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[CaLooch]

~~~~~  Original Post  ~~~~~~~~~

sweaty palms

A physics-based climbing game where The Devil wants one favor, for you to climb up and ring his bell.


Gameplay + mechanics
The moment to moment gameplay is pretty simple to understand; click and drag the hands and feet. Old man Murdoc is surprisingly strong, so when he’s positioned correctly, he’ll manage to just pull himself up. With all that said, I consider this to be a dynamic puzzle game. You have to get your hands and feet in the right spot in order to move yourself up. The kicker is that the physics are so fine tuned that grabbing a hold a little to the left or right can change the whole problem.

The other factor is that each attempt, you can freely place a hold (your number of freeholds can increase throughout a run). If youre in a section with only a few holds and youre having trouble getting through, drop down one of your free holds.

Levels
The levels are composed of pre-designed sections that are then stitched together with some simple procedural generation. This is meant to  make the levels have a high degree of replayability because as I mentioned with the mechanics, its hard to move through sections in the same exact way again.

There is also a timer that “melts” the holds, from the bottom up.

But don’t worry, The Devil will make sure you don’t fall to your death.

[CaLooch]

Devlog 1

I’ve been iterating and adding a little more spice to the game. Probably one of the biggest changes is that once your reach the end of a level, the devil will replace one of your hands/feet (bc they got all sweaty climbing up to him.

Old man Murdoc with a block of wood and a fish for hands.




One thing I didn’t expect with this game was the amount of UI work I was going to be doing. The past week has been a lot of shuffling around and figuring out what info I need on the screen.

The world map is probably going to see the most change by the time this game is done but it is helping me nail down the visual tone of the game.

[CaLooch]

Devlog 2

Theme

Early on I came up with the idea of “ringing the devil’s bell” as the goal and motivation of the whole game but as time went it, it just turned out to be a little hollow. I didn’t feel like it game me much to work with to add context to the game. I ran through a handful of ideas that tied in with this climbing mechanic and landed on this old time circus vibe.



There is plenty of reference material to pull from and it has a really distinct look to it. This changed a good handful of elements of the game as well as letting me iron out some of the game design (see below)

Now we aren’t dealing with the devil, he’s the ringleader of this traveling circus.



You’re still playing as the old man, but he’s now The Magnificent Murdoc, who’s a washed up circus acrobat that needs to train for the upcoming show.



Art



Since the theme was figured out, I’ve been able to push the art in more specific directions. Since all of this is supposed to be a summer time circus, I’m really trying to keep the color pallet restricted on the warm side of things. This is actually the first time I’ve put this much thought into the color composition of what I’m putting on screen so its a learning process when going for such a distinct feeling.


 

A few other things that are still WIP:

• Still playing with parallax backgrounds.
• Normal maps for character sprites + body parts

Game Design stuff

You now have 7 days to train and get ready for your upcoming show. The sign guy helps keep that on point.



Each time you start a new game, you are given new levels and mechanics that you have to deal with. I figured out this week that I’m tying in the reward system (after successfully completing your show) to the costumes + mechanics for each run. I’ll probably post about this next time.

[CaLooch]

Well this devlog got dusty real quick...

Devlog 3

I've still been working on Sweaty Palms since I last dropped by here so there's a bunch of new stuff to share. I put my head down and focused a little too much on working and not sharing so that’ll change.

Here are some screenshots of what its looking like now:

Nasty Birds


Still working on that color pallet


Your map


Intro selection




Design stuff

The last time I was talking about the design, I was saying how you have 7 days to get ready for the show. That’s still in place. It’s one of those things that’s just easy to communicate so the idea has stuck around. The main game loop involves starting a new week that has specific mechanics attached to it (like beginner levels, balloons, fans, spring boards, etc) . You traverse through the levels on a world map that lead you to The Show. If you fail or reset a level, a new day starts. If you run out of days, then its game over for that run. You’ll have to start from the beginning again with whatever mechanics you choose (from the main menu).


Stuff on the TODO list this week

• Controller Support
• Local coop

[CaLooch]

devlog 4

Quick update

I was looking at some of my most recent screenshots and I really didn’t feel like the game was reading that well. I started tweaking the colors a lot more. I also went digging for a sprite outline shader to help with that and to set some ground work for local coop.


I found Outline Effect on github. Its really solid and I recommend it if anyone needs a sillohette shader for unity.
https://github.com/cakeslice/Outline-Effect

[CaLooch]

Been a while since I updated here. I threw up a playtest build up on itch.

https://thecalooch.itch.io/sweaty-palms

have at it