next »

[kevin andersson]

WISHLIST ON STEAM

Hoplegs is a different kind of platformer about a moving box and four legs with unconventional controls. Each of the four buttons on your gamepad where you usually jump, interact, crouch and change weapons are now your different legs. Master this unique way of controlling your character to navigate through a large variation of levels created by the developer or the community!

FEATURES

• Build and share your levels!
  Let your imagination run wild when creating custom levels in the level editor. Do you want to build a puzzle level with switches that can control almost anything, a space inspired level with zero gravity or do you want to create an impossible mountain to climb? With a wide variety of objects to use there's really nothing that's stopping your creative ideas! Create singleplayer, coop or party levels!
  
  
• A sweet single player story!
  Play as a young wizard who's about to move his house closer to the king's castle but during the boring phase of packing your bags, a spell accidentally hits a magical mirror and bounce back. Our young wizard turns into a moving box so it's now your job to help him get back to normal.
  
  
• Friendship testing co-op levels!
  Sadly this accident is very common so you're not alone as a medieval moving box. You need to push each other away, stand on top of each other and do more unspeakable things in order to overcome difficult obstacles that's ahead of you.
  
  
• Compete against other players in the leaderboard!
  Are you fast and good at climbing in video games? Yes? But are you good in a game with unconventional controllers?! Well then I wish you the best of luck on your road to the top!
  
  
• Unique look!
  Unlock and customize your hat, face, box and legs to make the most stylish moving box on the market. Be sure to keep your eyes open for rare items in hidden areas!
  
  
• Party modes!
  Local play for 2-4 players in different classic and silly game modes. Get ready for hilarious moments together and make sure to not end friendships over this.
  
  
• Controller & Keyboard support!
  … also a dance mat?! That would be stupid.. right? Don't do this you will risk hurting your legs!
  
  
• Wonderful soundtrack by Nathan Ross
  Nathan will make sure that if you cry of happiness, fear, sadness or rage then you'll at least bounce your head with the music.

.

LINKS

• Twitter: @AnderssonKev - Progress gifs
• Twitch: @AnderssonKev - Streaming development of Hoplegs
• Website: Hoplegs.com - Information about Hoplegs
• Steam Page: Hoplegs Steam Page - Wishlist the game!
• Presskit: Hoplegs PressKit - If you want to write about the game.

-How It Started-
So this started as a small prototype on one of my streams that I had too much fun with, the testers who've played it kept laughing so I think this is something that I need to continue working on! I got a lot of peoples thoughts and impressions when my tweets spread, which is great!

[Kyle O]

Looks frustrating haha—I wonder if this is one of those games more fun to make than play? To be fair, I could definitely see a lot of great puzzles emerging the more you play around with this very imprecise control scheme. I would say lean more into the ridiculous and funny aspects, it seems like you are anyway.

Also I don't want to step on your artistic vision but it would be way cool if instead of a character with a face and legs it was like—I dont know—an apple with 4 worms, or some other thing with 4 separate characters inside controlling it.

[harsay]

I really like the idea! It has the potential to be one of those frustrating games that everyone loves to watch people play

[kevin andersson]

Looks frustrating haha—I wonder if this is one of those games more fun to make than play? To be fair, I could definitely see a lot of great puzzles emerging the more you play around with this very imprecise control scheme. I would say lean more into the ridiculous and funny aspects, it seems like you are anyway.

I hope that it'll be fun to play and yes it's very fun to work with. I think it'll go toward the "funny" direction 

Also I don't want to step on your artistic vision but it would be way cool if instead of a character with a face and legs it was like—I dont know—an apple with 4 worms, or some other thing with 4 separate characters inside controlling it.

Maybe some sort of customisation? :D

I really like the idea! It has the potential to be one of those frustrating games that everyone loves to watch people play

Let's hope that some of them also likes to play the game as well. I don't plan to make another "one long and frustrating level", but I still want it to be challenging and fun!

[oahda]

This is really clever! Excited to see more.

[FrancM]

Really cool concept, can see this becoming the next hit frustration game.

[kevin andersson]

Thank you guys! So glad to hear that people like it!

[kevin andersson]

February
So in February I focused on making the controller feel nice, I still have some minor tweaking to do (obviously).
This is from one of my streams, where I managed to achieve peak-coolness.



March
So this month I'll make sure the level editor reach a barebone working state where I can use it to create levels, it will still be breakable if you don't play nice but I'll have to fix that in the future. Something I also want to achieve is one level that looks like my mock-up of the game.

Quick gif of my level editor so far.

[QOG]

Looking good! Seems like this could be a fun use of non-intuitive controls along the lines of QWOP.

[Ripityom]

This is golden, love how you use the legs for multiple stuff, like hanging between two platforms with two and pressing a button with a third. Can't wait to see where you take this.

[kevin andersson]

Looking good! Seems like this could be a fun use of non-intuitive controls along the lines of QWOP.

Thanks, yeah I think it's really fun right now so I hope that people who play it also enjoy it!

This is golden, love how you use the legs for multiple stuff, like hanging between two platforms with two and pressing a button with a third. Can't wait to see where you take this.

Great :D Glad to hear that, I always try to think "how can I solve this with 4 legs" and sometimes it comes out great :D

[kevin andersson]

Art Style Progress
So the outline and grass shader is implemented in the game. In short how it works, all brown shapes (ground layer) gets a combined outline. The green shapes (grass) that's placed outside of the brown shapes doesn't get rendered. I really like this direction and will continue to add decorations like flowers, swaying grass, improved backgrounds and more things to make it nice 

Coop Test
Obviously I had to try and make coop... this is the first test, I have things I want to fix with it to make it more fun (hopefully). But will not work too much on this part right now since I'm focusing on the visuals of the game, I want to reach a point where I can show a gif of the game and say "this is how it will look at release". So to set the bar for the rest of the game which will make it easier to estimate how long the project will take to finish.



Difficulty
I've made some levels that have different types of difficult obstacles. I'm hoping to do some tests on friends to hopefully figure out how I should adjust the difficulty curve of the game.

[NinthPower]

This is fantastic is every way, killin it.

[oahda]

The faces are so good. Especially the screaming mouth as it goes flying.

[kevin andersson]

Art Updates
So I've made some good progress with the visuals in Hoplegs. Color updates, grass, flowers and background decorations!
In this gif below I've made a test for houses, what I feel is missing is more props in general (inside and outside) but it's an iterative process



What's next?
So right now I'm focusing on making more props, but to not get bored of making the same thing all the time I'm also making some easy levels that I'm planning to have some friends test to figure out where to put the difficulty curve at. I should go in to detail how I plan to structure the difficulty curves in relation to each other in the different game modes.

Devlog on Youtube
For anyone interested in some sort of Devlog on youtube then I tried to make something in the format of a relaxed podcast on my own. Let me know what you think.. Be gentle haha! The reason I went with this approach is because it's more efficient with time, instead of 5+ hours a video could take me 90 minutes to finish which gives me more time to work on the game. Since this isn't my full time job then I have to try and find a good balance with everything regarding the game and life

[JobLeonard]

I'm with KyleO, this looks frustrating! But also in a good way

[andos]

Love the simple mechanics of this. Excited to see more!

[oahda]

Great video! My vote goes to kevlog because I love a bad pun.

[kevin andersson]

I'm with KyleO, this looks frustrating! But also in a good way

Haha thanks, I hope I find a good balance between frustrating/fun/rewarding :D

Love the simple mechanics of this. Excited to see more!

It means a lot, I'm excited to share more as I progress

Great video! My vote goes to kevlog because I love a bad pun.

Had someone from my Discord suggest that, couldn't skip it :D

[kevin andersson]

I'm so happy to reach this milestone for the project. I've remade the artstyle and made a ton of progress!
So I've announced the game properly now on youtube and also set the Steam page live if you want to wishlist it!

Trailer:


Announcement tweet if you want to help share it: https://twitter.com/AnderssonKev/status/1306617106532835330
Steam page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1395830/Hoplegs/


So the plans going forward is that I'm going to try and post every week or every other week with some updates about the game! And here are some gifs from the announcement!