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[Kevin]

Hi. How's it going? I'm new! I've been lurking around here, on and off, for quite a while, but this Commonplace Book thing was to good to pass up. So here we go... a game in progress (which I might actually finish. Hooray!

It's based on entry 92:

"Man’s body dies—but corpse retains life. Stalks about—tries to conceal odour of decay—detained somewhere—hideous climax. [Cool Air]"

Here's the basic idea:
At the moment, it's a pretty common platformer. The cops are after you, known only to them as "a terribly smelly man", for some as-yet-undefined reason. They'll chase you if they catch wind of your stink, which gradually increases with play. the smellier you are, the greater the distance from which the cops can detect you. You can throw collected coins at cops to bribe them into leaving you alone for a while, and collect perfume to temporarily mask your smell. Oh, and don't step in the poo. It won't make matters any better.

Also, zombies for some reason.

It needs some love...
The game's playable at this point, with all of the stuff mentioned above working to some degree. Some stuff needs to be tweaked, more obstacles/pickups/fun need to be added, etc. etc. ... maybe a more developed plot at some point, too.

Old Screens:
http://h1.ripway.com/tremulant/screen02.png
http://h1.ripway.com/tremulant/screen01.png

Current Screens:
Title screen:


Placeholder first level:

[Chaoseed]

Hmmm. Looks okay so far...but you seem to have focused on the "stench" aspect, instead of the "dead walking" aspect. If I were you I would have more stuff about, you know, the protagonist being dead. Maybe he's the result of a failed revivification experiment, and he's searching out the stuff that will allow him to really come back to life. In each level he's searching out some sort of item and then going back to his base to 're-preserve' himself so he doesn't smell as much. So you're trying to finish each level before your smell gets you caught. (Or you could have it so that when you decay too much you actually die...but it seems like you really want to focus more on the smell aspect, which is perfectly fine, so you can stick with that.) And then maybe in one level something chases you out of your lab before you have the chance to completely de-smell, so you start off with your "smell bar" halved.

Just some random ideas, what do you think?

[N]

I loved those screens!
I want to play!

[JasonPickering]

art style looks awesome but on the main character he doesnt look like soemthing that would stink horribly, he looks like he should be the green skinned zombie.

[captainbinky]

Perhaps he gets progressively more zombie-ish..?

[godsavant]

Originally, as you got dead-er, the sprite would change, but that lead to like 15 or so main character sprites. It's not difficult, but it's messy I'll probably throw it back in before I'm done.

He could just turn progressively paler shades of green. Palette swapping ftw.

[Chaoseed]

I wouldn't post ideas if I weren't okay with them actually, you know, being used. Go ahead and steal anything I say in your thread.

...By the way, if you look at the CPB quote, it says "[Cool Air]" at the end. That's an HPL story that uses the idea. You might want to read it...or you might just want to stick with your own ideas and not let the story influence you. It's up to you, really.

[Reecer6]

Before you remake the sprite-changing, please show it to us.

[deadeye]

This game looks damn sweet.  I want it NOW

[sereneworx]

I'd like to say that the reason I don't play many indie games is that the artsyle seems too busy with lots of clashing colours. What you've done is perfect. You've found a fantastic midground between simple and stylistic. Wonderful. I look forward to playing this, no matter where you go with the gameplay.

[Rory]

a suspiciously over-informed homeless man

Maybe someone who worked on you but was fired from the facility? Or who worked there on something else and found out about you, making him decide to leave, but the facility tried to kill him so now he's become a nobody to survive.

[Cray]

I love your art style Kevin, it's pretty awesome. Great work with the logo too!

Are you going to work the "detained somewhere" element into the gameplay too somewhere besides the plot?

[moshboy]

This is looking charming so far. Definitely want to see more.

[increpare]

Ah well. It's, like, 85% done but there's too much left to do/polish/etc before the deadline which has already passed probably.

Ah, a pity indeed.  I'm quite sorry to hear that dude; the game had a good look to it :/ I look forward to seeing it when it emerges: you have a reasonably good mechanic going on

[captainbinky]

OH NOES! I was really looking forward to this one - I love your pixel art, it looks adorable 

Good luck with the rest of it - I hope you find time to finish it off.