next »

[MereMonkey]

Loving the game's aesthetic, and you're right that's one serious banana!!

[Canned Turkey]

Nice art!
If the character is really lazy, a sloth would be funny.

[stringkiller]

Thanks everyone for your posts!

@lobstersteve Yeah the dog looks pretty cool but as you said it doesn't fit so much with role. I still want to use him anyway so if he doesn't end up as the trashomancer he would most likely appear as some other npc  

@MereMonkey Thanks! glad you like it. On a side note it looks suspicious that the dude with the human with a dog head avatar comments about the dog face character and then you comment about the banana XD.

@Canned Turkey We thought about a sloth too but I can't get him to be recogniced as a sloth on the sprite. The same happened when I tried a raccoon (since they steal trash all the time, and stuff that's not trash XD), the head ended up as a noisy bulk of pixels. We are trying to get a design that first fits as a sprite with those dimensions and then looks cool on portrait. Thanks for the suggestion!

[MereMonkey]

LMAO!! Didn't even consider that haha!

[Shigatosis]

Those banana-headed fellows look amazing. Do you guys plan on releasing a playable demo at some point?

[stringkiller]

Those banana-headed fellows look amazing. Do you guys plan on releasing a playable demo at some point?

      We still haven't thought about releasing a public demo yet as there many people who advise against and in favour of releasing it. We do plan however to have a closed demo which is what we are aiming for first. We are aiming for the closed demo to have these features:

      - Online multiplayer (the main reason a closed test is necessary).
      - One environment (the one that is displayed on screenshots right now).
      - One boss and enemies for that environment.
      - Sound and music.
      - Few items of every kind.

      We plan to use that demo to look for a publishing deal although we have yet to decide on how to publish the game as we are very disconnected from bussiness stuff in our country where it is a pain to do any kind of start up on your own.
      From then on we can focus on adding content and doing the most tedious stuff such us menus, achievements and all the unlockables system, unfortunately screenshots won't be very varied until then since they'll all be set up on the same environment

[Cranktrain]

The game is looking great; crisp pixel art and character design, and an interesting construction mechanic.

We plan to use that demo to look for a publishing deal although we have yet to decide on how to publish the game as we are very disconnected from bussiness stuff in our country where it is a pain to do any kind of start up on your own.

When you say a 'publishing deal', what sort of arrangement are you looking for? If you worked with another business, wouldn't you have to setup your own business anyway? Or are you looking for a company to effectively employ you so that isn't a thing you have to do?

[stringkiller]

When you say a 'publishing deal', what sort of arrangement are you looking for? If you worked with another business, wouldn't you have to setup your own business anyway? Or are you looking for a company to effectively employ you so that isn't a thing you have to do?

Thanks for the praise first  .

We don't really have much experience publishing games but the main reason we would like to find a publisher is because we certainly need some advice on the marketing/greenlight aspect of the game and to take away some of the paperwork and tax handling that would slow down the development and release of the game. Plus if it's a good publisher we'd get much more exposure so we believe it would be a nice kickstart for us in the indie gaming industry.

If a company would effectively employ us in order for us to publish the game (we don't really know if that is possible, I doubt it though) it would save A LOT of trouble because in Spain if you have two or more employers there is no mayor impact on taxes, but if one of those employers is your own self (your own company) you'll be majorly tax screwed. A friend of us had a day job and an on-line shop for a year, and due to that reason we was charged almost every penny he made with the shop in form of taxes. He earned the same as not owning the shop but working double.

[stringkiller]

Update 6
Aside from working on hazards we've been making mocks on possible enemies. This is what we've got so far:

The rocky dudes doesn't mix very well with the terrain and the design didn't really convince me so here's a revamp of those and a color swap:

This new desing also allows his head to fall off and turn into the other monster pictured before! What color pallete do you like more? one of them mixes better with the terrain but it is hard to read and the other pops out but is slightly more out of place...

The little black things with robot armors are generic enemies for the whole dungeon (we'll have at least one more of those) while the rock dudes are environment specific.

[stringkiller]

Update 7

Artwise I'm already animating some of the enemies listed above, here are a couple of gifs:

What do you think?

My partner has been working on making water look a bit more awesome and he has fixed some online issues when coordinating how players break and reconstruct. Right now he's working on doors and screen transitions.

Here's some water splash frenzy for you to enjoy:

We thought about adding particles to that water but it may be a bit to messy when there are a lot of enemies and porjectiles around. Particles are cool but I think overdoing the use of them in a action game may not be the best choice.

[Crabby]

I really like those main character designs. My favorite is the girl one with the whip.
This is just such a cool concept.

[flipswitchx]

Nice style! I adore the popping pieces off and on mechanic.

...What color pallete do you like more?...

I don't think the greenish ones are out of place at all. I would definitely choose the palette that stands out from the background. 

[stringkiller]

Thanks for the feedback guys! We are still uncertain about the main character (who is actually an npc) but we are also thinking about twisting some of the designs and adding several npcs since we kinda like them all and they would fit in the theme (someone has to be a shop keeper!).

As for the colour pallete we will choose colours that stand out a bit for the enemies definitively, way more clear :D.

By the way (mini update), when you try to animate a character walking, try not to desing it with 3 legs, its a pain and there's very little reference 

[Dene]

What a totally mad concept. Love it.

Regarding the palette, design-wise most artists seem to flatten backgrounds a bit by reducing contrast, and then use higher contrast along with complementary colours (or even outlines) for things that need to 'pop' or read well. As such, like the others here, I think your second colour palette is better for gameplay... unless you really want those rock monsters to come to life and surprise players, in which case I see why you'd go with the first.

As for the 'main character' - do you need to decide now? You might find the entire role changes as the game progresses (as well as, perhaps tech or screen-space requirements). Is he going to be overlaid on the main screen and give advice? Does he have to talk/animate? All these things might make you think differently.

For now it looks like you're well on your way to creating something unique, so I look forward to seeing more!

[flyingmangoes]

The game looks great and the concept is awesome, but if I were you, I'd use different colors for your enemies, or for your trash guys.

It just seems like the white guys and the rock guys should have more to do with trash, or trash removal.  That in mind, your enemies look fantastic design wise, especially those mechanical white ones.

Can't wait to see what this becomes! good luck!

[stringkiller]

Wee more feedback! thanks a lot.

@Dene: Yup, the colour saturation values on every background piece is way duller than any of the characters and I believe that makes the characters pop more but as you said, it is better to have more colourful enemies if you are supposed to see them. Every enemy will have 3 pallete swaps anyway so there will be variety.

As for the main character thing, we don't have to decide now. We tried making some early concepts because if we hit a design that worked perfectly we could start making cool artwork for the game right away, that stuff is really eye catching. Also the personality of the main character is important for the story (although it will be simple, we are focusing on gameplay here) and its an important comedic factor so it is inspiring to have that in your mind early.
Anyway as we have many doubts and ideas with that and the feedback you are all providing is really helpful we'll wait for the game to be in a more advanced status to choose a main character, but we'll be messing around with ideas form time to time 

@flyingmangoes: The point is the enemies also look ridiculous and wacky so it doesn't look too bad that they drop random garbage related to themselves for you to reconstruct, although it will sometimes be just random garbage XD. I'm happy to see you liked the designs, there will be many more enemies and recolours as dificulty goes up since the game is supposed to be non linear, I'll focus on keeping them visible and eye catching :D.
Do you think the palletes for enemies/trash are too dull? or would you just choose different colour schemes? keep in mind there will be many other thrash items and they'll also be way more colourful, the point is the character you control looks absolutely wacky.

Thanks again for the feedback!

[flyingmangoes]

Your game idea makes a ton of sense, I definitely understand that you want the character to be a, for lack of a better description, a cuddly abomination. 

I would most definitely try a couple palette swaps, maybe some dull green or blue, but I think it looks great otherwise.  I love those mechanical fly things, and I doubt they need any big changes at all.

On a completely different note, I was interested about whether this game would include bosses.  Just curious, but I think they'd make an awesome addition.

Good luck, and the game looks great!

[stringkiller]

I'll try some more pallete swaps on the enemies to see what impression they give me.

About the bosses, yes there will be bosses, and we want them to be really epic, specially the last ones. We have 4 bosses planned, along with 4 environments and an extra final epic fight. My partner worked really hard on making moveable and rotable platforms work really well off and online so we can have bosses you can jump onto and bosses where you have to jump on moving platforms to get a good shooting angle.

I don't want to spoil more about it specially because we really don't know if we will be able to achieve some of the ideas we have, but we will do our best to deliver epicness!  

[Lugen]

The enemies look good. I like the animation of the flying thing. I feel the robot things should be much smaller, like half the size considering their nice simple shapes. Looks off to me seeing them next to the rock things anyway which have a more busy design.

I lean towards the new colours but it does look slightly off. Don't know if that's anything to be concerned about though. It will become more apparent later if the palette still bugs you. Perhaps just changing the values rather than hue is enough to make them stand out, maybe increase the contrast slightly.

[stringkiller]

@Lugen : The size of the spider things are on purpose, although they are a bit plain when they move, shot and stuff they look pretty nice (at least in concepts). I'll keep that in mind though and if they feel off when enemies are implemented I'll do a smaller version. I'm trying to make most of the enemies feel big and overwheilming in contrast with the character so you feel a bit more crappy (they'll also be kind of tough).

I've also tried changing many of the values with the golem but if I wanted to have just 3 colours on the rocks it poped out A LOT when changing it, but then again I'm going to wait to see them moving in game before changing the pallete and doing enemy recolours. Also I didn't manage to come up with a simpler rock golem design that's why they look a bit more noisy than the "robots".

Thanks a lot for the feedback!

Update 8
Being hit animations and spikes are almost finished, although we will add a white "flash" on the character in order to add more impact and also an "on hit" particle.

Here are some other monster animations: