle which is just above or below my weapons hit area. I always resort to just running away from them as I didn't find them enjoyable to fight..

They are quite easy to kill if you know when to jump at them. But that might just be my many hours of playtesting talking. The large amount of crows with a high annoyance factor could be a bad thing.

I know you're not the art guy, but I was wondering about the character rez: why did you choose to make some characters half rez? (I noticed the ghosts are regular resolution, but other enemies and main character are lower). It looks a bit odd to me?

So true, this is less noticeable on the Wii (due to TVs just being blurry). But the reason is simple, some of the graphics are old stuff, build for half the resolution. It's in the process of getting upgrades, but we wanted to get this demo out to get feedback on things. And to make sure the 'engine' is stable.

I can see a lot of work has gone into this though- well done!

Thanks! It's been a wild ride so far (We spend 2 nights on getting the intro just right, with the music text and everything)

Why background is clearer than foreground?

It is? not sure, I'm not the graphics guy. I'll get him over here to comment on that.

[RichMakeGame!]

about the birds: yeah it might be there is one particular play style which makes them easy to beat, but first-time players don't know it. I suggest if you can, physically watching as many first time players play your game as possible, while you stand and don't give them any advice. This is like gold dust for finding any rough edges and bits where you've trained yourself to play the game in the most optimal way. It's always painful, but you'll fill pages of notebook with new tweaks to make

[Theon]

Why the hell is the ground high rez?? *looks at screenshot*

Really destroys the effect of the, otherwise, marvellous pixel-art imho.

[Saint]

A nice game, overall. The presentation felt consistent and good (except for the different resolutions), and the controls were slow enough that you thought about when to hit but not so slow it felt sluggish. A slew of random comments, though...

- The back parallax layer looks kind of mismatched where it meets the sky as there is so much contrast. Normally, back layers tend to be decreasing in detail and contrast against the sky to signify distance and get the player focused on the important stuff in the foreground.

- The art style is a bit disjoint. The pixel art in the backgrounds is very nice, but it is a bit jarring both against the low-res characters and the antialised text. But you've already said you are getting rid of the low-res characters so I would suggest also removing the antialiasing on the text for coherency.

- And speaking of making hi-res characters, take care to make them pop out enough. Right now they are a bit hard to read against the background, their most distinguising feature is that they are low-res.

- In the first area, it is sort of hard to see where the actual ground is. I would suggest having a narrower strip (like in the latter parts) or making the characters cast shadows.

- There are a few places (most notably by the water) with small ledges that you have to jump over. Not sure if you have this functionality already, but a ledge that is not even halfway to the player's knee should probably be scaled automatically.

- Thrown bones and the sky background move even when the game is paused, but not characters or powerups.

- The level became kind of tedious after awhile, maybe this was because the birds kept killing me (As others have already complained about) but it felt like there wasn't enough variation to the "Kill some undead, then move forward"- scenario to have so many of them. More variation would be nice =)

But again, nice game. Good luck with future development?

[Daid]

A nice game, overall. The presentation felt consistent and good (except for the different resolutions), and the controls were slow enough that you thought about when to hit but not so slow it felt sluggish. A slew of random comments, though...

First off, many thanks for the comments Saint :D I've forwarded the graphics related comments to the graphics guy.

- There are a few places (most notably by the water) with small ledges that you have to jump over. Not sure if you have this functionality already, but a ledge that is not even halfway to the player's knee should probably be scaled automatically.

Good one, there is some ledge walking code in there, but it only works on very small ledges. Currently the lower water room is the only location where this is a real problem. But it's should be easy to fix this.

- Thrown bones and the sky background move even when the game is paused, but not characters or powerups.

Good catch! Missed that one. All fixed up for the next version.

- The level became kind of tedious after awhile, maybe this was because the birds kept killing me (As others have already complained about) but it felt like there wasn't enough variation to the "Kill some undead, then move forward"- scenario to have so many of them. More variation would be nice =)

Stage 2 will feature more height action, with jumping and climbing in between of the killing. And there will be some whip upgrades that fire projectiles which should give you some more tactics (still working on those)

The crows are much easier to kill in the next version. I watched a new player playing like RickMakeGame! suggested, which really helped a lot to see where other problems are. The running move seemed a bit random to him, but other then that he finished stage 1 in 8 minutes with 2 deaths. Which I don't think is that bad.

But again, nice game. Good luck with future development?

Will do :D I'm learning a lot from this project.