Posted February 14, 2024 by JD Nation
There's still a couple of days left, so this might not be the final build. but it's always good practice to update it a few days earlier, so you aren't scrambling to upload with a dwindling deadline timer and a spotty internet connection.
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Goals
Having played a few other Jam entries this year and last year, I've noticed everyone else tends to put together a strong finished Metroidvania. Usually between 30 minutes and and Hour long.
Whereas I've always aimed to produce a theoretical introductory segment to a bigger game. Especially this this one, since it was the game concept I've been wanting to make since I took up Game Design as a hobby. Even my entry last year "Little Ghost: HTD", was made with the intention of rebuilding the core mechanics of this game from the ground up with all the new knowledge I'd gained.
This issue with this is, a big part of a Metroidvania is having the full picture of the set-piece flow, so you can propperly pace how you gain abilities, stack/build on the mechanics, and open up the map to branching routes.
Plus, I feel like the main appeal of my game is the combat. A combat system that isn't quite finshed, and if I stripped out too many of the abilities that I had already integrated, it started to feel very thin.
What I'm essentially making is the tutorial section. And a tutorial section is a bit like the introduction to an essay. It makes a lot more sense to do it last. Again, knowing the full picture so you can pace things properly, rather than having to guess aproximately where you're going to land by the deadline.
So, the compromise I've made is that you start out with very few abilities and combos. While the game dishes out combos quite quickly, there's only really one main traversal upgrade. In a bigger game, I might not even have the player get is this early on, but without it, there's no sense of the map opening up.
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Goals Reached
I think the combat's coming along OK. The feedback had been good. The moves feel distinct and balanced for the most part. The only one that's maybe a bit over-powered in the Air Stomp. I wanted a lot of tactile grabbing and throwing, which I think is all quite fun, especially when paired with some fast music.
I've got one Boss set piece, which I think is quite good, but might be a bit hard for the first boss. It's always hard to tell when you made it yourself. It never stops surprising me when sections I feared were too easy were actually too hard. I shortened it by a couple of phases after my friend had a little trouble with it, so hopefully no one else gets stuck too much.
After that it mostly becomes a Key Hunt. I had a very similar sequence in Little Ghost, but as a side quest. Most people missed it, so I fgured I'd reuse it as a main quest in this one. This hasn't been tested so I have no clue how intuitive it is. Out of caution, I added extra Keys and tried to make most of them fairly easy to find.
I also added a map last second. I build my rooms to a grid, so it was pretty easy to add a player icon to it.
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Notable Shortcomings
While there are a few new assets, like in the intro cutscene and other interactables, most of the enviromental art is premade stuff from Little Ghost. As a result, I don't think I've quite nailed down the art style, unlike the charcters, which have black outlines and cell shading (with some exceptions, like hair, slime and fire which have coloured contours to give them a softer more energetic edge)
Though while the charcter artstyle is stronger, the actual sprite index is a bit thin. Even the player character has a lot of place holder and reused animations as of now. I had to fudge quite a lot of the enemy animation with patchwork jobs. Actually, I'm surprised how good some of them look in the heat of battle.
And I did get a full attack animation done for the Slime. Slimes are pretty easy to animate.
The main shortcoming I think is the actual combat sequences. Including the Boss Battle there's only really 3 main combat encounters, and two Enemy types. I wanted to have at least one more enemy, and a big rumble at the end of the game, with every type, and a room where they and you can run around.
While I did make some headway on the Enemy traversal, as you can see in the earlier build, Combat Room Test Ver03, I didn't spend enough time refining it. So the game just kinda ends when you unlock the final gate. Which is kinda lame. But so it goes.
Edit: So it does not go!!