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[Roel]

Intrepid Izzy has been funded on KickStarter!


About
Intrepid Izzy is a colourful action adventure platformer ("metroidvania") about a girl who fights monsters. Both the graphics and the gameplay are a blend of classic and modern standards.

In this game you will find a lot of classic platforming elements (spikes, springs, etc), but instead of jumping on your enemies, you fight them as you would in a beat 'em up. Upgrades to your character are not cumulative, but are linked to the costumes you wear. (More about that later in this thread.)


Systems
PC (Windows)
SEGA Dreamcast (resolution reduced to 640x480)
Other systems under investigation


Team
Roel (that's me): design, graphics, animations and programming
Black Device: music


Technology
Intrepid Izzy runs on a completely custom-made engine, written in C. The animations and levels are created with custom tools.


Screens (click for larger version)





Links
Intrepid Izzy
Senile Team

[cgmonkey]

It feels like a retro platformer with modern resolution - looks very nice!

Looking forward to seeing it in action!

[Roel]

Thanks cgmonkey!


Intrepid Izzy features a different upgrade system than other games in the genre. Instead of gaining abilities and upgrades one by one, Izzy collects costumes. Each costume grants a set of special abilities.

In her initial outfit, Izzy's only special ability is a fireball. Wearing the vampire suit, she can collect health and spirit power from defeated enemies, as well as turn into a bat for a short amount of time. Dressed as a ninja, she uses powerful sword attacks, wall jumps and double jumps. At least 3 more costumes are planned.



As is evident from these gifs, the same animations were rendered with different "skins". This was done with a custom-made animation editor, without which this feature would not have been feasible.

[Claude Ruelle]

Looks awesome, the animation is super solid!

[Roel]

Thank you Claude_Ruelle!

I've been working on platform behaviour for a couple days. Coded several options that can be combined to create lots of different behaviours. Here are just a few examples:

[Roel]

While the PC version has full HD graphics, the Dreamcast version has half the resolution. I simply generate all the data for the Dreamcast version with a tool that scales everything down to 50%.

I made some footage of Intrepid Izzy running on the actual hardware this morning.

[Roel]

I'm working on Intrepid Izzy every day, and it's progressing very well. I recently extended Izzy's abilities with a new move that can be used in several ways. That's always good because it gives you more bang for your buck!

Combo


Relocate your enemies


Smash them into the ceiling for more damage

[Roel]

Demonstration of my custom animation software in action!





-edit-
Wow, it took only 5 tries to get the video working here. ^_^;

[Roel]

Izzy has a voice now! A friend took the role of voice actress. She didn't have any experience in this, but I think she did a good job. We recorded plenty of samples, so they can be played at random, thus preventing repetitiveness. Also the selection algorithm never plays the same one twice in a row.





I added an audio capturing feature into the game engine just to be able to make this video. Fortunately that was quite easy to do, as I also wrote the audio mixing code myself.

[LyricalReverie]

I like the Izzy's design and the bat form is super cute. Good luck with the project! 

[psyguy]

This looks really great.  Your animation editing tool looks like it'd be harder to make than coding the game itself!

[Roel]

Thank you both!

Well I guess this is another case where appearances can be deceiving. The animation editor took only a small fraction of the time I spent on coding the game. The fact that the editor was built with a framework (NWJS) while the game was coded entirely from scratch certainly plays a role here, but even so, I can assure you that the game is vastly more complex than the animator.

Also, here's a tiny pixel Izzy just for fun:

[Roel]

Although I was not present on this year's GamesCom myself, I was still able to get a playable demo of Intrepid Izzy (Dreamcast version) on display, thanks to Retrospiel!




Also, I've recently added some new moves to the game!



Meanwhile Izzy has hundreds of animation frames per costume. I think I've actually animated more for this one game than I have in the rest of my life! Still having fun with it though!

[Roel]

Launching on KickStarter tomorrow, after months of hard work! Wish me luck!

[rebelholic]

Sadly I can't launch the kickstarter campaign on my country  . Good luck for you

[Roel]

Sadly I can't launch the kickstarter campaign on my country  . Good luck for you

Aw, that's a shame. It wasn't available here (in the Netherlands) for a long time either. Let's hope KickStarter will take more steps towards being a truly international podium - they still have a looong way to go...

[Roel]

Oh my goodness, I was so busy with the Kickstarter launch yesterday that I didn't even get around to updating this thread!

Anyway, good news everyone! We're off to a promising start, getting 18% funded in the first 24 hours.

Trailer video (I also put it in the first post, hope that's ok):




You can support us here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/senileteam/intrepid-izzy-pc-dreamcast-ps4

[Roel]

Made some new stuff this week!

Enemy designs


Stackable octopuses

[Roel]

Made two time-lapse videos of the drawing process:

[PypeBros]

I love the backgrounds, I can't get convinced by the characters (yet). I'll need more thought about it to be more precise about why.