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[Rebusmind]

Are you having any difficulties developing to all 3 in parallel? Looks sweet on all 3 and I can see that you've spent a great deal of time on rendering / scaling to any resolution - the iPad clipping the sea makes it quite obvious...

Game Maker: Studio makes it very easy to develop for the three platforms. I just got the Windows Phone device (never had one before) and it literally worked after five minutes. And yes, the game works independent of the screen resolution. Of course there is some clipping involved, but it really works well with the game mechanics.

This week I've been working more on the world map. Some features were still missing like being able to choose your path whenever it splits up. Unfortunately I had to code the whole thing again to add the flexibility I needed, but now it's done.

Jussi also has been working on the next level, the Dark Forest, which is right next to the Light Forest. The story behind this is that the Horde once attacked the kingdom and hid inside this forest, cursing it for the centuries to come. Now it is a haunted place filled with strange shadows and glowing eyes.

Here are two of the enemies you will encounter in the Dark Forest.


Moonlight Flower - This carnivore plant has thorny vines growing all over the place, making it hard to progress. It can even create other flowers when the vine grew long enough, so make sure to cut it off as fast as you can.


Will-o'-the-Wisp - No one really knows where these strange lights come from, but they appear out of nowhere and can be hard to kill. Legends say that they hold the souls of the men who died in this forest as their eternal prisoners.

[Rebusmind]

Sorry for the long absence, I've been working on (and fighting with) the new SwapQuest website and it's finally finished.

So please take a look and leave feedback!

SwapQuest Website

In other news, I'm also preparing some things for the upcoming Amaze Festival in Berlin. Like these cards. But don't get too excited, there's no SwapQuest board game in the making (yet ).

[gambrinous]

Really like those swapquest tiles! Where'd you get them printed? Is this for your stand, just to make things more interesting?

I'm bringing my game to Insomnia in the UK next month and have ZERO marketing materials.. might steal your idea!

I met these guys at GDC last week and they've done up an entire board game version of their game to prototype with. As a bonus it looks totally sweet as a stand prop!

[Rebusmind]

@gambrinous
I printed them at PosterXXL, a german printing company. Basically it's 'just' a photo memo game, but as I just needed a handful of different tiles, it was enough for me.

If you should 'steal my idea' I'd really like to see pictures. :D

And yeah, I will put these tiles together with some other props on the table and people can play around with it.

[Rebusmind]

Finally I can show you something new. It's the vine that grows from the Moonlight Flower in the Dark Forest. It slowly grows over the level and creates a new flower eventually. The vine can be cut by the hero, though.

Hope you like it.

[Windybeard]

What a great idea! Looking forward to this!

[Rebusmind]

I've been working some more on the Dark Forest. There are two new objects.

First there's a strange hole that emits an even stranger mist that you should avoid. Also a strong enemy emerges near those holes. It is invisible as long as you don't fight it, but you can still see its shadow on the ground.

The second is a mysterious eye that appears out of nowhere and you have to touch it fast enough before it disappears again to get some extra jewels.

When I was not working on the actual game I had some more fun with this:

[Rebusmind]

I made a little gif showing all the status effects that are currently in the game.

Paralysis: randomly paralyses you when moving or in battle
Confusion: the hero will randomly choose a direction at forks and you cannot stop him
Blindness: the hero has a 50% chance of missing the enemy
Poison: the hero loses some life from time to time

[nikolaus]

I have an urge to play this.

[marcuz]

I've tried it at A Maze last friday, it is a great little game!
 

[Rebusmind]

@marcuz
Thanks a lot for stopping by and playing SwapQuest!

@all
Yeah, I was at the A Maze festival last week to show SwapQuest to as many people as possible and had a great time doing so! I got a lot of great feedback and it was fun meeting new people to talk about game dev.
Here's a little snapshot from the awesome mobile games piano! (it was kind of a mess after a few days...)

[Rebusmind]

I made a subreddit for SwapQuest, so if you want to subscribe there click on the image below. I still have to figure out what the best way to use it is, but hopefully I will be able to get more attention for the project there.

Made some changes to the way the hero reacts when a tile is swapped right in front of him (before you weren't allowed to swap tiles that the hero wants to walk on). Additionally, the character now stops immediately when touched (before he would walk to the center of the next tile first, but that confused A LOT of people).

[Rebusmind]

Here's a little sneak peek of the first boss that you encounter in the forest.

It's a giant bug that has been transformed by the Horde to aid them in their cause. It spits goo that slows you down, jumps around and throws bombs at you. But how you defeat it you'll have to find out for yourselves when the time comes.

[Rebusmind]

I've implemented a progress bar today that shows you how far you've come in the level, as some folks have been wondering about that as they played. Not as exciting as a boss battle, but a neat new feature (which you can also disable in the options if you don't need it).

For those of you that are wondering why the marker on the bar is not moving constantly: the progress is determined by the rows of tiles that have left the screen, so only then a new progress value is calculated.

[Rebusmind]

I've been working more on the first boss, especially the balancing of the difficulty, as I kept losing.

Here's a longer gif showing what it will be like to fight him (although the actual strategy is not revealed... )

[Rebusmind]

I've been working on the next level, a village under attack by the horde. This means you can enter houses (which are a bit empty right now, but will get stuff like chairs and tables you can destroy) and there will be fire and explosions! :D

Here a little teaser.

[Hypnohustla]

This is really one of the coolest game concepts I've seen in a long time. Can't wait to play it. And Jussis pixelart looks awesome as usual

[Rebusmind]

The new level is complete now, only some balancing needs to be done. The level is the most action-packed so far and for the first time you will fight weaker minions of the Horde. There's also a lot of fire that you have to keep an eye on so that you don't find yourself surrounded by flames. But see for yourself.

From now on, I will concentrate mostly on creating new levels, as most of the features are already in the game.
Some great news on a more technical matter: I finally found out what was making the game perform very poorly on my Galaxy S1 smartphone (and other older devices) and now it works like a charm. Yay!

 

[Rebusmind]

I'm really surprised, but we managed to create a new level in a week. If we can keep this up, the game might actually be finished this year!

So, the next level is the Graveyard (it belongs to the destroyed village, which is the level before that). The graveyard has a more spooky vibe to it, with constant rain, lightning bolts, zombies and other 'terrifying' monsters. The new thing in this level is that all the monsters can move to a different position and they all have their own rules for it. Just check the gifs below to get an impression of the enemy behavior.

[edmundmk]

I absolutely love this idea!  You guys are geniuses.  Puzzle games need some characters and plot - for example, Puzzle Quest is one of my favourites.  And I haven't seen this game mechanic used like this before.

The graveyard looks awesome, especially the weather effects.  Can't wait to play it!