Posted October 04, 2021 by Jackson Westbrook
The development process began with my concept to make a platformer game without any way for the player to directly attack the enemies on the stage. Instead I would focus exclusively on parries using the shield. Counter attacks, block and reflect would become the main method of defeating enemies in this game I decided, and from there I built a few levels in order to test this functionality. Initially I had a lot of trouble attempting to program and implement this behavior (swords would only be deflected in one direction, along with a slew of other issues that came with my spaghetti code). However, after I got this mechanic working for the most part (probably will update in the future to make more interesting interactions with the swords), it was fairly simple for me to flesh out interesting levels with scaling difficulty. The last level is still a bit hard, but I believe it's doable.
Playtest notes:
Development Documents
Initial Main Character Sprite Sheet:
Initial Enemy and Sword designs:
Pixel Boy Sprite Sheet:
Enemy Sprite Sheet: