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[Plattfisk]

[updated main post 8 july]

So... Devlog then.

Short Description
Food Spirits is a sort of arcade life simulation party game, in which 1-4 players controls a spirit of food(or their chicken friends). The point of the game is to have good mood and thus collect points (unless some other game mode is played). There are also fighting game-esque special moves for battle.

Long Description
Basically, you pick a character(again, fighting game style) and then a personality(things such as starter skills, traits, taste in furniture and favorite weather etc). Then you simply try to keep your character in a good mood, and the points will start rolling in.
The game ends after a pre-determined time in an apocalypse after getting increasingly more difficult, but the point isn't to make it to the end but instead I aim for more of a rougelike thing where death is common.
As you do things, you gain levels in skills such as fighting(gives you more "special moves") or cooking.

You also have three Sims-like "needs": hungry, dirty, sleepy. If you don't eat you start taking damage, if you don't bathe you might get sick, if you don't sleep you'll fall asleep in less then optimal places(like underwater maybe...). Furthermore, having any of these meters near max will drag down your mood.

If mood is too low for too long, you'll temporarily become a "tainted spirit", a sort of ghost with two forms. In the light, an invisible ghost that can only pick up things and fly around. In the dark, a more dangerous monster ghost with attacks. As a tainted spirit you'll need to eat the souls left behind by killed animals or players. After a while you will return to normal.

I could go on, but eh... Just look at the screens.

There are three main game modes:
FREE MODE - sandbox type 1-4 player game, the main game mode.
COMPETITIVE MODE - a versus mode for 1-4 players competing with points or just violence.
SINGLE MODE - work in progress, more info later

The non-hidden playable characters:


Random sprites: (the chickens arm is not moving because it's an old image and I'm too lazy to make a new one... d'oh)

[Plattfisk]

Still going with it though, here's some newer screenshots.

Hopefully this will be one of the rare games I actually finish, and I can take my shot at the indie release thing. Should be fun, if nothing else.

[Evan Balster]

Them some sexy pixels, though I'm a bit puzzled as to how gameplay would work and it's a tad late to try the build provided.

The animation look good.  Keep up the good work!

[Plattfisk]

Them some sexy pixels, though I'm a bit puzzled as to how gameplay would work and it's a tad late to try the build provided.

The animation look good.  Keep up the good work!

Thanks!
Actually, there was never any build publicly available, and there won't be until release/demo.

The gameplay is pretty odd (and kinda hard to explain actually), but it can be a lot of fun as long as you have someone to play with. I'm battling with how best to make an enjoyable single player thingy, that won't take too much extra work.

[Plattfisk]

(Updated the main post to be a bit more informative...)

So after playing/seeing Monster Hunter Tri and Atelier Elie, I realized that collecting things and combining them is a lot of fun. Then I thought, that would fit well in my game. So I reworked cooking so that you'd be able to combine two ingredients, earlier it was just like "meat becomes meat dish" etc. And I'll reuse the code for an Alchemy system as well I think, where players will have to buy a cauldron and then use their Magic skill(used only for scrolls/spells now). Anyway, here's what the combining meny looks like:


Also a new character is done, but she's just a sprite edit of Juice. Still, she has original special moves though.



And here's a screen of the hi-score for free mode, now featuring cause of death.

[UnemployedVillain]

This looks...pretty awesome. I especially like the cooking system, reminds me kind of the Tales game

[Plattfisk]

Unloading some more screens in this thread... I feel like I'm getting closer to finishing the game, things are getting done.

First of all, new character done: Candy. Only two characters to go, wooh.
She has a lot of projectiles that do low damage, but they cover a lot of ground and some of them increase the opponents need-meters. Her super move transforms any player or animal into candy, that can be eaten. Basically an insta-kill move, so I'm trying to make it very cumbersome to hit anyone with (it's not the beam pictured)



Secondly, I decided on how to approach the single player mode. Basically you choose one of several single player-only maps and the goal is to collect 100 stars on each, while still keeping your character alive life-sim-wise and fighting-wise.

[Plattfisk]

zombie suicide mice!


I'm getting close to finishing I think. What's left is basically... One character(Yoghurt), a bunch of maps, the last boss and some pretty minor implementations. Exciting, my first indie game. Wooh.

[Plattfisk]

Working on a small tutorial mode now. God knows the game needs one.
Will probably redo some menus to make them easier to understand as well...

Here's a shot from a "scary" themed single player map, some sort of factory where it's always dark/night.
It's also where you meet hidden palette-swap character "Bad Meat", it's his spawn/summons you see around Grapefruit there.

[moi]

I am still ? about the gameplay but your graphical style is very cool. This game would be at home on a PC engine or an obscure arcade board. 
 

[OneMoreGo]

Awesome character ideas. My favourite is Dark Chocolate.

[Plattfisk]

Thanks I also seem to gravitate towards picking her when I play with people.
In particular, I like the last attack she learns. She creates a copy of herself as the real her become invisible for a short while. If any attack hits the copy, it will reveal itself as made of chocolate as spikes shoot out of it.

As for the gameplay... I guess it's a bit hard to explain. It has elements from life simulation, fighting games, platforming and maybe even rougelikes(random crap happens, then you die lol).
The primary goal of the game is to survive, while the secondary goal is to gain points (or collect stars in single player mode).

I'll see if I can record some video soon.