csg
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« on: April 07, 2018, 06:45:02 AM » |
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Skellboy is now ready after more than 2 years of hard work! In the end we got published by Fabraz for the Nintendo Switch. We didn't anticipated that in the slightest, but now it is reality! Preorder will start Jan 20th in the e-shop, game release is set to Jan 30th! PC/Mac/Linux release has no official date yet! About Skellboy Skellboy is a small action-adventure. you take control of Skippy, an old hero who rises from the graves because there is just noone else wo can do shit against the evil warlock Squaruman. and because your body is rotting anyway, there is no need to keep it: You can equip body parts from your slained enemies!
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More about Skellboy!! Collecting your enemies parts is not only cosmetic! They influence your power, health and other attributes as well. Moreover, a whole set (a total disguise...!) will result in even more crazy effects and skills. Even enemies react different, depending on your equip. If you look like a zombie, why should they eat your brain? We developed Skellboy 2016 as a Prototype for a small 1 month-gamejam and decided later in 2017 to polish it up into a complete game with more features, enemies and areas. So we're kind of late with this thread, to be honest! This is just a small selection, we've got A LOT more gifs on our Twitters! Just scroll through my personal ones ( csg) or our collection at UmaikiGames |
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« Last Edit: January 29, 2020, 09:07:46 AM by csg »
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matriax
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« Reply #1 on: April 07, 2018, 06:59:21 AM » |
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Looking great! i alwaywished do something like that, some mario paper style. I think i saw some gifs on twitter time ago, just did some RTs, good luck with the project!  |
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csg
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« Reply #2 on: April 07, 2018, 09:19:15 AM » |
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You should try this style out, its really fun to play around with. Plus, you don't have to use 3d modelling AT ALL. We're using a custom script which create all objects just from the sprites. :D Thanks for your support <3
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Iconic
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« Reply #3 on: April 07, 2018, 10:47:45 AM » |
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I love the art style! The game looks awesome so far. I love that you can tip the cows over. Can't wait to see more updates
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csg
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« Reply #4 on: April 07, 2018, 04:39:35 PM » |
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Today we tried to rework our grass - the old one was quite nice, but did not really fit into our artstyle. Now we have a serious problem: Which one sould be take? Is one of the new ones really better, or is this just pure actionism? Kinda at a loss here :'D The old one  New one with a strong outline  New one without outline  any suggestions? also thinking about adding a grass texture on the ground ... |
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Citsua
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« Reply #5 on: April 08, 2018, 02:21:41 AM » |
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To be honest, I think the old one still looks better... I think it's the shading on the new version that feels wrong.
I also wanted to say your visuals are amazing! That gif with the cardboard cows looks way too good.
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Thaumaturge
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« Reply #6 on: April 09, 2018, 08:52:27 AM » |
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Hmm... What about clumps of pixel-art grass?
That said, this might not be in keeping with the "blocky" aesthetic that you currently have... In that case, what about simply using a grass pattern on the ground, and dropping the 3D grass?
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csg
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« Reply #7 on: April 18, 2018, 11:00:50 PM » |
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So we tried some things with the gras, also your suggested gras texture on the ground, but we didnt get a satisfying yet. In the end we choose the new gras and adjusted our values a little bit, this is our look right now:  Roses might be a little huge :D Video of our latest area (wip): https://giant.gfycat.com/UnequaledNauticalBeaver.webm |
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Paszq
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« Reply #8 on: April 19, 2018, 02:43:28 AM » |
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I like the newest grass the most, nice to see the evolution and experiments with various approaches Also, I love the overall art style, the designs, the game looks very solid :D Good luck! PS. I think the background of the logo clashes a bit with pixelized title  |
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Paszq
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csg
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« Reply #9 on: April 22, 2018, 08:59:31 AM » |
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This week we worked on our first boss! we already implemented the second, but this one is our first big one. We had some tough decisions to make on this as our usual approaches did not work well with its huge size.  This is Sabakus first design of Suzy. We realized, this huge body would be a nightmare to animate on its own. So we shifted towards a more open, modular design:  This worked better, albeit it shifted a good ammount of animation work into the realm of coding. Workload sharing! :D As I started my first implementation, soon another big problem emerged: Until now, all characters rotated with a full on body-turn so we get our flat paper-like artstyle. This does not work well for Characters as big as Suzy, as they move other entities around them like a revolving door, yikes! so we had to write a new way of rotating for her.  We just shift some individual body parts and mirror our objects as soon as they overstep a threshold. This works really well for us!  Next up was a lot of visual improvement. Some sine movements, rotations,bounces and screen shaking for a more realistic movement did the trick!  Then we added the tounge and eyes.  and then started to create a presentation video. A body this big should be able to push away all sorts of objects, we thought! First try was a bit rough, though. :'D So, that's it! We finished for now with a nice gif, you can see our results on twitter: Click me!Next up should be her attacks and the general layout of the fight. Still a lot to do, but I'm looking forward to post about it! Have a nice rest weekend |
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Schrompf
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« Reply #10 on: April 23, 2018, 03:26:52 AM » |
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I love the "cardboard" art style of this game. I just hope you're not getting all too involved in this physics playground, because it usually annoys me to no end if player/mobs are blocked by stuff that is meant to already be out of the game.
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Snake World, multiplayer worm eats stuff and grows DevLog |
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csg
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« Reply #11 on: April 23, 2018, 03:48:41 AM » |
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I love the "cardboard" art style of this game. I just hope you're not getting all too involved in this physics playground, because it usually annoys me to no end if player/mobs are blocked by stuff that is meant to already be out of the game.
I feel you, haha. Most physics related stuff is just cosmetic and does not interact with the player at all. |
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Wyvern93
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« Reply #12 on: April 23, 2018, 02:32:09 PM » |
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Ey it looks quite great! I like the pixelart physics thing. Its quite funny and seems interesting at the same time, it really opens many posibilities.
However i was watching the gifs and pictures and there is something its bothering me, i dont know if its only me but when i see the pixel art floor that looks awesome and then i look the outdoors with the blended texture-less floor / cliffs it looks really bad. I would put some time into that, because everything else is fantastic.
As its an action-adventure game its like a Zelda? I mean, with story, bosses and that kind of stuff?
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csg
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« Reply #13 on: January 20, 2020, 09:17:21 AM » |
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oow, normally when threads like these disappear into the void the project is canceled, but guess what: We are finished! :D After more than 2 years of hard work we finished Skellboy and will be releasing it Jan 30th on the nintendo e-shop for Switch! You can even preorder it right now with a 10% discount! It's to late to document the games creation here now but I'll post after-launch insights because development will hopefully not end here. We still do not have a release date for the PC version which should add some more content to the game. First draft of the forrest region Finalized area! The development was really crazy because this was indeed our first Unity project. When something like this is growing so big, problems will definetly show up! It's part of the learning process and I would not recommend it. I did it anyway because I had a lot auf programming experience beforehand. I'm not writing a full post-portem (yet), but here are some things I learned along the way using Unity: - Working with a big interconnected world in Unity was suprisingly hard to do! We hat do implement our own system for dynamic loading and removing of different scenes. In the end there are still minor hicups when new areas are loaded in, so takeaway: Do not initialize all objects in their respective start-functions but spread it out over multiple frames! - You should use prefabs and Scriptable Objects for literally anything! If not, your scenes will become a huge monolythic file which you can't use efficient via source control. This is fine if you're working alone, but even then pushing huge files for each small addition is no good practise. It will also slow down producticity with the team because only one can work on the big scenes at a time. We hat this problem with a huge SceneManager-scene which hat most of our sub systems and definitions. That's it for now! Feel free to ask anything!! |
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AgentAvis
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« Reply #14 on: January 21, 2020, 05:38:20 PM » |
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Wow! congrats on finishing your game! excited to play it on my switch.
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csg
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« Reply #15 on: January 23, 2020, 09:01:41 AM » |
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Thanks! Really exciting time right now for us! Our press and influencer keys went out when preorder started and we are getting a lot of feedback right now! Most important: Bug reports. Man, this is so stressful, haha. Right now I'm deep in the code, fixing all sorts of stuff comming up. We decided to open up a public Trello as a Issue Tracker for the game at https://trello.com/b/yTckRnZ3/skellboy-issue-trackerWe want to be transparent about our progres and the state of the game. All bugs sent to us are added to the tracker. Also we list our patchnotes there, so people can see what will change with the next patch beforehand. We also got merch for the game! The soundtrack is available on blackscreenrecords , even as a vinyl which is so cool for us! We also got a Skellboy collection on The Yetee which a Tshirt, pin and stickers! I'm not telling you all this (just) to promote, but to say this: We would never be able to achieve all of this alone without our publisher. The last months were so stresfull and full of work, we as a team of only 3 people had to focus solely on the game. That IS a big problem, because how good your game is doesnt't matter if you're not landing the next lucky indie hit. You need marketing for your game in this oversaturated business! I know there is a big trend against publisher for small indie teams, but for us this was not true at all. It is really important to team up with the right one for you! |
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csg
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« Reply #18 on: January 10, 2021, 11:07:34 AM » |
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Uff, we're finally releasing the game on the PC via steam on the 13th! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1096100/Skellboy_Refractured/We took almost a year to polish it after the initial switch release, because the reception was kinda lukewarm. Some people liked it and we got a lot of feedback. what we added: - Local two player Co-Op Mode - A brand new Randomized Dungeon! - Massive New Game+ Mode with new Items, enemies and challenges! - 20+ New Items with special effects and a ton of Gameplay improvements! We made a new trailer, here it is!
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JobLeonard
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« Reply #19 on: January 11, 2021, 04:47:51 AM » |
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Congrats!  (will there be a Skellboyo reference Hades in the game? :p) |
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