Bit of a bump, but this game deserves more attention. Very fun! With a record of 1407 I've still got a ways to go, but already I've seen a lot of variety in it. The roguelike elements are great for that, as well as how it doesn't kid around with death.

I have a few suggestions for the game. This list looks longer than it is, as it's mainly small tweaks:
1. Revive potions should give you a couple of seconds of invulnerability if you had a non-lava death, as currently most hazards kill you instantly after you revive.
2. Mouse really shouldn't be used. Bind keys 1-4 for the shopkeeper menu, potentially make teleport have the player aim a reticule. As-is the mouse makes teleporting under pressure impossible and buying potions cumbersome.
3. Keep the game running when you are at a shopkeeper or selecting a teleport destination, like it does now - the mortality of the character should be a focus, as it isn't reasonable to go shopping when there's rising lava right?
4. The dogs can be a bit excessive on some levels, which sometimes forces the use of a teleport or several corrodes.
5. Duplicating the potion keys down to ASD would be a nice option.
6. Could corrode potions work for straight down as well? Useful for escaping the gas-trap.
7. Problematically, pressing jump when hanging from the ceiling wastes a double jump potion. Also, not sure if this is my playing or the engine, but I seem to waste double jumps when jumping out of a block-high gap, despite feeling that without the double jump I still would have jumped regularly.
8. I like Justic Jones's suggestion for some Metroid-style enemies. Having enemies that are crawling around blocks in the level in particular would add a bit more action to the regular platforming portions.

One gametype suggestion would be to have a mode that makes every other level a rising lava level. This would be great (I think) as an alternative play style focusing more on action while still maintaining the same core gameplay.

Final thing, not sure how implementable this is or what you're using to make the game but a co-op feature would be excellent. I've talked to several people who also like the game but it ends up just being highscore comparisons, despite how the game design looks like it could accommodate more than one player. Platformers are perfect for multiplayer and I don't know that there has ever been a randomly-generated level one before!

Just my 2 cents. In any case, cool project and I hope to see you continue it!

[Examples]

Judging by the examples below, I hope it's clear I spent approx. 20 minutes just experimenting and finding interesting words. It's rare that a game will actually capture my attention, when it simply involves typing in a lot of different words, then playing for 20 seconds (or more if it was a good one).

I'd say that it's really neat already. The only thing it's really lacking is depth (and better music creation, though that is based on the game elements in play sooo...). The game has too few things in it right now to last that long.

You've got a good start though - go for it!

EDIT: Oh yeah, I never got a single swarming behavior for anything but my main character. Not sure if it's intended to work otherwise.


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Examples


Wow. Type WassupDog as the seed (case sensitive, of course) and graphics stretch a bit, you can't absorb the swarm things, the bg sounds are neat, and it's impossible for the npc to die xD

The name itself, Apophenia, results in balancing the sizes of an eye (you) and a floating pentagram, via taking size away from the pentagram by touching, and shrinking yourself by hitting bouncing rectangles (the pentagram grows with rect collisions).

apophenia (lower case) results in a game similar to the properly capitalized version, it just has swarming enemies and different graphics.

The word Enter results in a moderate game; purple angry things swarm at you, if they touch you or the npc you shrink, either shrinks is game over. You can outwit it easily with circles though.

The word enter results in a horrible game. You're a slow balloon which shrinks on contact with anything. Non swarming enemies, just bounce.

seed (lower case) results in a game with an npc red arrow firing homing purple blocks at you - that increase the size of you and the npc! The only way to lose is by touching the npc, to make it shrink.

phobia results in a game similar to seed, only with a stationary NPC.

Already it's pretty neat and has made it's way onto my list of "games to look out for from the PG comp." The ambiance was really cool, as was the way the collection of seeds had an "organic" feel to them. They're growth patterns weren't rigid calculated ones; in addition, you could see the particles moving between the blocks, giving the impression that more was going on and increasing the "organic" feeling of the game.

Oh, yeah, the effect as you look around is really cool.


Next are some things that are in need of improvement. I'd say that, at its current state, it's begging for a fast forward key. That would make it easier to try new stuff and probably speed testing for you, once it was consistent.

In terms of the way the seeds currently battle for territory, it seems to resolve in a stalemate too often. It takes a lot of particles (I counted around 10, could easily be wrong though) to make it a productive seed, but only a couple enemy particles to destroy it. This makes the gameplay get stuck at certain points.

As a final tip, the game window went offscreen for me and I couldn't move it or resize it - thus, I was stuck with an invisible row of dark blocks. Oh well.



Great project so far, I'll be watching this one. Code on!

That redesign concept sounds perfect! It'll help sort out how each one moves stuff, too.

When you say position them, do you mean rotate around the ring, not move them at all (just on/off), or inwards and outwards from center?

[Right!?]

No Skippy-esque characters, right? Right!?


Looks interesting. It'd be good to see any screens/concepts, though, to get a sense of the style.

Looks like a good start. You're getting the coding going and have a great concept to back it up!

One of the concepts I really like (I didn't play the original you mentioned) is the fireworks missile system. It's a neat concept that the missiles will split off when there are multiple targets, as well as will auto-home when their primary target is destroyed.


I as well am curious how it's looking. If it's at the "basic geometry rendering" stage I guess it's ok, but any first shots of ships and other media would be greatly appreciated!

Is that a smoking indicator I see in the lower left? Lolz.

I'm surprised as well that there haven't been more rogue-likes appearing for PG contest - they thrive on PG!

This will probably be pretty comical to play, or at least I hope. As suggested, try making more than just the levels procedurally generated - maybe weapons, enemies, or objectives (not all of the above though) too!

This is looking fantastic! In accordance with the other replies, the graphics style looks pretty good as-is. Work primarily on the gameplay, as opposed to making it look really good - it's got style already!

The depth of quests/items will be the most interesting part I feel. Especially if you get procedurally-generated enemies. Keeping it simple as a whole is a good idea, but features like that would make this fun to play again and again.

Despite the contest, keep working on this after it's over. It looks really good!

I gave it a shot and, while it's an interesting concept, it was a bit confusing - and stale. The game had a nice ambient feel prior to starting, but once in it felt a bit boring. The concept, also, was a bit underdeveloped. I just clicked on a bunch of drums until they were all active, then pointed my mouse at the goal. I didn't experience any lag, though.

Overall, it's an interesting idea. To make it more interesting to play, I'd suggest a bit of a change on the concept - make the debris a bit more important, or maybe make the guy move based on waves from the drums. The debris movement was also a bit random and unpredictable.

This looks really good. Reminds me of Spheres of Chaos.

This is a lot better looking than Spheres of Chaos. That was your one stop trip to damaging your eyes!


Xerus, this looks fantastic! It'll be great to see the background painting in motion 

I'm leaning towards "The world is what you think of it," but then again I don't know what Kastaneda is. Is that the name of the main character? I can only find references to a band when I look it up.


I'll be giving the demo a shot in a few minutes; it sounds interesting.

Wow, that sounds like a great concept! Is it going to be purely text-based, or have visuals too?

In any case, this makes me think a bit about Facade. If you can get a full sentence-recognizing system going, combined with your implementation of Freudian slips, this will turn out even better.

I really hope to see this working for the competition. Not many gamestep into fields like this, which offer many unexplored opportunities!