next »

[irabonus]

Specter

Facebook|Twitter|IndieDB

Alpha 0.1.15 download, 90mb, Windows only

Tigsource dev log

Latest video development update!

Specter is an action-platformer which borrows a lot of our favorite tried-yet-true mechanics from the genre and meshes them, all while adding some new concepts to the mix.

You play as king Harold who's castle has been overtaken by spirits. While otherwise reasonably pleasant neighbors, they decided to not longer tolerate the loud parties and drunken noblemen, puking on their sacred grounds.
Thus they raided the castle, possessing Harold's sweet skull decorations and stripping him of his abilities.
Now he must trudge through his haunted halls, feeling remorse, and reclaim his lost skills.
So much for the set up...

The game revolves around the king’s abilities. You’ll be receiving a new ability after the completion of just about every level (attacks/activations are inspired by the Kirby series), and you’ll be using your abilities during both battles and platforming sequences.
There you are going to encounter obstacles such as walkways that flip around when struck by your dashing attack, or platforms that only appear when struck by a charged projectile (a more literal approach to “action-platforming” if you will).

The theme of Specter’s gameplay is critical thinking. We want players to constantly be thinking about the most efficient attack to use on a group of enemies, or quickly assessing a simplistic puzzle, before leaping forward in narrow escape of rising lava.
This concept is encouraged in combat with elements like time limits during battle segments, and valuable rewards for speedy battle playthroughs (such as boosted max HP, secondary effects for your attacks, or even unlocking special attacks).

We want platforming in Specter to revolve a little less around precision, and more around thinking before you leap... ranging from quickly assessing a jump, to full-fledged puzzles.
A few screenshots:






And a development update:



We are three people working on this. I'm doing the programming and Blair the art/game design. The music is by Jonah Backfish
It might be interesting to mention that I live in Germany, while the other two guys are from the US. We do all of our communication via Skype, and share files via Dropbox (and git for the code). The 6 hour time difference was something to get used to, but it's working well now.

Currently I'm using XNA, but I really want to port it to MonoGame as a lot of my friends only run Linux and I want to support the Linux game dev community.

We are looking mainly for feedback on level design, but any criticism is welcome!

Cheers, Dario

[Majestic]

Smooth gameplay and nice commentary with the instructions at the beginning, makes me want to keep going lol


Art and graphics are good and I like the animation. Pretty solid platformer.

[irabonus]

Thanks for the feedback! As soon as you unlock a few abilities the "puzzle" aspect should come through a lot more, so playing for a bit will definitely pay off

Anything you didn't like at all?

[Ancient Account]

Looks nice...

Smooth gameplay and nice commentary with the instructions at the beginning, makes me want to keep going lol


Art and graphics are good and I like the animation. Pretty solid platformer.

Same.

[irabonus]

Thanks for giving it a try

[Digital Awakening]

This game looks awesome. I have downloaded it and I hope to have time to test it. I don't get around to play a lot of games these days, just short on time.

I have seen both the movies and the game looks graphically impressive. However, there's one thing that bugs me. When the hero walks he turns his head towards the screen. It looks unnatural. I think he should turn it away from the screen or just keep it still (like all other games do).

[irabonus]

I totally get where you're coming from. I'm playing way less since I started making games myself.

We've gotten quite a few comments about the walking animation already. It's one of the oldest animations in there (I think it's still left over from the three day prototype...) and I guess you don't notice something like that after a few hundred hours. Now that I look at it, you are absolutely right, it looks kinda weird!

[Digital Awakening]

OK, I've played through the first level. Overall the game is very nice. Here are a few pointers:

1. The introduction use the word allot instead of "a lot".
2. The controls feels both a bit stiff and a bit slippery. I found them a bit hard to get used to. Not very platform friendly.
3. Some of your art looks very pixelated while others looks more smooth.
4. My first try on the timed sequence I killed everything but nothing happened. The time ran out and I died. The 2nd time it worked.
5. In the door room there's no visible cue as to what doors can be accessed.
6. Most of the game can be played with the keyboard, but some sections requires the mouse. I would suggest making it all keyboard supported.
7. I tired the dash and it works while on the ground but jumping and double-tapping up/down is quite difficult. Either do single press up/down or make dash a 3rd button.
8. While I didn't have much of a problem with this, objects between the hero and the player obscure the view and can be annoying.

I'll be playing more of this though. I hope my progress is saved. Good job!

[irabonus]

1. Oh, dammit 
3. I'll relay that to the artist, it's possible, because some of the art is very old, while other stuff is a lot more recent.
4. Hmm, that's weird, never happened to me, but I'll look into it!
5. The torches next to the level doors light up, should probably be explained though.
6. Where did you need the mouse? I know that the options menu doesn't work with it yet, is there any other part?
7. Unfortunately it's quite hard to change the dash controls to something else (you'll get a few other abilities that will interfere with the single tap/separate key idea). But if enough people find it way too hard to get used to we have to think of something!
8. Yeah, noticed that as well. We really want to keep the foreground objects for visual reasons though. Maybe an outline of the player/important objects that stays in the foreground would help?

Don't worry, your progress is saved. Thank you for the extensive feedback, we really appreciate it!

[Digital Awakening]

5. Wow, I looked around yesterday but I could not see them. I just had a quick look today and there they are. But I was staring directly at the doors, not things to the sides of them. One suggestion would be to put chains and locks on the doors you can't enter. That would be much harder to miss. Or put the torches so close to the doors that they touch. I am a big fan of showing, not telling. If you can avoid text messages, I think you should.

6. It seems you need the mouse to be able to select your perk. At least I couldn't use the arrow keys to switch between them. Also after the level I had to click on continue, but perhaps it was just me not trying more keys, like space?

8. They do add to the visuals of the game. Outlines is one way of doing it. Like green for the player and red for the enemies. The other option is to not use them in places where the player has to see what's going on. I personally prefer the 2nd method.

BTW, I think you need a visual queue in the level selection room to tell which levels the player has gotten a perk from. My guess is that you can get one on each level and that you have to replay the level to try the fight again if you fail. Perhaps putting something above the door?

[Magnega]

Okay, for one, great job. I was very positively suprised. The intro is amazing. But this is the feedback section, so here's what I found:

1. The jumping skull spirit things make literally the most annoying sound in the world. Take it away its horrible oh god (or at least make it a bit less loud)

2. You can use dash to dash through the battle sequence cage walls, completely skipping the sequence. At least on level 2, didn't try on other levels

3. For some nice polish, you could add a nice effect when you get through a level and grab the ability orb, right now it just kinda goes to the continue screen. Just a little thing that would make the player feel better about their achievements

Anyways, better than anything I've ever finished. Good job! :D

[irabonus]

Thank you for the feedback!

@Magnega:
1. Yep, very temporary sound effect. We are working with a sound designer now.

2. A few people reported that, something in my collision detection code has to be broken...

3. Yes, the level ending is really abrupt right now. I'll add that to the "must polish" list

@Digital Awakening:
5. Yes, we definitely want to avoid text as much as possible (and keep tutorials to a bare minimum). We'd rather teach the payer during normal gameplay than shove instructions in his face all the time.
We'll think about how to make the unlock thing more obvious! Maybe show the torches light up when you get back into the lobby after finishing a level?

6. Oh, I think up/down arrow works in the perk selection, but that's not intuitive at all (a limitation of my self written GUI system...)

8. I'll talk to the artist/level designer. We'll try a few approaches. Though I agree that the "not use them in places where the player has to see what's going on" is probably the easiest and most straight forward one.

I don't know if it's usual to reply like I do (answering every point). I don't want to sound defensive, because I'm totally not, I really enjoy getting feedback like that! But maybe it seems like I'm trying to rebut your points?

By the way, we got a lot of feedback saying that the jump and walk animations were kinda off,  so we redid them: