This month I'm taking a short break from AGameAWeek, and instead focusing on the game I love to remake.
Ever since college, 12 years ago, (I'm so old!!) I've had an obscure urge to constantly rebuild the JNKPlat platform/puzzler game, and this year is no exception.
This year, Platdude's getting bumped up to the MASSIIVE, and all his sprites are being fluffied up to scale.
High-Definition all the way!
The game is currently 50% complete, and should be with you within a week or two.
Meanwhile...
A Brief History of Plat(
Downloadables for a few of these are here, those that aren't have lost compatibility/levels over the years!)
JNKPlat 1,2,3,4 and 5 (spanning 1998 -> 2005) all used a simple "Block at a time" movement style. Without any animation, the speed of the game relied entirely on how quickly the player could "tappity tap" the controls.
I still have a special place in my heart for that style, but when I first started the DS edition, (way way way back, in the early days of DS Homebrew) I had no way to save extra levels. Since the JNKPlat games focussed on how many levels could be crammed into them, a lack of user generated levels would've killed it. So, instead, I finally took the time to animate Platdude, and the game seemed to take off around the DS scene.
It ended up working nicely, and the animation has since stuck around, but I also tried out a 3D style in 2006, which went a little awry. The block-at-a-time didn't really work at all, in 3D, and neither did the nasty control scheme. 3D was a failure, Animation was the future..
In 2007 I redid the animated style on the PC, with nice big scrolling levels. JNKPlat07 worked out quite well, but never became as big as I'd hoped. There were the odd control issues, but there was no interest in it. In JNKPlat's world, DS appeared to be the much better audience.
So in 2008 I hopped back over to the DS, and carried on building. A bigger, better, smaller version, with levels actually being submitted for a change! Along with that, DS user SirVoe
decided to submit some nice new graphical styles, which I added into the game, giving it a nice lovely makeover. Although I wasn't quite sure how to implement them, and they eventually just became an onscreen option. Bah!
By now about 95% of the graphics were pretty much solidified, so in JNKPlat3D09 I decided to give 2.5D a go, and try to reconstruct all those graphics in 3D, but since proper 3D hadn't done too well, I'd keep a 2D gameplay.
Since the graphics would be the same, I saw no reason not to try to keep the game compatible with the DS edition, and an entirely identical set of levels was produced. I say produced, they were, infact, the exact same levels.
Again, though, a lack of interest in PC versions is what inevitably killed it, and the game didn't make it past the trial version.
Shame..
Hopefully this year will be better.. right?!!
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