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[Indie4Fun]

A few months ago we had a big problem with the combat mechanics. We had only a basic attack for the main character. We thought that with one single attack  would be enough. Then, we invited a friend of us to try a prototype. His words were brutally sincere: the game is not fun. Killing enemies consists only in standing still and spamming the attack key.

After recovering from his opinion, we created a more complex attack system based on secondary attacks and some simple and nice combos.

First of all, we nerfed the normal weapon: simple attack spam should not be effective. We added a delay between bursts of three attacks and removed the area effect of the weapon. Now if the enemies come in groups the player will have some problems

In order to help Izzy to surpass this significative nerf, we gave her additional movements. Our first one was a kick, makes little damage but it is really effective to move enemies away:

Thanks to these changes, the combat gained a lot of depth and became much funnier:

[Indie4Fun]

In order to recover health along the game, we intoruced a first aid dispenser as one of the inventions of the Apothecary guild:

You can find their machines on every corner of the city, specially the rich districts. Thankfully, these machines are not very though and can be 'sabotaged' quite easily. Izzy can use them to recover health along all the game:

As curiosity, we though about make the item usable, but after some testing, most people hitted it first. So we made that Izzy should hit it in order to recover health. We think that is funnier also

[karlozalb]

I agree, It's funnier. It's like Street Fighter car bonus stage xD

[Indie4Fun]

In addition to kicking enemies, we added also to Izzy the ability to raise enemies.

When Izzy raises an enemy, she jumps with him. At this moment a combo of up to three hits starts: while both Izzy and an enemy are on air the attacks are much more effective:

With this we try to encourage the user to make more complicated attacks rather than just normal attacks:

Finally, we made Izzy to stand on air while doing the combo, this made easier to do the combo and it looked really nice.

[AidenBainsGames]

I remember seeing stuff about this game on Twitter quite a while ago. Seeing it again now, and it still looks cool :D

The animation is really smooth and those advert posters you made are very striking.

Will be following this thread for updates

[Indie4Fun]

Thanks for your support! . Making smooth animations with traditional techniques is a pain in the ass, but we totally love the result!

[Jad]

aw wow I looked at page one and didn't realize this thread is 4 pages long.

Anyways I took a look at the death animation and I think it's lacking timing

so I put some timing in, a 10 minute edit. I'm sorry for editing things without even asking first. It is simply how I roll.

[Indie4Fun]

OMG, I have to say that I totally agree. We had some problems with that animation since the begginning. Thanks a lot for your help!!!!!! We totally will use your improvements (if you allow us )

There is another interesting fact about that death. Although it is quite spectacular, it was problematic in several cases, specially when Izzy got killed while she is on air or when she gets hit by a rocket.

We created another animation that, although it is not so cool, it never looks weird:

But, with your improvements we will revive that old death sequence for some special case  

[Jad]

think about how the distance between the same element across frames affects the timing and make sure that things accelerate from standing still. If the distance between the, say, head, is the same between frames, the animation will be stiff. (in the cases where you'd expect acceleration, that is)

When it comes to falling down, for example, you'll expect it to move slower (pictures closer together) in the beginning and then speed up (pictures further apart).

You'll also want the motion energy to dissipate in a way that makes sense when it meets an obstacle at a high speed. As in the case of, say, hitting the ground after falling. You'll want some kind of bounceback to increase the sense of impact. People are pretty elastic, too (I mean, sinew and muscles) and fat is bouncy, so people absolutely bounce a bit!

Also in the animation I made, I just squash/stretched the body a bit as she hits the floor. This is in no way realistic, but it conveys the sense of weight and impact you need to really get what's going on.

[Indie4Fun]

Jad, thanks a lot! Our animator fell in love with you with your explanation . She found it extremely useful.

[Indie4Fun]

Finally, we added to Izzy one final attack: throwing enemies to the floor. When she does that, a small impact area appears, hitting all enemies arround.

This attack can also be used not only in combination with the rising enemies attack, but also when falling from high places. This attack can be tricky to do sometimes as some timing is required. Otherwise, if done properly, it is quite effective, specially against groups of enemies.

[Indie4Fun]

After adding all these movements, we asked a couple of friends to try again the first level. It looked funnier, but it still had a problem, the gameplay was a bit repetitive. Finishing the first level took to them about 15 minutes, and the gameplay was limited to chaining combos to kill the same enemy type.

So, we needed to redo the first level with more stuff. We decided to introduce miniboss fights along the game levels. These minibosses will help us to explain better the game story with some dialogue with Izzy, and will present a new challenge to the player.

For the first level we created a security tank that holds the needed key to go to the second half of the level:

[Indie4Fun]

The tank miniboss has a projectile launcher that makes massive explosive damage.

Programming the AI for launching rockets was really interesting. The projectiles have a ballistic trajectory, so the AI has to calculate it in order to detect the impact point.

In addition, we wanted to do some basic position prediction (the tank shoots at where you will be), this made the maths slightly more complicated, but now fighting him is a pain in the ass: if you walk straight-line you will be dead soon:

Here you are some gameplay example:

[EdFarage]

May i suggest flashing for a better indication of damage?
Also, good project 

[Indie4Fun]

Hi! thanks a lot!

Yes, I agree that all the blood sprites and animations are a bit too discreet, we have to improve them u.u

[Indie4Fun]

Recently finished to add a new enemy for the airship guild: the shotgun bird

Killing him is not specially hard, but this enemy is quite good as support enemy, making combats a bit more challenging

[Indie4Fun]

Hello there!

A few weeks ago, we managed to have a complete prototype of the game, about of 15 minutes of gameplay.

We are now totally focused on making a Kickstarter campaign in order to get some funding an keep the development on.

We plan to do a totally illustrated video. The video will consist on several animated drawn scenes that explains the game plot and some fast-paced ingame action that shows the game mechanics.

I have to say, it is quite frustrating when you try to do a (as nice as possible) illustrated kickstarter video with little experience. A lot of manuals reading, lots of drawing, lots of try-and-fail and several nights without sleep slowly gives some results (WIP):

 

[Indie4Fun]

Oh my god. I never could imagine how complicated could be to launch a Kickstarter campaign for people living outside US.

It took us more than 4 months to be ready to go. It has been so frustrating.

We have been working with a friend of us who has a residence card. He offered us to be an intermediary in order to ask the kickstarter and help us. He had to set up a company there and open a bank account for linking it with amazon payments.

We worked really hard in order to have the campaign in time for middle October. But all the needed paperwork in order to set up a company and a bank account there delayed us. So we endend up with a finished campaign that could not be set live.

The 1st december arrived. We could not launch during christmas, so we had to delay again the campaign until January.

In mid January, the kickstarter payment method change from amazon to Stripe. That made thing a little bit more complicated: The bank account we had linked with amazon payments was not valid for Stripe (it was set as a saving account I think) and more paperwork was needed. Our friend had to go to the bank in person. Thank god he already planned to go to the US for other reasons.

After all, after so many months of depressing uncertainty we will have an answer (positive or negative) from the community. At least now the campaign is again in our hands and we can get back to work on it.


So, we are finishing the press kits and we will launch next week   

[Indie4Fun]

Well, first days of KS. I will be honest, by now we know that It's gonna be hard to make it, but we are not going to stop fighting.

We have been working really hard for a few days. And we have learned really valuable lessons. These are some things we should payed more attention:

(1)
Your game has to be quite unique in some way. Excel visually (KS like hollow knight, darkest dungeon), or have really special mechanics. Some people told us that our game has nothing that attracted attention , it looks OK but it is just as a platformer, nothing special.
Many people complained about the graphic style. Too bland. Other people complained about the huge difference of the graphic style between the video cutscenes and the ingame scenes.

We are working hard on this. We are preparing a huge update with a revisited graphic style and a lot of cool concept art.


(2)
Press kits, have to be short, have to go right to the point, must have some nice links to any info the editor will need. The first PK wave we sent had too much info and nobody posted anything about us. For the second wave we made it much shorter, something like this:
Topic:  

Izzy’s Revenge, a steampunk comic style 2D platformer, is on Kickstarter.

Hi, mi name is María Ramirez and I’m part of a young game studio placed in Valence. We just launched a crowdfunding campaign for our first game: Izzy’s Revenge.

Izzy’s Revenge is a 2D action platformer game based on exploration with a combo-based fast paced combat, set in a steampunk universe.  Everything in the game is illustrated with cartoon style.

Game Features

• Steampunk, illustrated environments.
• Fast paced and combo-based combat system.
• Exploration and secret items.
• 15 different weapons.
• Unlockable movement and combat abilities for Izzy.
• Hard final bosses.
• Minibosses in each level.

Campaign link: http://kck.st/1vNv3M5

More about us and our work
You can access to some images and gifs and other stuff here http://indie4fun.sitedrop.com
PDF presskit: http://indie4fun.sitedrop.com/PressKit/PressKit.pdf
You can also check our website if you wish: http://indie4fun.com

Greetings.

This new PK worked worked much better, we got some coverage.
Another reason we though first presskit wave was useles is because we sent it two days before KS. The second wave was just sent the day after KS launch.
ATM we got nice coverage from local (spanish) videogame webpages. Only small/medium size international webs wrote something about us. No big page were interested in our game.
We still have serious visibility problems that need to be addressed.

(3)
Contacting other indie groups asking for feedback and spreading the word is a good idea. Most of the will not answer you, but those who answer, gave us  really valuable and sincere feedback. Special mention to ‘project rainworld’, he answered very quickly and his answer was quite useful!

(4)
A KS takes a full month! Don’t work too hard! The first two days we didn’t sleep at all. You just can’t do this long term without tragic consequences, so just take it easy.  In my case, I work in a local videogame studio, so in addition to the KS stress, I have to work in my regular job, I just could not stand such amount of work for more than a few days.  


In short term, we will do some major updates to the campaign, correcting flaws and adding a lot images with improved visuals. We want also to improve the rewards section.


Overall, it is becoming an amazing experience, but also really stressful. As my personal opinion, even if we don’t make it, It worth the effort. I learned so many things. We’ve received great feedback from awesome people such as Moon Hunters developers. Even a few dozens of people payed money to a game we are making, that's kinda cool!
 

[Zorg]

You should put the kickstarter link in your signatures. Good luck with the campaign!