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[Melly]

Square Hero is a small game I'm currently working on. I've been working for a bit of a while on the first 5 levels and the first boss, and then trying to polish that with my meager design skills.



I plan on making it a minimalistic sort of platformer a la "N", with shooting. Gotta start somewhere. Gonna add more enemies and bosses and squeeze level design ideas out of them until I can't anymore. I plan on doing my best to keep the game from feeling repetitive.

Right now I'd just like people to play what I have and give me their thoughts, ideas, just overall feedback gewdness. Anything goes.

Download Links:
Rapidshare: http://rapidshare.com/files/93868375/square_hero_beta.zip.html
Yoyogames page: http://www.yoyogames.com/games/show/26462
Yoyogames direct download: http://www.yoyogames.com/games/download/26462?code=088ddc075e9b9962dce6053e0dc1100f2074d426

Thanks in advance and enjoy.

(More download links soon)

[carbon]

I like the controls. The jumping and movement are smooth and I like the overall player control. The sound effects fit the style of the game (old-school graphics) and they added to the atmosphere.

The only issue I had with the game was with death. I admit that I stopped at level 2 because I kept dying, which forced me to play the level all over again. Maybe a health bar so that there is some sort of hit buffer before dying, or maybe all the enemies that you've killed stay dead after you die. You said that you're trying to keep the game from being repetitive. Having to play a level all over again because of 1 mistake (especially near the end of the level!) is very repetitive in my opinion.

I like the game, though. I'd keep playing it if it wasn't so frustrating.

[shinygerbil]

That's a fair point, but if we're talking about an N-style platformer, then that would imply that it's the kind of game where you really do have to endlessly repeat levels just to get that perfect run necessary to complete them.

(Note: this is not a criticism aimed at this game or N, just an observation. I love these kind of 'pure' platformers, even if I suck at them bigtime.)

I haven't tried the game yet, downloading! :D

[deadeye]

Not bad, not bad...  I like the unlimited lives bit, and how fast you restart after dying.  It is kinda frustrating having to start all over at the beginning of a level when you make one simple mistake after spending a lot of time clearing most of the screen.  On the other hand, the game is very fair, and every time I died it was my own stupid fault for either not paying attention or just having really sucky timing.

My only suggestion would be to give the player the ability to stand up the same way that the enemies do (by pressing up, maybe?).

[Melly]

Yeah, still working out how I'll do deaths, if I'll do lives, and so on. I'm also planning on having a level select when the game is done, in which you can select each of the worlds of the game you reached so far (like in Mario, world 1 has levels 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, etc). The difficulty curve on these first levels is also nowhere near finished. I want to get more levels done so that I can make the first ones easier. Some of these may end up being farther in the list.

I'm really glad people like the platforming. It was one of the things I wanted to be perfect (GM's example platformers feel shoddy). I'm also trying to make everything fair, but the later levels of the game are meant to be absolutely masochistic (but fair).

Make sure you guys let me know of any bugs that pop up. Also if anyone manages to reach the end. And no, you're not going to be able to 'stand up' like these enemies do, sorry. There will be more 'unstandable' enemies when the game's released.

[Stij]

Ooh, looks cool. I've always liked insanely hard platformers.

Downloading now. I'll post some feedback later today...

[Melly]

It's not insanely hard YET, just challenging.

[Stij]

'Kay, yeah, I tried it. I've gotten to level 3 so far.

My only complaint so far is that it's kind of annoying to have to restart the level from the beginning every time you die. In N that wasn't a huge problem because the levels rarely took more then a minute or two to beat (not counting deaths), but in this game it's kind of annoying.

Also, I found it kind of weird how you can't die from touching enemies. This isn't really a problem per se, just an odd design choice. Most people have "touch enemy=DEATH" permanently ingrained in their mind.

[Melly]

Also, I found it kind of weird how you can't die from touching enemies. This isn't really a problem per se, just an odd design choice. Most people have "touch enemy=DEATH" permanently ingrained in their mind. Tongue

I've heard that before, but I want the enemies to remain like that because not only is it a bit illogical for you to die by simply touching something (maybe cause it's EVIL. Or electrified, but whatever) but also because of some few 'challenges' I'm thinking of inserting in the full game for medals/achievements.

Also, I'm trying to create consistency, specially with colors. Red kills you, green is vulnerable, grey is a wall, etc.

[Stij]

Ah, yeah, that's a good idea. Being able to identify if something is bad or not at a glance is helpful.

BTW, I beat the demo. The boss fight was pretty fun. : D

[carbon]

There is a boss fight? Maybe I should try and finish it, even though level 2 was frustrating enough to make me stop. What level is the boss?

EDIT: Wow. The above post motivated me to beat the demo. I'm glad I did! The boss fight was really fun! Not overly complicated but definitely fun. If future bosses are as fun as that one was, this game will be fun to play.

[Al King]

If you can't die by touching the enemies, then perhaps you should be able to stand on them? It just feels a bit weird falling right through them, and it could also give a platforming advantage to those who avoid killing the enemies.

[Melly]

If you can't die by touching the enemies, then perhaps you should be able to stand on them? It just feels a bit weird falling right through them, and it could also give a platforming advantage to those who avoid killing the enemies.

That's an interesting idea. I might take it into consideration, if not in these maybe in future enemies.

It seems Mario has spoiled a lot of people here.

[Guert]

Hey there! Interesting title you're working on there...

First of all, I felt like the shooting part really toned down the experience during the first level. Second, you cna easily position yourself in safe place so, when combined with shooting, the player can simply place himself halfway on the enemy, in front of it, and shoot it without any fear of failure.

I also think that the game should try to bring something new. What will make this game differnet than all the other super hard plateformer? Perhaps you could think of adding an extra mechanic (I dunno... like morphing or something cool like that)  that would bring a new kind of gamplay to this genre of masochist games (which are fun to play). It's just that right now, I'm not sure why I would choose a game like that over another one like, "I wanna be that guy" game. You simply have to find something good and new to offer and make sur it's well polished and you'll have something really nice.

Well, hope this helps a bit! Later!

[Melly]

Hey there! Interesting title you're working on there...

First of all, I felt like the shooting part really toned down the experience during the first level. Second, you cna easily position yourself in safe place so, when combined with shooting, the player can simply place himself halfway on the enemy, in front of it, and shoot it without any fear of failure.

I also think that the game should try to bring something new. What will make this game differnet than all the other super hard plateformer? Perhaps you could think of adding an extra mechanic (I dunno... like morphing or something cool like that)  that would bring a new kind of gamplay to this genre of masochist games (which are fun to play). It's just that right now, I'm not sure why I would choose a game like that over another one like, "I wanna be that guy" game. You simply have to find something good and new to offer and make sur it's well polished and you'll have something really nice.

Well, hope this helps a bit! Later!

Thanks for the feedback Guert.

About what you said with the shooting toning down the experience, I plan on having enemies later on that aren't as easy to exploit or shoot down. These are meant to be fairly simple enemies to face.

About the mechanics, this is honestly my first proper game (the first I'm really trying to go all the way with and not just make a shoddy buggy prototype). I don't really expect this game to compete with other platformers, but I plan on adding much more stuff to it for the player to find out. My goal in it really is to just see how much I can do before I find that I'm out of ideas for it, or that it shouldn't get any bigger. This isn't really my most serious project, but I plan on making it a high quality one nonetheless. Besides, it'll be freeware, so I'm not all that bothered about its success. I just want to improve my game making skills before I tackle more serious, unique projects.

Besides, one thing that makes this game different from games like I Wanna Be The Guy is that's it's going to be tough, but fair, and not pull cheap tricks on the player every 5 miliseconds.

[Massena]

I must say I'm not into the kind of games you're making here, but if you wanna listen  to advice from a very lousy gamer I would say shorten the levels.
I was playing the first level and it seemed hard, but I managed to get past it. Now, when I saw the second level I immediately wanted to give up. The thing (IMO) that makes N addicting is that no level, at least the earlier ones, take too much time. In your game one level takes a lot, especially because you have to wait for the enemies to stand up and all.
I really liked the platforming and the sounds, I just think you could either add checkpoints or shorten the levels.
One idea that struck my mind is that it would be interesting if the character occupied 2 tiles instead of 1 (like the enemies) and managed to crouch, because trying to shoot in mid-air got pretty tiring.
I hope you don't take my criticism the wrong way, you can just discard it if you want, since I'm very bad at platformers. 

[Melly]

Added another download link to the first post.

[Bad Sector]

Fun platformer, i finished the demo :-).

For *some* reason i thought the controls were Z and X, not X and C :-P and i didn't killed any enemy. I just tried to avoid them - in fact i thought that was the purpose of the game: trying to avoid the turrets. When i went to the boss battle i saw that there was no exit and tried C. But until i read all the comments here i thought that firing was only enabled in boss fights :-P :-P.

You may want to put some immortal turrets there. Red turrets maybe :-).

[Melly]

Indeed, part of the level design is focused on making them beatable without firing at anything. Killing stuff is not forced, and I'm thinking of ways I can reward the player for 'pacifist' plays.

Also, is anybody with Vista having trouble playing this (like heavy slowdown)?

[serprex]

You should have the up arrow also jump and Z fire too
I liked the death stuff
Running into an enemy should just kill them
Overall it just seemed too bland and unchanging to keep me interested. Maybe gray isn't the best choice of background?