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[joeyspacerocks]

Spooky Pooky is a 2D metroidvania for PC, Mac and iOS set for release in 2016.

Horatio Bones is a curious lad.

Working late one night at the Nefarious Science Corporation he strays into a deserted sector and unwittingly triggers ... The Machine.

The Machine strips Horatio of his fluids and organs ~ he finds himself reduced to a living skeleton trapped in a specimen jar!

The horror!

Thus begins the longest night of Horatio's life as he travels through a dangerous and bizarre world in search of Restoration.

Some samples from the latest devlog entry are as follows ...





Presskit, mailing list and out-of-date GIFs can be found at http://fistfulofsquid.com/spookypooky

Finally, the original first post follows below ...


Spooky Pooky is a 2D platfomer with big pixels and 16 colours. That's right, the 1980's are back with a vengeance.





As with QB1-0 this game is written in C, initially for iOS, and OpenGL for pixels.





You play [unnamed protagonist] who stumbles across a mysterious castle/lab. Pressing buttons you shouldn't you are accidentally pookified by The Machine - all your flesh, blood and organs are stripped and scattered around the forbidding building. You must traverse the levels collecting blood and organs whilst avoiding the other macabre experiments that roam the facility.

Honest, it's not as gruesome as it sounds - not with my pixel-art skills ...

Y'know, it's for kids.

[tieTYT]

Overall, I like the art but I have 2 complaints:

1. It's easy to see the vertical seam between the tiles of the walls
2. I don't like the way your character looks. 

I'm hoping this is constructive, that's my intent. 

[joeyspacerocks]

Thanks for commenting, that's why I'm here

The art is definitely a work in progress - I quite like the way he looks front facing (it's quite a ZX Spectrum look) but not sure about the side views.

As for the walls - I'm sure they didn't look like that the other day

[Bobert]

the simple graphics are pretty charming. i'm just worried that with a field of vision so small players might constantly run into obstacles that they couldn't see from off-screen. i guess it's just a matter of being careful with the level design, really

oh, and i like the title

[joeyspacerocks]

Yes that's one of my concerns - if I keep the same view I'll need to be careful with the level design - perhaps more puzzle orientated than arcade.

It's just after dealing with retina vector graphics for my last game I really fancied doing something with BIG pixels ...

Plus I know my artistic limitations.

[joeyspacerocks]

Fixed the tiling bug and experimented with changing the scale.



I like big pixels, but there's no getting away from the fact that a larger view area gives me a lot more level design options.

NB. this isn't a 'real' level - just some tiles thrown together to play-test with

[ndke]

Looks great so far!
One thing I noticed: when the character goes up, the background moves but it looks like it stutters.
I'm going to follow this.

[joeyspacerocks]

@ndke - thanks!

So here's the thing - like an idiot I'm being a bit of a purist. The big pixels aren't just for show - that is the actual resolution of the render surface. The background is rendered with parallax so it often ends up siting on fractional pixel boundaries ... hence the slight stuttering.

It's not actually as bad as the poor gif fps makes it look, but it's still noticeable, so I've not yet decided what to do about it.

[ndke]

So are you drawing the background at rounded coordinates?
If so, It might be better if you draw it at floored or ceiled coordinates, I think that'll stop the stuttering...

[joeyspacerocks]

Ah got it - I think it's my embryonic camera system messing things about (I am flooring the coords before rendering).

Added it to the list

[joeyspacerocks]

Which is faster? Glaciers or continental drift? Either way, they're both faster than my development of Spooky Pooky ...

So, what have I done since the last time?

* Revamped protagonist sprites and walk cycle
* Freshening up of some of the tiles
* Added water levels so that areas can be drained and filled with water
* Reworked water to be rendered via a shader - currently looks exactly the same as straight-forward tiles, but will allow me to do something more interesting next



What haven't I done?

* Made it into a game ...

That is to say I've succumbed to spending too long messing about with sprites and tiles and basically avoiding the more important business of fleshing out the game play. So next up is ... organ collection.

The game revolves around collecting all the blood vials on each level, plus the body part that sits in the Organ Incubator .. first up is some terrible pixel art resembling a 'human' heart - once broken free of the machine it'll bounce about like an errant puppy requiring you to chase after it to complete the level.



Or something like that.

[ndke]

The thing that I find a bit weird is that the heart has a blue line in it. I personally think it looks like someone cut in the heart with a knife.

The water looks great, but sometimes the air particles get out of the water and  because it goes out of the water it looks like the water is boiling.
Is that intentional?

[joeyspacerocks]

No, the bubbles shouldn't escape the water - think I've got a bug in the generation routine; thanks for pointing it out.

As for the heart ... yes, definitely needs a bit of polish. What's worrying me is when I get to the level with the spleen in it ...

[joeyspacerocks]

Added some wibbly-wobbly water shader goodness.



It's not exactly revolutionary but I quite like the effect. Although it offends the purist in me that the game is no longer 16 colours now that I have transparency ...

Haven't fixed the bubbles yet though ...

[jonkk]

I LOVE that underwater effect. Well done! :D

[joeyspacerocks]

Hey thanks jonkk - I wasn't sure at first if I wanted to start messing about with shaders as I love the hardcode retro look, but ... it's 2014 and nostalgia only gets you so far.

[ndke]

I think that your shader really fits the game well, so there's nothing wrong with it.
It's really cool!

[Lexonite]

I love games like this. Keep going!

[jonkk]

Yeah, the effect really fits with the rest of the aesthetic, still pixel-perfect and all. So well done in bringing some modern shaders seamlessly into your retro aesthetic. 

[joeyspacerocks]

Thanks for the encouragement all - it's really motivating to receive feedback like this