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"Why have you trapped me in this ivory castle tower, full of mystique and nightmare creatures, south of the Lands of Glorious Kings, with nothing but a lantern to aid my way out?"

"Because it's fun, Fay!"

We have finally completed our platform game for the competition :D You can download it here:

Windows: http://www.oxeye.se/files/stuff/BIFF.zip
Mac OS X: http://www.oxeye.se/files/stuff/BIFF_Mac.zip

Story and Objective

The game is about the woman called Fay, who has been trapped in a tower by the lonely fairy Cornipolous. Not interested in being anybody's pet prisoner, Fay decisivly starts to make her way out from the tower. However, Corn doesn't want her to get hurt and he knows the prison is filled with evil monsters, and is forced to assist in her escape.

Your objective is to escape the tower with both Fay and Corn. The game is best enjoyed with a friend in co-op mode, but you can play it alone of course.

Procedural Info

The game's map and final boss are randomized. The source code is in Lua, so you can take a peek if you like (but don't spoil the game!).

Controls

General:

Shift+R    - restart game (generates a new level)
Cmd+Q      - exit game (Mac)
Alt+F4     - exit game (Windows)
Cmd+F      - toggle fullscreen (Mac)
Alt+Enter  - toggle fullscreen (Windows)

Single-player:

Left key   - move left
Right key  - move right
Up key     - jump (Fay) or fly (Corn)
Down key   - pick up / throw items (Fay) or shoot (Corn)
Space      - switch between Fay and Corn

Multi-player:

A          - move Fay left
D          - move Fay right
W          - jump with Fay
S          - pick up / throw items with Fay
Left key   - move Corn left
Right key  - move Corn right
Up key     - fly with Corn
Down key   - shoot with Corn

I have a feeling that this may be one to watch. :)

I deliberately want to keep this project quite undercover until it's near-completed, but just to show you that there's progress, witness the programmer's art:

(http://www.oxeye.se/files/stuff/Screen-080510-00.jpg)

Exploration platformer?

Top of the line artwork  :o :-*

Looks like some multiplayer action

Come on, competition not about the graphics, it's about getting the gameplay across, ^_^

Yeah, but admit it, having those high resolution graphics there REALLY makes you want to play this one more. I mean, come on, the circle has a little cut on its side! The artistry and expression is amazing! I'm tired of seeing perfect circles, give me some imperfect ones!

You another circle with a cut in its side? Pac-man. And look what happened to that guy.

Another screen...
(http://www.oxeye.se/files/stuff/Screen-080522-00.jpg)

You're really going for the "invisible text" look, huh?

The clouds look pretty cool.

Looks awesomesauce.

Ok people, video time!

First preview:

Your tube, my tube, everyone's tube! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iom1UkjQ744)

 :o

That was...an experience.

:D

erm...
looks fun? :o

So awesome.

 :o

 :D

...

 :o

:D :D :D

That was damn awesome.

Oxeye-awesome!

Are you guys hiring? :o

Seconded  :-*

The whole torture thing is what i enjoy the most about the Swedish work environment.

Required Qualifications
-Bachelor’s degree with major in waterboarding
-Strong social network/community background not required, we prefer loners.
-Fluent in swedish-chefish, both written and verbally

Watching the video, while using my Holmes-like deducting skills, I have identified your geographical position and: it turns out to be with in a few hundred meters of where I (physically) am right now! Should I come visit or perhaps conduct some serious industrial espionage, with the risk of my own life?  8)

[SMOKING WILL FIND AND KILL YOU AND YOUR ENTIRE FAMILY]

Hey, you're welcome to drop by. The address is Sibyllegatan something. I'll PM a phone number for you to SMS/call at your leisure, but you probably want to bring a laptop because we're focusing on our work and are not very social at the moment. And no video cameras  >:(  ;)

And by the way, it was jeb writing this. I forgot to log out / log in on Kinten's computer.

Awesome!

Oh dude, that is so unfair.

There was some kind of misunderstanding. He meant "some day" and I meant "tonight", so the date is no go it seems  ::) We're only here in Stockholm for this weekend (Swedish Game Awards).

Well, uhm, it's still unfair. Stop by Falköping on your way down.

Yeah, I thought it was kind funny that you were living in Stockholm when you have your HQ in Lund/Malmö! Well, no biggie, I'm just going to become an awesome developer, move down there and become your intern instead!

So, how was the SGA this year?
(I woke up 5pm today, missed the whole thing :P)

The game is completed! Here's a new screenshot (download links in first post):

(http://www.oxeye.se/files/stuff/Screen-080602-00.jpg)

looks like you guys just knuckled down and went for it! Well done. Gonna download that now and hopefully come back with feedback. (After our own Dyson is done)

I can already tell the graphics look amazing!

Now for the actual game! *downloads*

Wow, really great job on this one guys.  This is an achievement, for sure.  I love the two-character approach, and the levels actually work really well!  Definitely develop this further.

Haven't had a chance to play too much yet, but so far the production values are awesome. Great job guys!

Well the platforming area was pretty fun, but what's with that boss? :P Seriously guys. Don't make fun of us like that. Either way, until the boss it was very enjoyable. Great job.

Wow, quite a change since the first screens, that loks great :-*

Very polished graphics!  The platforming was pretty routine, though, and it seemed like I could mostly ignore the door/key mechanic.  It was especially bad once I realized I could easily clear everything out with the flying guy, but still a bit fun if I ignored the flying guy entirely.  The jrpg-style boss battle with no animations at the end was too confusing and boring to play, so I quit in the middle of it.

Looks and sounds great, but I didn't find it very fun to play. Agreeing with the above comments as to why it wasn't fun.

Yeah, this was the problem of having both characters active and still supporting a single-player mode. It was hard to design real co-op situations, such as Corn helping Fay to reach areas and vice versa. We could've done something more like Lost Vikings, but then it would be... Lost Vikings.

Maybe the door element could be some kind of threat to Corn to make it more interesting. For example, closed doors could shoot laser at Corn or something. But then again, we only have so much time, and I think we did a good job. I enjoy it even when playing alone, though of course, I helped making it and have a really soft spot for turn-based JRPG battles :)

Thoughts: once you figure out you can fly ahead and toast everyone with your blue boomerang death rays, and then the platforming is really just a chore.  And the last boss seems undefeatable.  I got through the whole level without losing a heart, and still couldn't waste the final head form.

This game has a lot of promise though.  And the randomly generated levels, if a story is put in and a whole lot of co-op/partnered boss battles (not just the JRPG but something akin to Secret of Mana) would make this game smoking sweet.  Kind of like a twisted and drugged out Castlevania (what with the fat fairy and all).  As a demo, it's kind of a neat idea.

This game seems a clear labour of love to me, but like all of us the 1 month limit is hard and it seems the gameplay suffers a bit. I love the feel of te graphics and the weirdness of going for the coop/rotated world. Go on! Loads of potential here :-) I realy appreciate what you are trying o here and it gave me real pleasure trying it out. I feel I need to do coop though, sp isn't te game's thing really :-)

Nice one

I couldn't get this to run - first it looked for MSVCP71.DLL, which I found on the internet, then it got as far as the title screen, but when I tried to start a new game it just hung. :(

http://www.oxeye.se/files/stuff/redist.rar

that contains two super dlls!

try it!

I played the game for a short while.  It seems easiest to fly around killing everything before trying to climb up with the other character.  I played the game in Linux through Wine on my laptop, so there was a little frame rate issue.  The low frames-per-second made it easy to fly and fall through walls and floors -- which I assume was not the intended behavior for the game.  On a Windows machine (or at least a more powerful machine, since I'm running on ten year old technology) this would not likely be an issue.  The graphics were good and the procedurally generated level design seemed interesting.  Like I said, I only played it for a few minutes, so I didn't have an opportunity to really get a sense of the depth of the procedurally generated levels.

I wanted to try this but when I open it I just get a black screen

I would like to add that yes, Corn needs some kind of hazard that he can't deal with that Fay needs to help him with besides opening doors. Right now Fay is far too secondary. OR you can have a lot more doors. :P

Windows or Mac?

Ran perfectly until the boss (love the platform mechanics btw) and then the screen just flickered uncontrollably, so much so, that I couldn't make out the boss or what to do.

Hehe interesting :) I have no clue what kind of bug that could be... We made the game with our "prototype engine", and we haven't distributed any games like this before. If you want to try the boss fight again, you can modify main.lua to register the boss game state instead of the menu state (you'll need some cheat powerups to be able to win, though... check the code in main.lua).

Glad you enjoyed the platform mechanics :)

Indeed. In a full production things like field of view and maybe platforms blocking Corns projectiles combined with a more interesting level with more doors might make both Corn a bit more interesting to play and also increase Fay's importance. Also, one of the original ideas suggested that fay should be carrying a lantern or a torch, if that would be implemented we could make Corns locking on to foes dependent on Fay's light.

I like the basic concept and the characters, and would really like to develop this one further given that we can come up with a more rewarding gameplay.
In other words, more suggestions wanted!  :gentleman:

Oh my. The sound clips when switching between the two characters bring back memories.

Pompel? Pilt?

Haha! Never seen them before!
Awesome!

I think I was very close to beating the final boss of this.

I thought this was a lot of fun even in single player. I imagine it would be more so in coop, so I'll see if I have some time / buddies to play it like that.

The level generation works really well, although there were plenty of instances where I could just run past doors and where Corn could fly a long way up the tower, far ahead of Fay. That's OK though, it would work much better in coop as it frees the players up a little. I could see the door puzzles nearly being quite involved on a few occasions, but then being easier to complete than I thought they would be (usually due to vines/jump pads).

Great artwork, great sound. I realise you probably didn't have time for many effects, so I hope you do an updated version with some effects in the boss battle :)

oh, and curse you for suckering me into a JRPG battle! >:D

I almost defeated the final boss but the screen went black and I had an error message :sadface:

Aww... You can use the cheat I mentioned previously to make another go on the boss. Just open up main.lua and edit which game state it begins with, and give yourself some extra powerups. You also need to change the singleplayer setting (all of this is in main.lua).

I'm unable to make it run... I get a black screen on startup. I'm running Vista, and I already copied the VC++ redist you posted.

Any other clue? :)

Same as Daniel... It crashed for me too on Vista. I really want to try this game... =)

Fantastic job!  I love how the two characters operate on different axes.  I also liked the variety in sounds the characters would make while performing their actions and switching back and forth between them.  The spawning enemies made playing through solo pretty tough, but it was still fun.  I particularly liked the physics in it, especially throwing the crystals and having them bounce around.
Cheers,
--Zack