next »

[Praterade]

CONTINGENCY





Been working on this game for a long while now. I'm in the final stretch, and everything left is mostly planned out. Hoping to release this Fall. I wanted to post here for the last leg so that I can keep things a bit more in order and you can see how it progresses.

With this game I wanted to create something that centered around the feelings of being alone and getting discouraged. There are some light themes that express my experiences with those challenges (I definitely don't want the game to be preachy, but I wanted to throw some ideas out there). The narrative is very simple, you crash land your spaceship during a cargo mission. You have to survive on a foreign planet until the company you work for sends a rescue ship.

While trying to survive, you have an AI companion named Wordsworth who is there to guide you and does a pitiful job at motivating you to keep going. Each enemy you encounter is a hallucination of your fear and stress. Surviving this planet will mean surviving your mind and overcoming your inner turmoil.

Gameplay is a mix of platforming combat with roguelite elements. I didn't want to reinvent the wheel but I wanted to make something I found fun. I love games where you get to gain upgrades that work together to let you play your own way (this game design keeps me hooked on playing MOBA's). There are many suit upgrades you gain each time you level up in a run. They can be combined to give you a variety of ways to play (being stealthy, doing tons of damage, being able to absorb tons of damage, avoiding enemies by changing their movements, etc.

Discord Server

Come talk to me about the game and meet the awesome people who help me with the game.

https://discord.gg/F4bDa5g

Store Pages

Buy now on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/905070/CONTINGENCY/

Follow me on Itch.io
https://mattprater.itch.io/contingency

Progress

In the last day I have been working on boss battles in-between polishing every rough edge of the game.

Here is the beginnings of the Golem boss for the anger storyline:



Next I added some particle effects for the text where you discover story dialog:



Finally I added the ability to adjust music volume in the pause menu:

[Praterade]

​Today I added a new enemy, the Samurai. He has a very quick attack speed and if he starts hitting you, it's very hard to get away. He does small bits of damage very quickly, which adds up.



I also added another suit upgrade, which allows you to see the remaining health of enemies and how much damage they do. Good for certain situations.



Finally I added another area that you encounter enemies in. It is a small building and you can climb on the roof from the right side.

[Praterade]

Today I didn't do much that could be shown in screen shots. Mostly changes to how runs work and designing new enemy challenges that incorporate the samurai. I have also been adding Wordsworth dialog snippets more throughout the beginning of the game to better narrate how to play the game.

I also worked on music plans.  Each time you level up in a run, you get a more positive attitude (rather then just having a number for what your level is) and the music changes along with your current attitude.

Here's a link to a track I made for combat when you have a "good" attitude level:

https://soundcloud.com/supadupaflymatt/contingency-hype-teaser

[andyfromiowa]

Looks cool so far. I like the idea of needing to keep your character's hope and morale up. I'm curious how that mechanic will play out gameplay-wise. Also, it sort of reminds me of Risk of Rain. Good luck with the game! 

[Praterade]

It's been way way too long since I've updated this devlog. I have been steadily working, although my progress has been very slow due to some family health problem circumstances taking my focus away from mostly everything but helping take care of a loved one.

I'll continue to update my progress. Right now I'm working on some procedural dungeons but I don't have anything that will definitely be a final product, mostly lots of arrays of procedural room details.

I did want to show the crafting system that I have worked on for the game. I wanted a system that wasn't only about collecting the ingredients and remembering recipes. I wanted those things to be a base but to add more skill based interaction on top of those elements.

My solution is a drink creation system. You find different colored fruits in the world and each one can be turned into fruit juice. Each color of fruit corresponds to a different stat in the game, red is attack damage, green maximum health and blue is movement speed.

Once you collect fruit, each fruit can be used to make a consumable drink of a different color. Once the cup is on screen, you hold a button down to pour the liquid on screen. That drink will improve your corresponding stat once consumed.

The crafting goes deeper than just making 1 fruit into a drink, you can combine 2 of any of the fruits to make a more advanced drink. Once you finish pouring, the the ratio you poured of the 2 juices will appear at the top.

The ratios of the 2 fruits determines what drink will come out. If you don't make a ratio of anything that the system recognizes, it gives you random sludge. Each different drink has a different bonus and by drinking the more fancy drinks, you can unlock really unique stats that you can't unlock in any other way (such as defense bonuses against damage, making damage reflect back on enemies when they attack you or having an electric shock that damages nearby enemies over time).

An example of a drink you can make is:

50% Red Juice - 50% Blue Juice : Purple Drank Gives you + 2 damage and makes you run 0.5 mph faster.

[Praterade]

I’ve been worrying about music for a long time. I’m an extremely amateur musician and I’ve made track after track for this game. I’ve tried to create scores that I felt fit the atmosphere I wanted but even the tracks I’ve really liked got tiring after I’ve put them in the game and heard them a lot.

I wanted to have music sync with the combat so for a long time my solution was to start the music when a battle began and then fade it out when all the enemies were gone. Well even when switching which tracks play depending on the progress of the run and for variety each time, I was just finding the music to get stale.

Here’s my favorite track from before I solved my music problem:

https://soundcloud.com/supadupaflymatt/contingency-b-side-hype-1

I decided that with this type of game, where you are going to be dying over and over, you don’t want to respawn and then go have vastly the same experience with the music over and over again. Plus only having the music queue up when you are doing specific tasks made the music feel really choppy and turned it into more of an annoyance than part of the experience.

I eventually noticed that when I play the game, I have the most fun with the game when music is just playing all the time. So I started working on how I could have music playing all the time and make it natural. I’ve also been wanting to incorporate more dialog for the sidekick character in the game, Wordsworth.

I realized these 2 problems could be solved together, so I decided to give Wordsworth a radio station. He makes stupid comments about the songs and then plays tracks for the player. It’s one of his software features he has been outfitted with to keep you happier so survival isn’t so hard.

Each track he plays is randomly generated, so that there will be a lot of variety. The algorithm isn’t very advanced. It only puts together preexisting sequences of music, rather than generating melodies. I really feel like game music needs to have easy listening, and be very catchy, but not too distracting.

Here’s an example of a track that could be generated:

https://soundcloud.com/supadupaflymatt/contingency-generation-example

All in all, I’m really happy with what Ive got for the music. It adds a lot to the experience and brings more character to the world.

[Praterade]

I'm working on a lot of puzzle sections right now, but nothing pretty to show. I do want to update on something I haven't shown before that I've worked a lot on.

The game's different suits. Each color of suit has unique starting statistics and a completely different attack method.

The original is the blue(ish?) suit.



This bad boy is kinda cumbersome to use, but the blue suit's stats are right in the middle, movement speed and damage wise. You have to hold down the fire button until the laser is totally charged for it to damage enemies. Upgrading your fire speed makes a huge difference for this suit. It has a few unique upgrades, like "Unrestricted Aim" which lets the laser go through walls and multiple enemies.

The second suit is the red suit.



The red suit makes your phaser shoot projectiles rather than making your phaser a long laser beam. You also have less damage in this suit and start off moving slower. It has several unique power-ups that are only available when in the suit. There is Sacrifice charge which lets you hold down the fire button to sacrifice your health into damage and Double Tap that makes every other shot fire 2 projectiles instead of one, to give a couple examples.

The last is the purple suit.



The Purple suit gives you a lightsaber instead of a blaster. The lightsaber allows you to teleport short distances towards enemies to close the gap. There are several power-ups unique to this suit, including a power that makes the gap you can teleport much longer and a power-up called Backstab Strike that makes your attacks from behind enemies do double damage.

I also had a really janky suit where you had a small torch that burned enemies from really close. I scrapped it, but I could pick it up again.

Thanks for reading if you got this far. I've been working hard on some great content that I hope to show soon.

[Praterade]

I wanted to show the dungeons in the game. Dungeons are randomly generated floor by floor. The game makes a path from the entrance all the way to the top of the building where there is a mini boss.


Here’s what the algorithm spits out for a dungeon before a function in the code goes through and creates world objects for each piece. The arrows indicate the path the player can follow to the top.

An “e” indicates that an area is a room with enemies to fight.

A left or right arrow means there will be a room with a puzzle that you have to solve to move on.

The up arrow means that there is a room to get to the next floor.

0's have random stuff in them, there might be something that can help with puzzles or give bonuses or they can just be empty.

Of course the top floor contains a mini boss. Each mini boss has completely random abilities. He could have an electric shock ability or be able to quickly charge into you if you don't jump out of the way

If you want to see me playing the game, follow me on Twitch where I'll do runs from time to time. As embarrassing as this sounds, I actually haven't been able to beat the game in it's current form, so I'll be trying lots of different strategies on stream to figure out what works best. (I hope to have the stream on the game's Store page on Steam too, but I haven't gotten it working great so far).

>> My Twitch! <<

[Praterade]

New powerups:

Suit Healing (Tier 1 upgrade):
This powerup lets you recover health if you hold down. It works pretty slowly so it can’t be used in battle. Lets you save food so that when you are fighting a boss you can have food to recover health in the middle of the fight.

(This one looks a bit like he's taking a dump haha)

Pyro Suit (Tier 2 upgrade):
This allows you to set yourself on fire at will. You can also extinguish yourself as you please. Fire does damage to you but also has some other cool interactions in the world that can be useful, from combat to getting into certain areas.

I've also mostly redone my store page. The "About This Game" fits my game so much more now and is filled with the type of dialog and humor that's actually in the game.

Please give it a look:

>> STORE PAGE <<

[Praterade]

Lots of work lately. Manly I've been ironing a lot of bugs out.

I streamed last night. You can see the runs I did here: https://youtu.be/wbD6yBkm9iM?t=177

Been working on bosses a lot. I wanted them to have lots of abilities and variety.

First off, I added more sprites for the boss. You can get 1 of 3 possible.

The first is the classic style that's been in the game for a while:



Next is a more shiny and sleek fool:



And last the most hellish looking one:



Additionally, I've spent tons of time on different attacks and random patterns for the bosses. I won't spoil all of them but I'll show a couple.

Here's a special ability, stealth, where the boss goes mostly invisible and then does his next attack on you.



Here's a fast paced rage smash, where the boss gets really grumpy and then hits much faster than usual.



Lastly there's a bit of a projectile attack where he shoots a wall towards you.



Thanks if you read this far.

[Praterade]

Today I've made a screen that comes in after the game over screen that shows each enemy you killed and the name Wordsworth gave to them:

[Praterade]

I've been working on tons of misc things, many of which I won't be posting for spoiler reasons.

I will show several random things that haven't been shown before.

Here's a clip of the changes to the final boss battle. The first phase includes the shadowman spawning many random enemies.



Here are some pictures of some consumable items that you can create, flowers. There are 3 different types all of which have different properties when consumed.

The blue flower takes away any negative debuff you have when consumed.



The green flower improves the amount of health you get when you eat food.



The red flower turns you on fire for a while after you consume it (sounds dumb but it can be useful).



I also wanted to show a mechanic that I like a lot, how you can pour juice on the ground. It can interacts with several things in the world. One basic example is how your can pour fruit juice on meat to change it's color. Once the meat is a different color, it gives stat bonus in addition to restoring health.



Lastly, I've changed how leveling up works a bit. Each different suit has 1 stat that will improve each time you earn an upgrade. Blue suit upgrades damage, red suit upgrades movement speed and the purple suit upgrades health.

[Praterade]

I’ve been working overtime on almost every element of the game. Performance improvements, bug fixes and designing new areas to discover. I’ve made huge amounts of content that is primarily auditory and as such not easy to show off. Pages and pages of new dialog for the player’s assistant character, Wordsworth.

I have added more locked off areas with new items inside them. You have to find a key to enter these areas. Like many things in the game, there are 3 colors of keys, red, green and blue.



Expanding on the flowers and other plants you can find on the ground, I've add several more plants which eat have their own ability when consumed.

The first and most common you will find is called Traveler's Herb. When eaten, it transports you back to your ship in an instant. This is really helpful since you can save time for more important things than going back to the ship (the game is timed).



The next is called Root of Pain, which does damage  to every enemy on the screen when used. The downside is that it damages you as well.



The next is called Healing Herb, which is similar to the normal health item meat, except that it heals you more slowly over time (meat is instant). This is good because you can take it before you anticipate taking damage and it can help you recover health. Works well with a tanky strategy.

[/url]

Lastly is Frightful Fern, which makes you frightening temporarily and enemies will run the other way when approaching you.



Here's how it looks in action:



Thanks for reading. I hope to release very soon, so please don't hesitate to wishlist me on steam!

[Praterade]

Been working hard towards a release. Mostly on bugfixes and making sure the engine works perfectly on as many computers as possible. I've had to work around many of the limitations of the tech I'm using, to make things work as they should (font problems were a horrible pain).

I have also been working on some new content too, to round out the variety you'll have. I've been adding many more areas to explore where you'll find items and resources.

There isn't much to say about each, the screen shots speak for themselves. These areas all have a animal in them that you can get food (health) from and many of them also have a fruit somewhere and sometimes they have items that can be locked behind a door.

[Praterade]

It's finally ready! Head over to Steam for an experience you won't forget! All you have to lose are some braincells.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/905070/CONTINGENCY/

Looking forward to seeing others speed run the game, I think some will be able to beat it quickly.

Some of the final updates leading to launch are quality of life changes and bug fixes. Your custom controls now save and more explanations have been woven in for the more complicated aspects of the game. It's been a long ride, and I expect to still work on the game some more. I know the testers and myself probably didn't catch every bug.

I'm very happy with how everything turned out and it's a game that I have a blast playing. I think each mechanic really blended with the others to make a game with a lot of strategy and nuance. I've played so many runs where I the game played out so differently.

I'm also happy with the story and the theme it deals with. It stayed really goofy while also dealing with things that go on in my head and even helping me improve my own flaws and thought processes.

Thanks for your support, I know many of you have quietly gone to the store page and wishlisted me and that means a lot. Even you just skimming the thread means a lot, I'm sure most reading this have also experienced making a game and other people showing interest in what you've created. It's really a special thing, so thank you all.