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[nt]

New monster!



So this little guy change to a key, which you can carry around to unlock doors.

[alvarop]

Very expressive animations, love 'em!

[christopf]

u, yea, following
and + to the swimsuit!

[HellaciousPuppy]

Interesting gameplay mechanics and thoroughly gorgeous graphics/animations.
Has a real charm to it. Great stuff! 

[gbelo]

This looks absolutely wonderful! I adore that swim animation. He really seems to be weighed down by the suit.

Same.

[nt]

Thanks for the comments! feels good

Some weird things happens when you go through a monster door!



More on that later!

[hyperduck]

I'm in love with everything you've posted, so lovely, sooo lovely. 

[Noogai03]

THAT ART 
want to play this so bad, it looks like a more exciting Fez

[hexdie]

This looks fantastic! I'm excited to play this. I love the animations, the artwork, and the concept. I look forward to seeing more.

[atmos]

Neat idea with the monsters and from what I can tell from the gifs, the gameplay will be solid.

[rj]

i've been following this for a hot minute and i like it and i keep thinking i've posted about it but i haven't yet and uh super hate me for this (and i probably am the only one here who feels this way) but

ahem

unwanted aesthetic criticism of a tiny detail that's been bugging me follows, feel free to ignore

i really, really, really think your title screen/logo doesn't do this game justice at all.

your game looks gorgeous and the title screen decidedly doesn't. it reads like an afterthought, like it was hammered together in paint in a few minutes because you forgot you needed a logo and then you photoshopped a gradient in and some quick fx

meanwhile the game looks, and i do not use this word lightly, beautiful. absolutely stunning.

part of the issue is the gimmicky wordart vibe; "shadows" being composed of literal shadows is not inherently a bad idea but it's executed unsubtley and not in a super fun way here. "in the" is even worse because of the solid black outline and poor color insert choice. then the random assortment of characters from your game make it have a kinda baby's first game maker project vibe even though your actual assets used are excellent. it feels amateur while your everything else is super mlg pro xxx league

i recommend doing some research into logo design and graphic design and spending as much time designing the logo as you would a full area of your game. seriously take some fucking time with this, it's an important thing, even if it doesn't feel important. this is the actual face of your game. even before screenshots, your logo is what people see first and they will inexorably associate this logo with your game, even after seeing the cool shit you're doing.

a good game logo, at the very least, doesn't aesthetically clash with your game. the best ones not only manage that but also evoke your game.

one of the best logos i've ever seen in my life (without exaggeration) for a video game is the one for antichamber:



holy shit. let's dissect this a bit. maybe it could be helpful!

so the first ting you'll notice is that this has got a ton of shit happening in it. most logo/graphic designers would shy away from so much because common wisdom is that less is more. but this manages to approach the line of "too much" without hitting over it. it's the perfect amount of ideas thrown together; it still manages to feel minimal without feeling reductive.

it doesn't feel cluttered. it feels clean. and that's very vastly important.

every element here is designed to evoke something about the game. the stark one-color (though mind, i assure you, if your logo isn't one color comfortably then you probably have a bad logo) white on black evokes the clean, sterile areas of the game while the slight bounce and additions (the cube, the hazard symbol) evoke the oddities within. "anti" is actually a transparent part of the background that's created by stretching the white over it and masking it out. the "i" is lowercase, which not only continues the oddities and minimalistic pattern but visually evokes how the "bullets" look in the game. every single element here is perfect and balanced and great.

your logo should match this level of quality i think because your game is fucking fantastic looking on its own besides that.

i hope all of this helps. your game looks really fucking cool. it's got a knytt stories vibe, and i love knytt stories. i really, really, really can not wait to get my hands on this. at all. forgive me for tearing this tiny thing apart.

also what are you doing for the music, by the by? *tugs collar nervously* because, this *sweats* looks like it would need some great music to *double sweats* go with it

6

[iamwhatonearth]

The art and concept sound interesting. c:

[nt]

Thanks for the nice comments everyone, it does help with motivation, it's still kinda weird for me that people actually could be  waiting for the game to be done to play with it, I can't describe it. It makes it more real, you know.

@rj™ Thanks for the time you put in writing your comment, its nice to have critical observation like this. You are also right, the logo does need work. I have a friend working on it, we are trying to make something special. Also looking into hand drawn logo too, at least for the "box" art.


For those of you who don't go in the screenshot Saturday thread, cross post of my last gif:


This is a good example of different light cubes and how they work. Some cube react differently, in different situation. I don't want to say to much because there will be other cubes as well, and it would be fun to figure them out also I think.

[nt]

So yesterday late night stuff. Tweaking the look for the shadow flip side. I think at this point the background colors and gradient will change a lot during the game, like dynamic or something. I can't really decide what I like so maybe Ill make a whole bunch of presets and they will change depending on the level or something. I just love playing around with different color palette.

[nt]

I've been working on these levels some more lately.



and a GIF!

[akoluthic]

A diving suit for the water based levels?



I also tried to do out of focus for the foreground yesterday, I think It looks pretty nice, it gives more depth to the whole thing I think.



I tested out the diving suit in it, but I think it would be better suited underwater, and just remove the helmet when out of the water.

That looks fantastic!  I really love the lighting and mood in all these screenshots.

[nt]

This week I've been working on some mechanics about keys. I didn't think much of it the first time I wanted to implement keys for doors, and then I got struck by the complexity. There is more than one way to deal with keys. The simple difference between the character physically holding the key, or holding it in an inventory is one thing, but when you hold the key, how do you hold the key exactly?

So first try, holding it in your hands. The character just hold the key like a physical object. Problem is, I didn't plan that at all in my animation sheets. I would need to make special animation sequence for walking, jumping, swimming etc. to make the thing work visually.  My other option would be to hold the key on top of his head, like in SMB2. This is limiting tho, I can jump I guess, but I can't climb ladder, or swim.  The limitation could also be a good thing tho, part of the mechanics and making a challenge. But then If the key can't go in water, what happen to it if the player fall in water? This also require some more sprite animation.

So I have been tinkering with all those idea for a while, and I can't believe how overwhelmed I am for such a simple concept.

If I just made the character arm separate from the main sprite sheet and then change it for holding key, that might be the best solution I think.

Keeping the key in inventory remove the possibility of some scenarios where you are kinda stuck with the key because if you go in "dark" places the key would revert to the monster. Id like to keep that mechanic.

Anyway, this was more text than I ever wrote in here, just about holding a key, such a simple concept. I wanted to share my thoughts on it.

Also I need some ideas about what to do when the character touch a monster. Right now he just pop right back at his last respawn place, so if anybody has a cool idea to share.

[kingPenguin]

Game looks great!

As for the key conundrum: maybe you can display the key floating above the characters head like an icon?

[arrebeat]

You could make him carry a keychain or something. It would even create the possibility of holding more than just one key at a time. You could have the keychain icon show in a corner of the screen whenever the character is holding a key so you can keep track of the ones you have.

About the penalty for touching monsters you could really beef up the gameplay by not simply killing and respawning the character. If you look at games like Wario Land for example, whenever you touch a monster, it changes the gameplay mechanics in some way (usually making things difficult but at the same time giving you new abillities momentarily). So you could have the main character touching a shadow monster and becoming something of a shadow himself. Maybe becoming immune to some hazards (like those stomping things) and unable to get too close to light cubes. I realize this would be crazy hard to implement but the results are always awesome if you do it right! 

[XN-Blank]

This looks absolutely amazing. Loving the sprites and the environment. Also the shadow creatures are adorable. Can't wait to see this release.