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[Yong]

Update v0.2.0​ - World 4 is here!



World 4 is robot/tech themed. Expect a much higher difficulty, even the environment is out to get you!
Some stages can be rather tricky(but fun!) to navigate, like the bouncing pad below:



Make use of the pad to overcome the height and traverse the stage quicker. Your survival might depend on it.
Even the enemies of World 4 have a few tricks up their sleeves.



The happy flying-bot looks deceptively slow at first glance, but with each hit it takes, it becomes faster (and angrier). You can't really tell from this gif but at its fastest the flying-bot is even faster than the player, making it the fastest enemy in the game.




The Shield-bot has a sturdy shield that makes it difficult to deal with head-on. However it is pretty weak if you can bypass its shield.

And of course, with a new World comes new weapons!



A big ass weapon that is both melee and long-ranged.




These bubble bullets may be weak, but they can linger around the stage and act as traps for approaching enemies. Set them up properly and they can easily overwhelm any enemy.

Gunkid 99 is currently on a 15% discount on Itch.io, after this discount period is over (19th Dec) the game will slightly increase its price from $4.99 to $5.99. As always, feedback will be greatly appreciated! You can reach me here or on Discord.

[Yong]

Introducing the Enemies of World-4.
World-4 is tech/robot themed and is by far the most difficult world as we're approaching the end-game.




The Shield-bot is fairly simplistic, it goes back and forth along its path, similar to the slimes of World-1. However, the addition of a sturdy shield makes attacking it straight-on rather time-consuming. This rewards a more active play-style because the bot itself is fairly weak if you can take it out by avoiding its shield. Also notice that the shield momentarily disappears when it touches a wall, leaving it completely vulnerable for a short time frame.




The Heli-bot looks pretty harmless at first glance, flying towards the player at a rather slow pace. But with each hit the Heli-bot takes, it gets faster (and angrier). At its fastest (1hp or less remaining) the bot is faster than even the player, this gif above couldn't really show its real speed because all the turning slows it down (in terms of movement the player is still the most dynamic). The real threat of the Heli-bot is that once you attack it you probably should make sure it gets destroyed or it'll come back to bite. The bot also has one of the highest health at 5hp. This means a weapon like the Mini-Cannon, which usually destroys most enemies in one hit, would leave the Heli-bot at 1hp (fastest state) after a hit.




Bird-bot, the only projectile-type enemy in World 4. Similar to the Lava-bat of World 2, the bird flies about in a random direction but quickly switches to attacking mode whenever it spots the player. The projectiles are also much bigger and faster than the Lava-bat's. As always, projectile-type enemies are usually priority targets as just a few of them can quickly overwhelm the player.




The Electro-crawlers are speedy wall climbers. They are especially dangerous in tight quarters and their ability to stick to walls can make the simple act of traversing a stage surprisingly tricky. They also fall straight down after a single hit so be careful not to attack when they are directly overhead!


That's all the enemies of World-4. Gunkid 99 is currently having winter sales on Itch.io. There's a demo available too!

[Yong]

I just implemented Steam Leaderboards for the demo!



Click on the button for a particular stage and click on steam-leaderboard to see where you stand.
Normal-mode and Equipped-mode have separate leaderboards.

The Leaderboard is still in need of much testing, particularly the 'Friend' tab. Some fonts for non-English characters are also missing.
If I may ask a favor, it would be great if you could help me out by testing the leaderboards on the Steam demo. Please let me know if anything is not working!

[Yong]

Final world, World-5!!

World-5 will be the last and final 'World' in Gunkid 99. Rather than having a new theme, World-5 will mash-up everything you've seen thus far to create the most unique and challenging stages yet.

Because the difficulty has been upped significantly for this final 'World', the pacing will need to be adjusted accordingly. As such, there will only be four stages instead of the usual seven.




Here we have the bounce-pads originally of World-4 implanted into World-2's lava stage. Needless to say, bouncing around in a lava-filled stage is not safest of activity so players will have to pay extra caution to the environment!




Environmental hazards are not the only things that have been mashed up. Enemies too are no longer restricted to their original worlds, so be on the lookout for some unusual combinations as enemies from the four different worlds come together.

In this particular stage, the laser-traps of World-4 have also leveled up into an 'extreme edition', with every inch of the stage being reachable by lasers. Certain attack-patterns (like the one above) will force players to utilize the dodge-roll or get hit!




A new enemy?!

Previously, the rule has always been that players will need to collect a certain number of weapons before they can clear a stage and progress to the next one. Well, this rule has been upended in World-5 so get ready for a surprise...

Gunkid 99 is currently having a 15% discount for the Lunar New Year sale on Itch.io.

I am nearing the end of development. All that is left now is to tie up loose ends and make sure that the game is bug-free. Release date to be announced soon!

[Yong]

A release date has been set, Gunkid 99 will be released on March 13th, 2019!
The price will be USD $5.99 with a launch week discount of 20%

Check out the new trailer below:

[Yong]

I am proud to announce that Gunkid 99 is finally released on Steam!

There is a launch week discount of 20%
https://store.steampowered.com/app/906600/Gunkid_99/

[bryku]

Congrats on the release! Did you spend some time doing marketing work? If so, can you share some experiences with us here?

[Yong]

Congrats on the release! Did you spend some time doing marketing work? If so, can you share some experiences with us here?

Thank you! I did put a lot of effort into marketing, at least has much effort as one can on a $0 budget and very limited experience. I'd probably write a post on that once more time has passed and I can get a better sense of the results of my marketing efforts.

[NowSayPillow]

Good news! Just tried it on linux with Wine and it ran just fine; I think this bad-boy will work via Steam Play. Will test more later!

[Yong]

Good news! Just tried it on linux with Wine and it ran just fine; I think this bad-boy will work via Steam Play. Will test more later!

Hey Geoff! Good to know it can run on Wine. Thanks for testing it, much appreciated 

[andyfromiowa]

Congrats on the release! It's great to see how the game has grown and how many new ideas you added towards the end. It looks great. Hope it's a success!

[Yong]

Congrats on the release! It's great to see how the game has grown and how many new ideas you added towards the end. It looks great. Hope it's a success!

Hey, thanks Andy!


Meanwhile I've make some updates to the game.


Steam Leaderboards

In order to drive up players' competitive spirits, I've decided to make Steam Leaderboards a lot more prominent than before.



Steam Leaderboard is now automatically displayed whenever a round ends. Now players can immediately see where they stand on the scoreboard.




Accessing Leader-boards from Stage selection is also less of a hassle now. Just click the arrow buttons to scroll through the various stages instead of clicking the stage buttons manually one by one.


Selling Weapons you've bought back to the Shop



Weapons from the Shop will start spawning in 'Normal' Mode once bought and unlocked. However, players might find themselves regretting the purchase but has no recourse to stop it from spawning other than equipping the equivalent Weapon-Blocker.

With this update, any weapon sold back to the Shop will stop spawning in-game. Of course this only applies to weapons found in the Shop. Weapons naturally unlocked as you progress through the game cannot be sold!

Now that there is no risk of being stuck with an undesired weapon, I hope this will incentivize more players to give the various weapons in the Shop a try!

[mtarini]

I found the older "99999-alpha" demo sitting on my hard disk and played it.

Then I saw that you ask for feedback, so I tracked down this thread and here I am.
Apologies if my review is no longer relevant with the newest versions, I didn't play them (but I want to!).

Anyway, my feedback so far...

First of all, great game. The difficulty level is spot-on.
It is very playable and enjoyable. The movements are very responsive and feel nice.
Level system is neat.
Upgrade system is nice too, but not flawless (see at the bottom).  

Currently, the biggest design flaw, however, is that you should...

Economize on your controls man!

Unless you hate your player for some reason, that is.

Most players come equipped with two hands, and, using one for aiming+firing, they have one left for the movements. How, then, you didn't try to reduce the movement controls as much as possible? Here is, for example, a drastic improvement:

Left-Right (A-D): move laterally
Up (W): jump up / wall jump / double jump
Down (S): jump down
Space: dodgy roll.

(also, consider Rolling by "left+right" or by "double-tap down" or by "double-tap left/right", instead, or in addition.)

Currently, the Up key is not even used (correct?), which is a waste, and jump-down requires a two key sequence, which is much less direct than it should be. I know: with the proposed controls, you lose the couching, but that's not really an element of the gameplay anyway, and certainly not one worth consuming one control over. You can still use the couch animation as a nice touch, activating it when the player presses "down" while not on a thin platform

I kinda tested it, and can confirm: after playing a good while with the original "6 keys for 5 fingers" controls, I went to the Options screen, made myself a favor, and picked "W" as the jump key (instead of the default "space"). Jumping downward became a pain, as it costed me to press Down+Up (a counter-intuitive, finger-twisting maneuver), but, even so, I already enjoyed the game better. I found myself fighting a bit more against the monsters and a bit less against the controls. I think I would have completed the demo anyway, but this way it was easier, and, more importantly, more enjoyable. It would have been perfect if I could jump down simply by pressing down.

-------------

As for the upgrade system (normal / equipped mode + coins): it works very nicely.
The only flaw of the system is that having a larger arsenal can backfire hard.
This is because, in "normal" mode, under-powered weapons will water down powerful ones.
The big problem with this is that it makes the player reluctant to buy new weapons, in spite of the curiosity.
This is exacerbated by the impossibility to go back if you fall for the curiosity and do buy them.
The power-ups deactivating weapons are not a solution because they costs dearly in terms of item slots.
This boils down to offer expensive, permanent and incurable downgrades.
Edit: nevermind this, I see this was fixed already by allowing to resell them.... good thinking!

The three-objects limit is a bit of a design problem also, as it makes less powerful objects completely redundant. Unfortunately, I am not sure what to suggest in this area. Maybe offer a "magic pocket" object, which triggers a 4th and 5th slots when equipped (i.e. it consumes one slots but makes two or three new slots appear), but reduces the coins earned when equipped (say a 40% tax or something).

[Yong]

Hey mtarini, thanks for the feedback but the version you played is way outdated by now. You can already go down platforms simply by pressing down. That also means remapping Up as jump is now viable instead of being a 'finger-twisting maneuver' as you put it