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Gravity Unlocked - 2D platformer with varying levels of gravity and frustration

A topic by Fodi created Jan 20, 2021 Views: 501 Replies: 2
Viewing posts 1 to 3
Submitted (2 edits)

I'm also a bit late to the party, but here we go. I'm about the make my first public game (...prototype probably), if we don't count a doodle I've created back in 7th grade in The Games Factory. I'm 33.

After the jam theme was announced, I tried to casually come up with ideas and bounce a few off of my friend Tibor. Yesterday morning I've received an email that there's only about a week left, so I finally decided that I'm going to make an experimental 2D side-scrolling platformer game in Construct 3, in which the gravity is only constant in a meaning that it's constantly changing. In other words the player has to quickly adapt to gradual changes between moving the "player" (which is actually a ball of some sorts) on the ground, in (near) zero gravity or on the ceiling. Since I'm super bad at graphics, I'll be cooking with pre-made assets by the very talented Rotting Pixels.

My main inspirations on this project are VVVVVV (the best retro-style platformer of all time IMHO), Rollin (the amazing DOS game, although it's top-down 2D, I loved the level design and the item/shop mechanics) and Ballance (if I have time, I'll try to nick implement its paper-wood-rock material changing mechanic).

The player will have to avoid hazards and pick stuff up to complete levels. I'm still experimenting with power-ups at the moment, which will allow the player to lock the level of gravity temporarily or set it to a certain level ("normal", zero, upside-down; or -10, 0 and 10 in Construct 3 terms).

At this point in time the "game" looks like this (please don't mind the super ugly gravity gauge in the bottom right, it's only temporary):

Once the basic power-ups are working, I'll upload a playable level and humbly ask for your kind feedback. By that I mean that it'd be very kind of you to provide any feedback. Its content does not have to be kind ;)

Submitted (1 edit)

The first prototype build is up! Feel free to comment here or on the page.

https://fodi.itch.io/gravity-unlocked

Submitted

I'm going to call it a day (it's 1:41 AM here); I'm afraid I only had time to make a sort of a tutorial level and a playground level, but I'll update the game with additional content (actual levels) next week. It felt really good to put it together, although I wish I started it a couple days sooner. Captain Hindsight OUT!