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[Shadestorm]

Hey TIGForums, my name is Connor Carpenter, otherwise known as Shadestorm from the Eo Game Dev Community.

This weekend was annoyingly dry on indie game releases, and in an unprecedent surge of motivation (for me), I made a game. This is my first real crack at two genres: "art" games, and rapid game development.

Chaser

Download - http://www.shadestorm.com/downloads/chaser.zip


There's a lot more I wanted to do with this. Particularily, I wanted to make a more upbeat ending. EDIT: I just had enough time to add-on said upbeat ending... However, travel plans forced me to wrap this up and kick it out the door. So I apologize for any rough edges. Still, the message is complete, I think. Hope you like.

Thanks! Give attention, please! Bye! 

[AuthenticKaizen]

hi connor 

i saw your game already on the indiegames blog and checked it out.
its pretty fun. 
i like the mixture of simple graphics (spiced up with some nice effects) combined with smooth gameplay and fine music.
good work.
especially for 12 hours.

also:
consider to introduce yourself on the introduction thread

[pixelatron]

Good. Very good. I was originally going to moan about the rocks being all-but-invisible... then I realised the brightness was turned down on my monitor. My bad!

[Pishtaco]

I really enjoy the speed and the way it feels fun just to zoom around. I couldn't see what the hell was going on though, and what to collect and what to avoid; the way the score is displayed, I'm not even sure whether it's going up or down most of the time.

[SoreThumb]

Hey TIGForums, my name is Connor Carpenter, otherwise known as Shadestorm from the Eo Game Dev Community.

This weekend was annoyingly dry on indie game releases, and in an unprecedent surge of motivation (for me), I made a game. This is my first real crack at two genres: "art" games, and rapid game development.

Chaser

Download - http://www.shadestorm.com/downloads/chaser.zip

There's a lot more I wanted to do with this. Particularily, I wanted to make a more upbeat ending. EDIT: I just had enough time to add-on said upbeat ending... However, travel plans forced me to wrap this up and kick it out the door. So I apologize for any rough edges. Still, the message is complete, I think. Hope you like.

Thanks! Give attention, please! Bye! 

I dont' know how many times I tried.  I lost count after maybe the 30th.
I just kept dying. And dying. And dying.
I have the feeling that colorblindness wasn't taken into consideration while making this game.. Usually because it hinders me in other games.

I really want to see that 'happy ending' which I can't get.  I can't get above 1,300, when everything starts flashing.  Why can't the rocks stay grey, the trees stay trees?  Why do color overlaps of the girl (presumably?) have to overlap the color of the rock or trees?

I start slamming into things I can't see.  I realize you die when you're off course, but sometimes I follow the girl intently and don't even notice the rocks... which is impossible to get around at high speeds.

Is there any answer you could give me?  I only am so upset because I actually liked this game right away.

(BTW:  http://shadestorm.com doesn't work)

[A7A]

This is way cool. I haven't cleared it yet so I cannot comment on that part of the game, and I like the gameplay even though I'm confused somewhat. Do I understand this game right if I say that the message is that once you're into something, chasing something, then smaller and smaller things can make you fall? Because I'm scratching my head, wondering if this is mirrored in the gameplay: at the beginning "small rocks" don't do me any harm, and later on they do. On fast levels I'm afraid I cannot see what's going on, but it would seem that even certain types of "grass" make me lose, which they do not in the beginning. The "blue coins" were a nice touch, and I also like how the blur after the "chased one" makes it hard to follow exactly behind it; I interpret these two elements as a way of saying that you shouldn't let other things distract you too much, but at the same time not follow something too close.

I also noticed that when I let go of the forward button I instantly lose on later "levels". I can see why this is the case; because otherwise it would be too easy. But, I think there is another way to this. Namely, why not make the object we're chasing after start running really fast and get out of screen in which case we lose it, instead of us just tripping right away? What the game tells me now is that if I slow down, I trip, lose focus, concentration, become my own obstacle. What the game tells me if the object we're chasing after suddenly gains speed if we slow down is sort of the same thing, but it's a different perspective, and it also is easier to understand as to have meaning, rather than just discovering by mistake as I did with the game as it is now.

Love to hear your thoughts about it.

[Shadestorm]

Hm... Thanks A7A, I didn't know anyone was still playing this!

If small rocks and grass are tripping you up at any point in the game, that might be a bug. That's not supposed to happen. I'll check it out, but it may also be that you're tripping on a tree or a tree beneath a cloud, and it's moving too fast/blurring too much for you to see correctly. Tripping on smaller rocks as you go faster would certainly go along with the theme I'm trying to convey in Chaser, but I think that would just be more unneccesarily cruel to players.

You've made a good suggestion about simply slowing down instead of tripping, but I don't think that carries the amount of impact I wanted failing to have. Chasing is bliss, and you can keep it going with determination, but eventually you will fail, and you will feel frustrated/confused/out of control, but this is just nature's way of pushing you in another direction.

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions, I really liked them! Unfortunately, you cannot find the meaning of Chaser until you've finished it. Oh, and for anyone else out there who is interested, I'm working on a sequel now.