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[shadiradio]

Hi everyone! My name is Shadi Muklashy and I've been working on my project Invisigun Heroes for almost a year, and have just recently submitted it to Indiecade and the PAX Indie Megabooth (fingers crossed). To summarize: it's a local (+online in the works) multiplayer single-screen battle arena, but everyone's invisible! You have to keep an eye out for environmental tells such as footsteps in water, etc, to spot your opponents. In addition, whenever you bump into obstacles, fire your weapon, or use a special ability, you momentarily give yourself away. It's definitely intended to be immediately fun for casual parties, but with enough depth to reward practice, deception, risk, and awareness for more competitive play. Thanks in advance for taking a look!

Teaser Video:




3 minutes of gameplay (uncut):






The game is still in alpha, and the art will be completely overhauled in the next several months. It will remain low-res (I am too fond of pixel art and it suits this bomberman-style throwback), but is being redone to be more clear and simple. I have a contract artist working on some character designs and promotional art (she is amazingly talented), and the music is well underway. I am pleased that online/net play is actually working without too many issues, and am hoping that I'll have time to implement a single player puzzle-mode that uses these invisible mechanics as you traverse from room to room. I plan to update this (and the official dev log) as the game progresses. Here are some of the features:

• 2-4 players
• Local & online multiplayer
• Many maps spread across distinct planets, each with their own environmental "tells" (footsteps in water and snow, proximity doors, birds scattering, hazards, etc)
• A variety of heroes to choose from
• A variety of special abilities to choose from
• A variety of game modes playable on all maps
• Instant replays that show where players were while invisible

Here's an example of a newly-completed tileset for one of the worlds that will replace the current art. It's more simplified with better silhouettes and boundaries, fewer colors per tile (less noisy/soft), more obviously on a clear walking grid, and heavily a Link to the Past influenced:



A little background: I previously worked on the PC mech game Hawken for about 3 years, and have been working on this (a passion project) since Adhesive Games closed up shop. It was perfect timing as I made a prototype with the release of Unity's 2D tool set in v4.6, but I've since ported it to Unity 5 and all is going well so far. Here are some relevant links, and thanks again! There is such amazing inspiration here, and I'm attempting to open up more to communities (I usually lurk). <3



Steam greenlight: http://goo.gl/9X824m
Dev blog: sombr.com
Twitter: @shadiradio

[devMidgard]

That's honestly awesome. I find Hawken a pretty fun game, altought I think it's like Mechs meet Call of Duty haha

I'm really liking the tiles!

[Transmission]

Can't wait to play this one!   So this is what you've been working on all this time.    

The CA when getting hit is a cool effect, and the overall color palettes are really tasty.  Loving the sounds too.  It's modern retro at its finest!

[shadiradio]

Thanks, and some great news: it was greenlit! It took a little less than a couple weeks, which makes the blackbox of the green light process and interpreting its metrics even more mysterious. :|

I decided to change the name/spelling slightly to "Invisigun Heroes" since that was the way most people seemed to naturally spell it. At the same time, it was a good opportunity to finalize the logo, so I updated it:

[del]

Neat concept, lovely art, best of luck on at the festivals!

[shadiradio]

Thanks del! A minor update, but I've been slowly chipping away at replacing a bunch of prototype placeholder art. Here's the protective shield powerup:

[jctwood]

I adored Hawken and to see something so completely different is incredible! I absolutely love this style of game and cannot wait to see more. I have to ask though why would you ever stay visible?

[shadiradio]

I adored Hawken and to see something so completely different is incredible! I absolutely love this style of game and cannot wait to see more. I have to ask though why would you ever stay visible?

Thanks a lot JctWood, much appreciated! I'm pretty sure this game idea was born out of my love for the Infiltrator mech.

That's actually a really good question about the visibility. In fact, the original game design was that you are always invisible (as soon as a round starts), and firing/bumping/tells give you away momentarily, then you automatically go back invisible. However new players (for the first few minutes) struggled with not knowing where they were, though eventually everyone seemed to pick it up and start being able to strategically move with purpose. I know how important those first few minutes are, and this troubled me - a core gameplay mechanic that didn't feel good from the start meant a lot of people could drop it right away before passing that barrier and feeling "in control."

I decided to try allowing the player to toggle their visibility, with the idea that new players would be in control of the mechanic - so rather than being frustrating, it was their choice and they would gradually use it more and more, until reaching pro status where as you mentioned, you would never want visibility.

This didn't quite work though! Through all our play testing, it was actually pretty frustrating to have another control to deal with, and it was an unnecessary layer of complexity. It is actually now back to the original concept where you are always invisible, but I am playing with some ideas where you fade out more slowly after showing up from interactions, making it more dangerous to fire/bump, but also gives you familiarity with your movement speed, etc, since you can walk around visibly for a moment. This seems to be great so far, and I'm really happy with where it's at - it's a slower game (as intended) that rewards planning and stealth. I have built so many frameworks that just didn't work and end up being turned off - but hopefully all for a better final product!

I edited the original description.

[jctwood]

The infiltrator mech was my favourite when I played. It makes sense to me that you are always invisible but maybe you could have some kind of taunt mechanic where the player can send out a pulse of colour from their position which stays even while you begin to move so that you can mislead people etc. but also relocate yourself in the midst of everythIng.

[shadiradio]

... maybe you could have some kind of taunt mechanic where the player can send out a pulse of colour from their position which stays even while you begin to move so that you can mislead people etc. ...

It's interesting that you say that because that is actually similar to one of the heroes' abilities, which is still being worked out. All the selectable heroes have the same weapon, but each has a unique special ability to add depth to the game. One of the abilities is a sort of misdirection / decoy power, but it's a tricky one and needs some more fine tuning. That is different from a sort of general use "ping" but I also do like that idea, and is also worth prototyping.

[gunswordfist]

The multiplayer looks very fun. Will keep an eye on IG.

[ashtonmorris]

I really love this idea. Following

[shadiradio]

Art & music update!

I've been working on some of the mechanics and bug fixing, but I wanted to share an art update that I'm pretty excited about! A while back I contracted the talented Yujin Choo for some character designs, and we were really going for the feel of the classic 2/3-tone Capcom decal look. These are a few of the characters that are more or less complete, and I think she did a fantastic job! In the meantime, I've been painstakingly converting these to pixel-form (there are no shortcuts here) for the character select screen.





The characters are also still lacking names, but I've been working on the lore as well and all of the locations (planets) at least have titles. The music tracks are each assigned to a planet, so all the maps in that planet share a theme, and are thus named after their respective planets. This week I've been posting short 30-second teasers of the music tracks, and you can listen to them here:

"Craterus"




"Nemoris"




"Glaciarii"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRnb2zSwTTU

"Arenae"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfdrNUzM_4g

"Arx-515"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJAcxOrx58Q

Thanks for your support!

[shadiradio]

A couple more characters in progress.

[bombjack]

First time I come acroos this devlog. I really looove you pixel art 

[jctwood]

Those character concepts are absolutely wonderful! Reminds me of the Link manual illustrations back for the old top down Zelda games.

[shadiradio]

Thanks very much bombjack and JctWood! Oh man, the nostalgia from those old Zelda manual illustrations. I used to be just as excited about manuals as the game itself back then. Yujin has done a fantastic job on these characters, and I've been slowly and painstakingly converting them to the pixel art game versions: