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[HybridMind]

For The Twin

Description It's a crazy alien dance party and you're invited! How good are your visual skills under pressure? For The Twin is a game about learning to recognize creatures that are alien to you in a variety of fun environments and challenges. Features Includes 6 different stimulating visual challenges to unlock Each challenge has 10 levels You will encounter 30 unique alien creatures 20 different alien habitats 6 original chiptunes for exciting soundtrack Earn bronze, silver, and gold stars Separate online leaderboards for each challenge Track challenge player stats A game intended for both adults and kids to enjoy! Initial notes 6/28: Just love the simple yet hilarious visual recognition concept I see represented by this case art and I aim to do a game in flash about it for this competition.		Inspired by

Link
PLAY FOR THE TWIN IN YOUR BROWSER

Trailer




How to play

• Look for the twin on each level
• Click on the correct twin to advance
• 5 second penalty for clicking wrong
• Less time the better!

Supports online leaderboards.

DEV LOG HISTORY

8/1: v1.0 posted!

7/23: v09.9.1 posted!

Some small tweaks...



7/22: v0.9.9 posted!

• RELEASE CANDIDATE--WOOHOO! Major update here. Been cranking on this past few days again and this is looking like it will be the final version barring any odd events or convincing feedback (or bugs!)
• Added stereo pans to sound effects like jumping, picking, destroying of twins
• Made the twin to find able to move also
• Raised movement rate on applicable challenges
• Lowered number of twins on 2nd perspective challenge
• Got my social links in to help build my fan base
• Fixed external mp3s not looping right by adding on the fly adjustment for leader and follower so that flash can skip the ID3 data and bogus frame data.. ugh
• Redid the bass mix on the music tracks
• Added a reset scores button so you can flush old data / achievements
• Totally redid main menu
• Added simple tutorial to first time playing first level (can restart any time with 'T' key
• Added a 'resume game' button to pause menu in case player is lazy and got there by mouse button on '?' icon on UI
• Added fail safe bail out on level generation when I'm placing twins in non-colliding fashion because sometime randomly it can't find a placement before the script times out. Now it will bail after 1000 attempts (about a second) and just drop the twin wherever it may be to keep the game going
• Made a credits screen
• Made a total game stat / rating thingy that unlocks once you've played all six challenges at least once that gives you combined totals as well as a combined bronze/silver/gold rating for how well your combined scores on the game were

7/14: v0.9.3 posted!

• Added two new chiptune loops bring total to 5 in game and 1 menu loop.
• Major overhaul of the music sampling rate and sound effects sampling rates. Also did another pass on balancing music and sound effects volume.
• Cut init time down to 3 seconds from 4.

7/13: v0.9.1 posted!

• BUG FIX: Fixed bug where game would replay the swf intro again when closing leaderboards

7/13: v0.9.1 posted!

• Added my preloader
• Added studio intro
• BUG FIX: A lot of the creatures had stopped smiling when the twin was found but they are smiling again
• BUG FIX: The penalty visual flash on time UI wasn't clearning right, also standardized it to red.
• Made it so every song will play in a random order without repeating until they have all played. This way I can add more tracks and people won't get repeats till they've heard them all at least. Currently just 3 loops and one menu loop.
• Added thin border around menu screens because on sites with white backgrounds it looked awful
• Moved loading of APIs to during Initializing phase of preloader so that background net lag spikes wouldn't visually lag the intros/main menu animations

7/12: v0.9 posted!

• Composed 5 new 30-40 second chiptune loops and put them in the game!
• Fixed version string mess up on pause menu.
• Discovered I was only using 3 of 6 available jump/happy noises and made sure they are all active now.
• Added a limiter to the amount of happy noises that will play because on levels with 10+ creatures it is a little overwhelming/annoying when they all go off combined.

7/11: v0.8.3 posted!

• Implemented pause menu with q/restart/help functionality
• Reworked in game UI a little bit to layout better / be less blurry
• Added a '?' icon to in game UI (same as hitting ESC)
• Added a visual notification to new star medals one on level complete screen (they pulse) This was to draw attention when you unlock a new one versus when they are already unlocked

7/11: v0.8.2 posted!

• BUG FIX: Challenge complete screen had two bugs with how it was displaying the star medals--should be correct now. The challenge select screen was correctly displaying the medals though.

7/11: v0.8 posted!

• Major version number bump because this thing is almost finished and I need playtesting feedback on how far/fun/easy/hard people are finding the six challenges.
• Implemented full gold/silver/bronze medal system
• Implemented all the various UI/Menu stuff to support challenge unlocking and various player notifications.
• Locked down the challenges and set some initial settings for earning stars and unlocks (feedback from playtesters welcome!)

v0.8 screenshot (Full challenge and star medal system with unlocks finished!)


7/10: v0.2.7.2 posted!

• Completed all six challenge modes (currently all unlocked)
• Implemented ability for the creatures to hop around on certain challenges
• Implemented goal/target axis flipping on certain challenges
• Implemented offtype creature modes for certain challenges
• Did first pass on challenge order and difficulty balance
• Cleared leaderboard data

v0.2.7.2 screenshot (All Six Challenges Finished--this is "Alien Mixer"!)



7/9: v0.2.6.1 posted!

Made a quick change because of major performance issues I noticed on my older test laptop. Backgrounds and creatures currently won't be color transforming until I can further determine what the heck is up with the lag.

7/9: v0.2.6 posted!

• Created 10 animating backgrounds for use during "Flat" challenge modes
• Made backgrounds not repeat during a particular challenge
• Implemented a new main menu (still work in progress)
• Implemented a new challenge select menu (work in progress.. horrible text content still)
• Implemented a level complete screen with stats
• Each challenge (3 of 6 finished so far) has it's own global leaderboard
• Created challenge unlocking system (all 3 challenges are currently unlocked though in this test version)
• Created save/load challenge data system to keep track of player stats for all challenges
• Made 3 challenges currently (Flat mode with no animating backgrounds, Flat mode with animating backgrounds, Perspective mode with landscape backgrounds)

v0.2.6 screenshot (10 New Animating Flat Mode Backgrounds!)


v0.2.6 screenshot (Challenge Select Menu!)


7/7: v0.2.5 posted!

• Reworked the UI
• Added completely new puzzle mode of Perspective based levels
• Added 10 unique backgrounds for Perspective mode
• Altered the fade ins of the creatures and the backgrounds
• Made some performance improvements on zooming in at level end

v0.2.5 screenshot (New Perspective based puzzle mode!)


7/6: v0.2.1 posted!

• Added the 5th creature type (30 total subtypes right now)
• The 5 creature types will always appear twice currently during the 10 levels
• Slightly adjusted creature amounts and scalings across the 10 levels

v0.2.1 screenshot (5th creature type!)


7/3: v0.1.9 posted!

• Added the 4th creature type (6 more creatures added so 24 total right now)
• Fade in happens over 30 seconds not 45 now
• Wrong click penalty is only 5 seconds now not 10

v0.1.9 screenshot (4th creature type!)


7/3: v0.1.8 posted!

• Added the 3rd creature type (6 more creatures added so 18 total right now)
• Removed (annoying?) 10 second time audio/visual reminder
• Made color fade in of creatures only go to 75% instead of 100% saturation (aesthetics)

v0.1.8 screenshot (3rd creature type!)


7/2: v0.1.7 posted!

• Added 6 more creatures of a second twin type (now there are 2 types, with 6 subtypes each...)
• Re-did all creatures as optimized vector graphics so they will scale good
• Did a bunch of memory leak profiling and fixing
• Currently each level can pick one of two types, still 10 levels

v0.1.7 screenshot (2nd creature type!)



7/1: v0.1.4 posted!

• Changed the way the zoom in transition works when you find the twin
• Made graphics a bit smoother and scale better
• Added animations for Smiling and Frowning
• Made creatures smile, jump and squeak when you find the twin
• Made creatures shake and frown when you pick the wrong one
• Made elapsed time flash the spot color (in case sound is muted) to indicate the interval has gone by (currently 10 seconds) which just helps the user subtly track time passing
• Added 'R' key for Restarting game
• Got depth by Y position sorting working so that the depth of field looks correct when they jump and shake
• BUGFIX: You can no longer kill creatures once you've found the twin during transition

v0.1.4 screenshot


6/30: v0.1.3 posted!

• Added a bunch of initial sound effects
• Added Audio controls to allow mute/unmute

6/30: v0.1.2 posted!

• Removed background fade to gray.
• Added SWFStats to gather useful play analytics data to study gameplay and improve it!

6/30: v0.1.1 posted!

• Added minute long random color transformations to creatures and background to add visual change while playing
• Added screen pan and zoom onto found twin at end of each level for fun effect
• Added a disintegrate effect when you click on the wrong creature. Since you are penalized (10 seconds currently) for clicking on the wrong creature I figured I might as well clear the playing field of them in case you are doing it to reduce the options and just move onto the next level (at quite a time cost though...)
• Horizontal scale flipping now randomly occurs as well to add visual variety (the twin and goal will always be flipped the same way though!)
• BUGFIX: Fixed text wrap problem on game over screen where time would be cut off sometimes
• BUGFIX: Fixed problem that let you click a ton to advance / cheat (thanks György Straub)

Next: More creatures and other art!

v0.1.1 screenshot


6/29: v0.1 posted! Managed to spend about 9 hours today getting the first playable prototype finished. It let me prove out some of my concepts with more to come tomorrow!

v0.1 screenshot


6/28: picked my case art!

[belbeeno]

I'm looking forward to playing as the squatting guy in the bottom right.

[HybridMind]

I'm looking forward to playing as the squatting guy in the bottom right.

He caught my eye as well!

[Inanimate]

Top left guy felt like a protagonist to me.

[HybridMind]

As I vaguely tried to hint at in the game's description above I am probably going to try and base the game on visual recognition mechanics. 

I hope to make a small, fun, and simple visual recognition game (not a "memory" game though) that will feature heavily stylized and humorous sounds, animation, and line art drawings of the various Twins. 

I am starting to imagine various mechanics to increase the difficulty as levels progress.  Starting off with smaller amount of creatures perhaps I can introduce dopplegangers where you will have to watch for a particular quirk or 'tick' of personality to correctly identify the other twin.

Initial basic idea of score being tied to how quickly your aggregate game time goes on finding all the lost twins across the levels with penalty time given for selecting wrong creatures.

I hope to find some fun twists along the way and since I don't have a ton of time this month because of a couple other game projects I needed a game scope that was small.

I'll keep posting updates as I go though.

[ChevyRay]

ahaha these guys are great. I look forward to what you do with it, HybridMind.

[HybridMind]

Alrighty.. got up early today and time to get started on this game.  First up breaking out the tablet to do my own take on creature art for the game.  I think I want to still keep it B&W line art style because that is what caught my eye in the first place about 'Twins'. 

I wrote down a bunch more of my ideas since last night and sleeping on the concept as well and I'm excited about implementing this game. Hope it turns out fun!

[HybridMind]

My current thinking is that I will create a whole bunch of Twin subtypes.  Then I can pick at random from any subtype and I can intelligently populate the remainder of the screen with look alikes from that subtype which should add to visual distraction.  I can of course also add some fun twins from other subtypes too.

I plan on having each drawing have an idle animation and maybe a "twitch" animation that will be used later perhaps but that will be there initially for visual fun only. 

[HybridMind]

Here is a little animation test I threw together demonstrating 4 frames of animation across 6 variants of twin type #1.

[LiquidAsh]

These look great!  I don't suppose you'll have them walking around?  I don't know whether that would make the challenge in your idea too hard, but I would love to see a whole screen of these guys wandering around and carrying on.

[HybridMind]

These look great!  I don't suppose you'll have them walking around?  I don't know whether that would make the challenge in your idea too hard, but I would love to see a whole screen of these guys wandering around and carrying on.

I am hoping to experiment with them occasionally wandering. I do worry it may make it a bit hard but depending on how I do the levels on this there may be some levels that just feature wandering as the prime deterrent.

[HybridMind]

v0.1 screenshot


Managed to spend about 9 hours today getting the first playable prototype finished. It let me prove out some of my concepts with more to come tomorrow!

Play version 0.1 in your browser

How to play

• Look for the twin on each level
• Click on the correct twin to advance
• 10 second penalty for clicking wrong
• Less time the better!

Supports online leaderboards.

Can't wait to work more on this tomorrow and add even more crazy creature types!!!

[Eraser]

Fun little game so far. They're all annoyingly similar 

[Galaxy613]

It's like where's waldo except slightly unsettling.

Keep at it. :D

[HybridMind]

It's like where's waldo except slightly unsettling.

Keep at it. :D

I hope at the end it will be REALLY unsettling.

[Soulliard]

#3 and #4 look a little too similar, I think.

[HybridMind]

#3 and #4 look a little too similar, I think.

Oh I know I HATE those guys! Currently it doesn't pick the Goal from #s 5 and 6 though because I found them to stand out way too much.  You can only get 1-4 currently and it uses the remainder as distractions.

Once I get more animating creatures in tomorrow I'll be continuing to test what is fun/annoying along with a few other mechanics for scaling difficulty as well as interest/attention from the player.

I hope to support MANY of the creature types from the Famicase art along with their eerie variants.

[Inanimate]

Looks amazing! The game was actually surprisingly fun.

[Snow]

Amazing how you got it made so fast. That was actually fun. I got the second highest score in the world on it. :D 1:34 min. WOOT! I like these kinds of games. Extremely simple and a pleasure to play.

[levelbylevel]

Loved it fun game