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Description The first thing that came to my mind when I saw this was the cover of Herbie Hancocks Head Hunters (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/aa/Head_Hunters_Album.jpg). I have no idea what it says on the game cover, but inspired by the record this is the concept: The space village of Funk has lost its grooves, and now it's up to the guy in tribe mask to restore the funk to Funk. By finding the lost band members, music will gradualy return to the game world. (Oh, and the picture was in the zip-folder in the competition topic, so I uploaded it myself).		Inspired by (http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/bb195/thefowl/16.jpg)

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Download
http://www.mediafire.com/?e9j0duwy7r59l5y (http://www.mediafire.com/?e9j0duwy7r59l5y)

How to play
Mini metroidvania: explore space caves, collect items and find your band mates in order to restore the funk!

Arrows to walk, Z to jump and make many choices, X to attack, C to play drums.

oh my word that is a fantastic idea

As a huge Herbie-fan, I can't wait to see what you'll make of this. Good luck!  :gentleman:

Looks like a cactus game. Good luck, man!

The cart says "Middle-Aged Man Quest" just FYI.

Haha :) Not exactly what I was going for, but we'll see how it turns out. Hopefully, I'll have some sprites ready later today. 

That's good cause to be honest I'd rather have Herbie over Japanese humor any day.

The work so far:
Repixeled the characters from the box (in order to get "clean" sprites ):
(http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/bb195/thefowl/space_funk_hunter_pixelart_copy.png)
The third guy from the left is based on this awesome cover (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/10/Herbie_hancock_Thrust.jpg). I'll probably include the ship as well.

Also made a quick'n'dirty walk animation fro the main character.
(http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/bb195/thefowl/dzIfWu.gif)
I'll probably decrease the struttering later, but it's decent as for now.

UPDATE

The last few days I've been playing around with the game design; after a lot of pen paper sketching I now think I've found the layout and mechanics I want.

After the first pixeling, I finaly got around starting making the actual game in MMF2. I had to rescale the character for the third time in order to make the proportions look good in full screen mode, but now it looks nice. The platform engine is almost done, and now that I've decided on how far you will jump, level design is coming up nicely.

I have also begun making some tilesets for the levels, they're pretty basic but fits with the NES-style graphics on the cartridge. I'm looking for a Metroid 1 feeling in the graphics. By now about 1/4 of the rooms are finished. Here's an early ingame screenshot (WIP) of one of the rooms:

(http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/bb195/thefowl/spacefunkhunterfirstscreeniecopy.png)

It's been a long time since I last updated, so here's the news:

For the last two weeks, I've almost only been designing levels. Work has been slow but steady, but I almost lost hope of finishing it in time. So yesterday I begun programing the attack move and some enemies. The game is almost playable by now, and perhaps I'll upload a demo soon.

The biggest issue right now is how to draw/color the background. I'm looking for a cave like background that doeesn't show too much, but adds a discrete feeling to the level. I wounder if the ground is too detailed in comparition with the rest of the graphics? Suggestions are welcome.

(http://i205.photobucket.com/albums/bb195/thefowl/spacefunkhunterhit.jpg)

Coming up next: enemies and bosses!

Perhaps you could add background tiles similar to the foreground tiles?
Also, I like the pixelart.

You could always experiment with a simpler style fot the foreground tiles.

Thanks for the comments guys, I haven't had time to play around with the graphics, but I'll probably will soon.

Anyway, I finally complied a demo. It features three rooms and the second boss. The engine is working but it's not flawless, especially when you get stunned. Sound and music is yet to be added and some animation could be inproved, but I still hope it's playable enough ;)

Arrows to move, Z to jump, X to attack, C to attack downwards (breaks blocks).
 
http://www.mediafire.com/?9hq1u35xv8urs5u (http://www.mediafire.com/?9hq1u35xv8urs5u)

Thoughts?

The boss killed me.

I didn't realize there was a door at the bottom of the stairs on the first screen until I reread your post.

I like the premise of this, and it played relatively smoothly.  If found the part with the lava a little hard on the eyes; I think it was the red on brown background that made it too vivid (perhaps you could darken the brown background).

The bongos felt a little buggy (as did the tuning-fork), as you remain in the air when you used them.  Perhaps you could continue falling when you use the bongos (and the tuning-fork), rather than hover in mid-air when you use them?

Yeah, I was wondering about whether hoovering in the air when attacking was a good or bad thing myself. I will look into how it plays when that bit is removed.

Also, an appologise for the strange colors :-[ The laptop I'm working with tends to display a much darker hue than it actually is.

Thanks for the feedback! It's sometimes hard seeing the flaws when you're working so close to it.

I kinda like that you hover when you're attacking, makes dealing with the boss easier.

The player's hitbox seemed a little larger than it should be, and sometimes I was hit when I don't think I should have. You should make the collision box a bit smaller than the sprite itself.

The boss has a ton of hitpoints, and with how you have to attack him in the air (I tried going to that platform below his head but I kept getting hit by him, though again I didn't feel I should have) it was pretty tough killing him, though not too bad if what you're going for is challenge.

A game inspired by the cover of one of my favorite albums? Pretty sweet. I expect an electro-jazz-funky soundtrack in the final version.  ;)

Game itself is solid but a bit basic at the moment. The graphics style is nicem but better animations would be great, though I suppose you're working on that anyway.

And so at last it is (somewhat) done!

I have been working with the last main issues for about eight hours today, and now I feel that its good enough to be released as a beta-version.

The beta includes all elements of gameplay, but lacks the extra polish (i.e. graphics, texts and some sound effects). I blame time and motivation for not having fixed these things by now, but at least it plays like I intended. Sadly, I didn't get time to fix all the issues discussed the thread, but I plan to come back and fix the game in a while.

And for the soundtrack... This version has a slightly mixed midi version of "Chameleon" in it. It was not my intention, but there was again no more time. If anyone would like to contribute by making a funky 4-instrument song it would be much appreciated.


Features;
*Funk!
*Sounds by Shaktool
*Plenty of collectable items!
*Bossfights! ( ;D at least one)
*A save-system with unlimited continues!
*Challenge! (The game is hard, you only get four hearts and you cant refill them...
             This was sadly skipped because of the deadline. Saving works almost like
             extra lives.)

Get it here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?e9j0duwy7r59l5y (http://www.mediafire.com/?e9j0duwy7r59l5y)

I know of a few bugs, but please report them if you find any  :)
Since the deadline is tomorrow I might have time/energy to fix some of them.

(Ohh, I just realised that this is my first released/finished game in my ten years of gamemaking :o
The first game that didn't suck or that I didn't get tired of making...)

This seemed like it was going to be a good game but I had a couple of problems. Everywhere I went led back to the start screen or a pool of impassible lava. Also the skeleton with the shield never does...

Ok, thanks for telling. I will play-test it later today and fix things.

EDIT: It seems that it is working as it should on my computer at least. If you have reached the skeleton then you're on your way. He can be defeated by:
SPOILER: jump over his head and hit him in the back. He will stop for a while after you've jumped over him and there's your chance

If that still doesn't fix the problem, let me know!

I played for a while but had to stop because I lost the bongos when I died. Also, if your health drops to zero you can stay alive indefinitely by spamming attack (you can't do anything useful, but still...)

There's little regarding indie games that pisses me off more then having to use task manager to exit some kid's game. Escape is generally used for this purpose!

Other then that I liked how large the game felt -- at the same time, however, it appears rather bare...if you choose to continue it, throw in a way to exit the game and whip up a few more environment tiles. You can do much with suprisingly few tiles.

For an exploration-based game like this to stay interesting, more emphasis needs to be placed on creative level design. The graphics, in addition to having some poor color choices (like oversaturated backgrounds), were very repetitive. Outside of the town, I didn't encounter a single visual that grabbed my attention. The complete lack of audio hurt this game immensely. And the gameplay for each area was all pretty much the same- basic platforming peppered with a few slow combat encounters.

For a game like this to work, players need to be constantly excited to find out what they will encounter next. Without this, there's no motivation to continue to play.

You need to make every area memorable.

Also, my screen flashed every time I changed areas or died. That was annoying.

I realize this is still a beta, so I apologize if this criticism seems harsh. But these are the areas you'll need to improve if you want to continue working on this game.

This is promising, I like this kind of games, so I hope it gets completed someday. I got no in-game audio, despite all the mp3 files you bundled with the game. I'll keep an eye on this,  for now it is too 'beta' for me to really have an opinion, but could turn out to be a good game.  :gentleman: Also, semi-penis shaped buildings are a big hell no.  :ninja: