next »

[SpinfoamGames]

Teaser Trailer

Class demo video

I wanted to build something "small" in Unreal Engine 4, so I started playing around with twin-stick shooter ideas. Nothing is ever actually small though, so after a troubling number of false starts I wound up landing on this visually extra-retro-styled idea. (The sprites are from Oryx's delightful "Ultimate Roguelike Tileset".)

Gameplay is more or less in the direction of Robotron at the moment -- I'm still working out how many modern ideas to include (upgrades? perks? level ups? etc?).

There are 30 levels planned out and about 30 different monster types at the moment, with the idea that you could keep looping after finished the 30 levels with increased difficulty each time if you wanted to.

I'd really like to take this idea through to completion and a release, but I'd love to hear feedback and opinions about whether anybody is looking for another twin-stick shooter (especially a lo-fi one like this) these days...?

[SpinfoamGames]

Been plugging away at Retromancer development and put together a handful of GIFs of both old and new content:



Since very early on, I had a test background with just a pile of pixelated bones in the middle of it for all the stages. I finally got around to adding some nicer borders and backgrounds that change for each set of stages now. These are the ants and wasps that make up the last stage of the first area: the woods.



This is the very first level, so it's relatively sedate, but the explosive shot power-up stands out nicely since the screen isn't too crowded.



The second area is the swamp, and it's full of evil trees, will-o-wisps, and other generally swamp-dwelling things. At the moment, the trees are the only enemies in the game that don't move, but that actually makes them interesting to have to deal with in a way, so I'd like to get at least one more static creature implemented.



After the swamp, the player heads to the crypt and runs into a variety of skeletons. The last batch are slightly on fire and explosive.



The caves come next, and are filled with monsters that drop blobs of poison or leave trails of webbing behind.

The last two areas, the ruins and the void, are populated by crazed cultists and eldritch horrors. Both those areas still need quite a lot of work; only one monster there (the Eldritch Cube) is anything close to fully developed so far.

[SpinfoamGames]

They aren't the most exciting things, but I've been working on getting some of the UI bits and pieces put together:





These are built in UMG in UE4, which is pretty nifty to work with

Tossed another video up on YouTube as well, with some more content from the end of the first and beginning of the second areas:

[-Ross]

Looks like it could be cool. I'm always looking for a good twin-stick shooter. If I had to define "good" I'd probably say: interesting enemies, a smooth difficulty curve, and maybe some character abilities that actually make you play differently. I'm sick of the hundreds of twin-stick shooters where you're constantly running away firing behind you and hoping the enemies die before they catch you or you run into a dead end. I think Nuclear Throne is the only one (I haven't tried that many) that encourages you to charge headlong into the fray like a madman and blow everything away.

It's probably a bit late to say this, but personally, I'd steer away from the black-background-with-neon-glow style. That's pretty much the go-to style for anyone who's making a shooter and doesn't think they can make good art (or doesn't want to put in the effort). Geometry Wars already took it 10x further and did a much better job of it than everyone else. The fantasy theme is cool though! Very few shooters doing that.

[SpinfoamGames]

I'm sick of the hundreds of twin-stick shooters where you're constantly running away firing behind you and hoping the enemies die before they catch you or you run into a dead end.

I've got four different character classes planned, so I'm hoping each one will offer a bit of a different play style. The hunter class definitely has a bit of that run away and shoot feel, but at least one of the classes will actually be a short-range / melee class, so there'll be no choice but to jump right into the fray there.

It's probably a bit late to say this, but personally, I'd steer away from the black-background-with-neon-glow style.

It's definitely fair to say that style gets used a lot -- I'm hoping to be a little less excessively neon though, and instead use the bright, glowing bits to call attention to things you really need to see, while keeping other objects in a less glowy style. I've been working with some subtle backgrounds too, but it's a tricky balance with the one-bit style sprites to make sure the background doesn't become distracting.

The fantasy theme is cool though! Very few shooters doing that.

I'm not sure why the fantasy setting is as uncommon as it is for these sorts of games, but I definitely wish there were more of them. (Shout outs to Iron Fisticle and Iron Crypticle for being great examples )

Thanks for the feedback!

[SpinfoamGames]

Just got rolling on the barbarian class:



Barbarians are slow moving and have short-range throwing axes, so they have to stay more or less in the middle of the fray. To compensate they get a radial attack at the end of their dashes and sometimes just shrug off a hit from an enemy without taking any damage.

Their axes also always pierce through enemies, so they can sometimes clear out a large chunk of monsters all at once.

There's a longer gameplay video over on YouTube for anyone who might be interested:

[SpinfoamGames]

There is a basic implementation of each of the four classes planned for Retromancer now, so I put together a video that shows each of them running through the same stage of the game:





Here's a quick rundown of each class:

Hunter
This is the "totally standard" twin-stick shooter character with a long range, rapid firing weapon and a quickly recharging dash. The hunter has the fastest base movement speed which, especially when combined with their long range, makes it relatively easy to dodge around monsters and projectiles.

Barbarian
As the last post mentioned, the barbarian is a fairly short range character. They have the most armor of all the classes, and they start off with a damage bonus as well. Barbarians also have a dash attack that not only deals damage but also makes them invulnerable during the dash. Occasionally, they also ignore damage (this happens at random about 20% of the time). All this is intended to make it fun and rewarding to charge into the middle of things when playing this character.

Mage
The mage has the same range as the hunter, but fires a spray of homing bolts instead of perfectly aimed arrows. The bolts also randomly split after hitting either a monster or the edge of the arena. The mage has a moderate movement speed, but gets the longest distance dash of all four classes (the dash makes them briefly invincible after it ends as well). The mage is designed to find a safe spot to stand for moment, unleash a volley of arcane bolts, then quickly re-position. Their normal rate of fire is a bit slow, but it increases significantly when they are standing still.

Cleric
The cleric is something like a hybrid of the mage and barbarian. Like the mage, they fire homing projectiles, but they do not cause damage on contact -- instead they drift towards nearby monsters and explode for splash damage. The cleric can move close to an enemy to direct a swarm of holy bolts at them quickly, or move around the area leaving projectiles behind like mines or bombs. They have less armor than the barbarian, but instead of shrugging off damage they can stop firing briefly for a chance to recover a point of armor.

[SpinfoamGames]

Some updates from over the holiday season:

• Quite a bit of time went into tweaking each of the four player classes -- none of them changed enormously from the descriptions in the last update, but things like weapon range and damage and movement speed got adjusted and tuned
• Packaged up a MacOS build for the first time and was happy to discover it pretty much just works
• Added some ambient sounds and VFX for each area (like the rain in the swamp shown in the image above)
• Started the ball rolling for a Steam page; hopefully there will be a place to wishlist Retromancer soon!

[SpinfoamGames]

I put together a gameplay trailer today for Retromancer's future Steam store page -- the YouTube version above is almost identical, except for about 30 seconds of extra logos at the end so I could drop in the subscribe and playlist links.

I'm sure I'll wind up doing more than one version of this, so if anybody has any feedback on how the video looks and feels, I'd be glad to hear it!

[SpinfoamGames]

Retromancer just got a shorter, more exciting (hopefully?) trailer and... a public Steam page!

I recently got the majority of the work for the unlockable upgrade menu completed as well, so power ups and weapons now need to be unlocked using points earned in previous playthrus before they become available.

[SpinfoamGames]

Retromancer got released on Steam today!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1007180/Retromancer/

This is the first time I've done a Steam release, and it has been ... an adventure; not only as far as learning about Steam, but also figuring out which bits of Unreal Engine's Steam support to keep and what to write my own versions of.

I'm fairly happy with the game itself, especially since it was always meant to have a small scope (and that *mostly* panned out in the end). But I didn't really have the development experience I wanted. In particular, I really wish I had released prototypes and demos publicly along the way... I think that'll be the approach for the next project.