I wanted to make a dungeon crawler and I decided early on to make the small screen a major point in my game-design.

What I ended up with is "Kame-Ra" a game where you (a turtle) fight your way through a monster filled sewer to reach the ladder to the next level. Pretty standard stuff. 

Here's the twist: As we all know turtles are pretty sturdy creatures, that's why when you get hit by an enemy you don't feel the knockback... the camera does.

You move the camera with the arrow keys and the character with WASD (little confusing in the beginning but you get used to it pretty quick). If your character ever leaves the visible area it's GAME OVER. It doesn't matter if it was caused by the knockback of an enemy, or if you just didn't pay attention when moving.

Planned Features (completed, in progress, canceled):

• resolution 512x512 scaled x8 to 64x64
• dungeon generation
• minimap
• amazing programmer art
• multiple enemies
• scaling difficulty
• animations
• turtle attack
• preorder bonus
• 40$ DLC

Taking the infamous screenshake and making it deadly? Dang, that's a super clever idea, hopefully it's intuitive enough to work in practice even once you add some more complexity to the game

It's a nice twist. I find the idea of having to keep your character (or a character) in frame of the camera intriguing. I think you could still have an interesting mechanic removing the dual controls. The "turtle" (now AI based, instead of player controlled) is some famous dungeon crawler and you've been hired to capture his crawling exploits. He gets angry the less centered he is in frame and  when completely out of frame you are fired - game over. I'm can't wait to try out your execution. 

Progress!

I changed the concept so now the camera can't be moved by the player but is instead only moved by enemies hitting you.

Also new Plant/Turret enemy and Bubble attack for the turtle.

I'm playing with the idea of powerups or different weapons for pickup. Maybe a "heal" that recenters the camera?

If you guys have any suggestions let me know ;)

First in-progress version is released!

Still a lot of work to do.

Check it out at: https://tp-.itch.io/kame-ra