UnworthyA combat-focused DS inspired Metroidvania. Without jumping.
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[FACEBOOK]I was inspired to do this game by an LDJAM entry done by a good friend and mentor of mine. He had made a small infinite enemy game where the only things you could do were dodge and attack. I was very intrigued by the idea and what lacking the ability to jump would mean for a Metroidvania. I definitely realized early on that taking away jumping would mean that combat would be a lot more up close and person (HOORAY!) but I was obviously concerned about vertical traversal of levels and the implications this would have on level design.
The artistic direction was also chosen to be very minimalist in terms of palette. I wanted to give myself half a year to finish this project and I've learned from past projects I've worked on that picking colors for pixelart takes an incredible amount of time. I did tell myself that I would not be compromising on quality of animations since I told myself those would be necessary to make the combat believable.
Here's some early combat footage:
InspirationI've always been a huge fan of Metroidvanias and more recently a huge fan of the Dark Souls franchise (Bloodborne too). So it only made sense that I make a DS inspired Metroidvania. I've also always been a fan of the darker more Gothic stories so I definitely though this aesthetic would work well. I also tweeted the death animation I put together pretty early and it had pretty positive responses so I just decided to go with it.
here's the death animation:
More Artsy InformationSo originally I decided to go strictly with a grayscale color palette since I knew I could put animations together quickly and still get a pretty pleasing aesthetic. I eventually started experimenting with adding a splash of red for blood, this idea was inspired by the artistic direction in the Sin City films. I was very pleased with the results actually so I decided to stick with it. Eventually I also decided to use hard white to represent fire. Was also happy with this.
Here's what the splash of blood looks like:
Sticking with a single tone grayscale color palette also allows me to animate large sprites a lot quicker, this allows me to put more emphasis on the animations themselves rather than the color palette.
This is a sample of a very large sprite (main-menu):
More about art (Oct 15 2016) - so I recently decided to break a hard locked pixel color count rules I put on myself. I guess I broke it with the fog particles before... but that didn't count... it just didn't... anyways...
I decided to break this rule so I could introduce light shafts into the aesthetics of it. Using simple alpha-blended gradient rectangles basically did the trick.
The Technical Stuff and Game DesignSo I'm using GameMaker engine to build this. I've used Unity and what not as well, but I find that when you're working solo, GameMaker is super fast and super friendly. The game is basically aims to be a love letter to Metroidvanias in terms of exploration, backtracking, and just giving that sense of rich lore and discovery. Where it differs from classic Metroidvanias is that it is a lot more combat intensive with enemy encounters.
Here's a more combat heavy fight (with some weapon swapping):
I mentioned that the only means of vertical traversal of levels would be via elevators and ladder systems. So far I've been able to create a reasonably large and complex map just using these elements. I definitely feel it still hold to true to the exploration / discovery elements of the Metroidvania spirit.
Here's gif of some ladder systems in action and the world map:
A key mechanic that I really wanted to add to the game is the influence of real world local time. Something about the idea of players experiencing slightly different things or discovering different secrets in the game depending on the time of day that they choose to open the game is kind of exciting to me. The first feature I added that was dependent on this was the day/night cycle in the game. I found this helped with immersion into the game and helped it feel a little bit more alive, also I was just kind of excited when the game was dark when it was dark outside (I have no idea why).
Here's the first boss fight with an accelerated day/night cycle (the hit collider was too large in this build):
The DevLogSo I've never made a DevLog before and I've only made a few very simple games as I was trying to learn everything I could about programming and pixelart over the past 2 years. This is one of the bigger game projects I've made so I thought it was time to document my steps somewhere. I've been working on the game for about 2 months now and I'm hoping to get it done in another 3. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.