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[tweiller]

Hi guys! I'm from JoyMasher and we are the guys who made

. We have always wanted to post about Oniken developing in here but, you know, we got a bit shy (and also a bit lazy) and end up never doing it. 

We are developing a new title called Odallus and we decided that this non-TIG existence had to end!

Today, we released Odallus Demo (PC only for now) and an IndieGoGo campaign and we loved to know what you think about the demo.

We went for a Demon's Crest/Castlevania/Ghost'n Goblins feel and gameplay, which is quite different from Oniken. Also, we are willing to make it more non-linear (not a metroidvania per se, because we will have stages, but not as linear as Oniken).








Thanks for your time!

TL;DR
What did you thought about the the Demo? Controllers worked? Any bugs on your computer? How did the game felt like?

QUICK LINKS
Odallus page
Demo
IndieGoGo

[moi]

you should talk about your in-devellopment games earlier, because I have played oniken and I had a lot of constructive criticism to say about it.
Anyway I'll try the demo for this one.

[TheGrandHero]

Thanks a lot for sharing the demo with us! I really enjoyed it.

• The controller worked fine for me. Control-wise everything feels solid, other than the fact that the alt-weapons are clumsy to use and took me a long time to figure out. Granted, I'm not sure how else to do it with an NES-style setup.
• Chests are unintuitive. It took me awhile to figure out you have to duck and hit them with the sword. Will there be any explanation of how to do this in the final version of the game?
• Jumping feels good, but the screen is usually too high to reliably jump down to a lower section. I usually end up hitting something and taking damage because I can't see where I'm going to land.
• I like the enemy variety. Each one feels really unique and has to be dealt with differently. Maybe it feels more like this in the demo because you've put several levels together, but I really do hope that the final game has a similar variety of enemies in each level.
• When fighting the fire-throwing magicians, so long as I'm right in front of them and smacking them in the face with my sword I never took any damage from them. Is this intentional?
• I really like the size and detail of the graphics, but I don't personally care for the modern effects (like underwater) and parallax scrolling because it clashes too much with the 8-bit style for my tastes. Other obviously disagree, though. Just my two cents.
• When I got to the game over screen, no matter what I did I couldn't select either one of the options using the gamepad (the keyboard didn't seem to work for it either).
• For the record, I would like more non-linearity, yes.

Really enjoyed what you have so far. Looking forward to seeing where this goes.

[Little Nando]

Welcome to the forum guys!!! Such great game!!

[Games Inquirer]

Looks great.

[tweiller]

Thanks everyone for the warm response! :D

I understand some would like to discuss Oniken and I'd love to do so, but since it is already launched and we are not going to change anything on it soon, can we leave it to another topic in the near future please? ♥ Thanks!

-Glad the controllers worked fine! About the weapons, I felt they were a bit rushed up in the demo perhaps. Our plan is to introduce one weapon each stage, so player will have more time to understand it and get used to it.
-We though about adding a buttom-hint on it, the problem is that there is no standard on how attack buttons com PC controllers look and we didn't wanted to write id down "DUCK AND PRESS ATTACK BUTTON". We are thinking about putting the first chest on a block, near zombies, so player accidentally attack chest and figures it out by himself, but we yet gave to try it.
-Camera is still not 100% ok, we will look into that!
-Final game will have a lot more enemies, believe me, we had to choose the ones to show in it ahahaha
Like this guy here
-Yeap! Most projectiles in Odallus can be destroyed by your attacks, it's a way to reward player's attack skill. That's also why the magician withdraws when you approaches him.
-I understand your point, but we tried to use NES limitations even there. We have a max of 3 parallax layers, like VICE Project Doom, and the water effect is similar to a boss effect used in Shattered Hand. But yeah, these games were exceptions and those effects were really rare on NES, so it makes total sense it feeling weird to you.
-That was a nasty bug we had fixed ages ago and didn't realized it had come back in the recent days! It's now fixed and the demo on http://keyo.me/odallus/OdallusDemo.exe should work fine now!
-Let's see about that soon ♥

[moi]

just one word about oniken:
lofi/retro is a great style for art asset but it sucks when it is applied to gameplay/playability

[TheGrandHero]

I understand your point, but we tried to use NES limitations even there. We have a max of 3 parallax layers, like VICE Project Doom, and the water effect is similar to a boss effect used in Shattered Hand. But yeah, these games were exceptions and those effects were really rare on NES, so it makes total sense it feeling weird to you.

In Vice: Project Doom, the "layers" never overlapped, though.

Guess I'll just have to pretend this is a late NES game with a special graphics chip in it. XD

That was a nasty bug we had fixed ages ago and didn't realized it had come back in the recent days! It's now fixed and the demo on http://keyo.me/odallus/OdallusDemo.exe should work fine now!

Think I'll give it another go, then. I'm not partial to "Nintendo Hard" sorts of games, but I actually enjoyed what I played fairly well. The balance seemed fair from what I played and, other than not being able to see where I landed all the time, almost all my deaths felt like my own fault (which is good).

[Games Inquirer]

I just got up to the demo's boss and got a game over on my first try, I had lost all my lives before that I guess. It's a nice game. I don't think any of it is unintuitive, bashing chests came naturally to me but I guess you could add a prompt when near a chest like you have the up arrow prompt to talk to the NPC. Sub weapons are simple and fine.

You might also want to add a casual gamer mode that gives you infinite lives (but doesn't alter anything else so you still have to actually beat a level/boss with some skill). Unlockables/scores etc could be disabled in that for incentive to get better in the normal mode (with the game making clear you miss out on those things when you start casual).

By the way, since you said it's level based, does this mean we'll have to get the power ups for every stage, or are those permanent? It might be annoying to hunt down the same items for the same purpose in every level. Or not.

Also, is it normal behaviour to retain power ups you got after the last checkpoint when you die and return to it? Is it like a respawn function? That might make my casual mode suggestion a bit too easy/exploitable.

Finally, the options seemed broken for me, I couldn't change any visual settings (like fullscreen or vsync) or remap the gamepad so I played with the keyboard, which I guess isn't so great for such a game.

[TheGrandHero]

Just tried the new build you guys uploaded, and I do like that climbing up ledges is optional now. It seems like a minor thing, and doesn't appear to have any real effect on gameplay, but it just feels a little more polished now because of it. Though I would like it if you could use the jump button to pull yourself up.

Also, how many hits does the boss take? I beat him, but the battle seemed a little on the long side. Also, can you make it so that you always get knocked away from the boss? If you turn around and get hit from the back, you get "pulled in". (By the way, I did like how you give a good idea of how the icicles work on the way to the boss.)

Also, a question: in the full version of the game, will you be able to go back to old levels to look for things you missed on the first time through? I'm guessing from the "return to world map" option on the menu that you can.

[joseph ¯\_(ツ)_/¯]

Lovely art guys! I'll try your demo out.

Edit, some feedback:

• The animations are hit or miss, the way his cape moves is really stiff and inconsistent from animation to animation. Looks retro, but also looks bad. The sprites themselves are awesome though.
  
• The currents in water feel absolutely atrocious, I got pushed into an urchin off of a one tile block like, three times in a row, the mixture of limited air control and oddly fast current makes it really hard to make any jumps or dodge any enemy attacks. Is it intended to be that aggravating?
• Why can I hang from immobile platforms, but not the moving, floating platforms?
• I liked the torch weapon a lot, seems to deal much more damage on a direct hit than it does with the flames? Fun to use.
• The bad wizard guys who shoot fireballs were fun to fight, timing their blasts and blocking them with your sword is satisfying.
• The level felt kindof aimless, I didn't end up finishing it, got to the necklace up on top past the second water area and got lost.

[basnih]

Played the demo and I really enjoyed it.  
Gameplay is excellent and very challenging. I liked that every enemy has a different way to be defeated (favorites: the pryromancer, the sea monster, underwater monsters, the worms).
Loved the art direction, details like corpses hanged, the details of the save points, the pushing blocks, enemies, the enviroment, the color palette gives that atmosphere that looked superb.
Good job guys!, keep it up!.