64x64 ill-fated

Hi guys, me and a friend are developing 64x64 ill-fated, a game for the #LOWREZJAM 2017 here on itch.io.

I have already created a devlog in the jam section but since I believe that the game is rising enough interest I want to share the progress here too. If at the end of the jam we'll have collect some fans of the game, we'll keep working on it.

Here is the link of the other post in the jam section:

https://itch.io/t/130595/64x64-ill-fated-multiplayer-fantasy-beat-em-up

And here for your convenience the link of the development videos in chronological order:

Video 1

Video 2

Video 3

Video 4

Video 5

What do you think? Are you interest in seeing how the project could end up to?

Let us know!

Thank you :-)

64x64 ill-fated has been submitted for the #LOWREZJAM

https://itch.io/jam/lowrezjam2017/rate/168333

You can now play the game alone or with friends, it support local multiplayer up to 4 players.

We hope you will enjoy it!

Thank you!

Let's start the journey!

Are you ready for start your adventure?

Before you start, it is better to know how the game works. Today we talk about the stats bars.

As you have already notice, 64x64 ill-fated provides 3 bars for each character, the top one in red shows your life, the second one in yellow is the stamina and the last one in blue is your mind.

During the game you have to keep an eye at those stats, they are very important for your survival. Each bar is large maximum five pixels and every pixel represents one point in that stats. So if your life bar is large 3 pixels it means that you have 3 life point left. In case a stat score is higher than 5 a new brighter bar will appear on top and so on every 5 points.

LIFE - If your life reaches zero you are dead and you cannot play anymore with your character, your friends can still play the game and try to fight they way until the end without you.

STAMINA - Every time you attack, you use a stamina point, when you reach zero you became exhausted and cannot attack anymore but you can still move around. Every few second that you are not attacking, you recover one stamina point.

MIND - Mind is important as well as the other stats, in this game version it is used lightly but it will be more important in future versions of the game. Some monsters attacks affect your sanity, if your mind reaches zero you become insane and it will be harder to control your player around. The game might seems bugged to you, but in reality your character became insane... Be careful because you recover your mind only at the end of the level!

At the end of the level, your characters will level up and they will earn some points depending on the character, these points will increase the maximum and current value of each stat.

Keep following us, next time we'll discover the characters in details.

New video gameplay 4 and 3 players

Let's discover: The Warrior

The warrior is the strongest melee character currently present in the game.  If you want to play with a character that is always in front line and can resist to many attacks, the warrior is your choice!

Stats:
LIFE: 10
STAMINA: 5
MIND: 5

The warrior is among the 4 heroes the one with the highest LIFE score, however carrying the armour around and swinging the long sword makes this fighter tired very quickly. While this hero concentrate their skill in the attack, the mind as the stamina have the lowest score in the game.

The long sword is currently the weapon that deals more damage; once the warrior hits with it, the enemy loses 3 points of LIFE. The warrior need to lift the weapon and then slash the opponent, this makes the attack a bit slower compared to other characters but it is faster than the other melee hero, the cleric. Every time the warrior hits an enemy, the latter is pushed backwards. The warrior can in this way protect the other heroes from incoming enemies.

Leveling up:
Once finished the first level, this hero changes their score in the following way:

MAX LIFE: 13
LIFE: Current score +3
MAX STAMINA: 7
STAMINA: 7 (Stamina is totally recovered at the end of the level)
MAX MIND: 6
MIND: 6 (Stamina is totally recovered at the end of the level)

Do you want to know more about the other heroes? Keep following us! ;-)

Let's discover: The Rogue

Today we introduce the second hero: the rogue!

The rogue, on the contrary of the warrior, prefers to stay away from the centre of the battle, this hero instead can keep attacking the enemies from safe distance. If you prefer to avoid to be caught in a brawl but instead to be able to move freely while attacking, the rogue is the character for you!

Stats:
LIFE: 5
STAMINA: 10
MIND: 7

The rogue is the character with the highest STAMINA score, however despite the high volume of attacks the damage inflicted is the lowest among all the heroes. The rogue has a stronger MIND compared to the warrior but together with the mage, has the lowest value of LIFE.

The dagger flies fast on the battlefield but it inflicts only 1 point of damage to the enemies' LIFE.  Every time the rogues hits an enemy, the latter is pushed backwards. With the rogue's high volume of attacks, another hero can have the time to get away from a dangerous situation.

Leveling up:
Once finished the first level, this hero changes their score in the following way
MAX LIFE: 6
LIFE: Current score +1
MAX STAMINA: 13
STAMINA: 13 (Stamina is totally recovered at the end of the level)
MAX MIND: 9
MIND: 9 (Stamina is totally recovered at the end of the level)

Do you want to know more about the other heroes? Keep following us, next time will be the turn of the cleric! ;-)

Let's discover: The Cleric

The third hero that we are going to talk this time is the Cleric. This character don't excel in particular things but overall has medium stats compared to the other heroes. With the future development of the game some special ability will shine from this holy fighter, in the #lowrezjam version of the game he has a special ability that we'll discover soon reading this post.

Stats:
LIFE: 7
STAMINA: 5
MIND: 7

The Cleric have an average LIFE and MIND score, while the stamina is comparable to the one of the Warrior and Mage. The good score in Life and Mind, make the Cleric the more versatile in surviving any kind of enemy attack.

As the Warrior, the Cleric fight in melee but bashing the enemies with the mace instead slashing with the long sword. This weapon, not only deals 2 points of damage to the enemies but is used in different way from the attacks of the other heroes. While all the others attacks tent to push the enemies back, the mace is used to squash the enemies on the spot and push them behind the hero. In this way he can be in front line and advance making space in front of him, while passing weakened enemies to the companion behind that can finish them easily. This attack is also useful to pull away enemies that are surrounding another hero, giving chance to escape from death.

Special ability:
The Cleric is the protector of the righteous, brings light in the darkness and disbands the vile corruption. When leveling up, the holiness that is inside this hero, will restore his health to its maximum score.

Leveling up:
Once finished the first level, this hero changes their score in the following way:

MAX LIFE: 9
LIFE: 9 (Restore full score thanks to the special ability)
MAX STAMINA: 6
STAMINA: 6 (Stamina is totally recovered at the end of the level)
MAX MIND: 9
MIND: 9 (Stamina is totally recovered at the end of the level)

Don't miss next appointment, we'll talk about the last (for this jam version of the game) hero, the Mage!

Thank you for reading! :-)

Let's discover: The Mage

Finally it's time to talk about the last of our heroes: the Mage.

If you are choosing this character, you are giving away all your physical skill in favor of your mind.  If you like the idea to play with arcane forces, then the Mage is the character for you!

Stats:
LIFE: 5
STAMINA: 5
MIND: 10

The Mage is the character with the highest MIND score and it is the one that can retain for longer own sanity. In the #LOWREZJAM version of this game, the power of this hero is limited to a ranged fire dart attack but in the future more tricks will be revealed. The fire dart inflicts 2 points of damage and can be used safely at long and close range.  The Mage can finish easily the job started by other characters, dealing the final hit or can be the first one to attack from distance a enemy, pushing it back while still dealing a good damage. On the other hand, the Mage is pretty weak when being attacked repeatedly due to the lowest score in LIFE and slow reaction, consequence of to the low STAMINA score.

Leveling up:
Once finished the first level, this hero changes their score as follows:

MAX LIFE: 6
LIFE: Current score +1
MAX STAMINA: 6
STAMINA: 6 (Stamina is totally recovered at the end of the level)
MAX MIND: 13
MIND: 13 (Stamina is totally recovered at the end of the level)

With this we have covered all the currently available heroes. There will be more news in the future, keep following the development of 64x64 ill-fated!

Thank you for playing! :-)

New version 0.2.1 online

The new version 0.2.1 has been uploaded. Here the changing:

FIXED: The game restart properly once all the players die.
FIXED: Sometime the gamepad/joystick didn't make the players move properly up and down.
FIXED: Collision box for Player 3 and 4.
FIXED: Collision box for Goblin.
FIXED: Collision box for Boss Monsters. Now they move more freely around all the levels.

Enjoy the new version!

#LOWREZJAM 2017 - VICTORY!

Yes, 64x64 ill-fated didn’t reach first place, or even close during the #lowrezjam 2017. But from our point of view, we still had great success. Let’s see why.

The primary point is that people outside the competition were enjoying the game and many were encouraging us to keep developing it. This by itself is the best prize we could get, the interest in seeing how this game could evolve. This means that our game has potential to become a really enjoyable complete game, and we are really excited about it!

From my personal point of view, by spending more time with the software, I can become more confident to push myself outside my comfort zone to create and try more. Last year I worked alone on 64x64 UFOs, as a short break from the development of The Outermost Bastion. I only gave myself 15 hours, out of the 2 weeks allocated, to spend on the jam. In that weekend, I managed to create a fully completed working game that reached the overall position of 241, out of 386 entries.

This year 64x64 ill-fated reached 45^th out of 235 entries, a big jump forward on the rating, but that’s not what I enjoyed most. I got most satisfaction from managing to create a beat ‘em up in two weeks, when I believed it would be beyond my current capabilities. The game has 2 levels this time, a level up system, characters with different behaviours and stats, and monsters too. I even managed to set it up with local multiplayer, up to 4 people! The level design was a relatively small and simple challenge by itself, but I really enjoyed the opportunity to play around with parallax more extensively this year. Lysa’s help with the art was precious, and gave the game a nice and enjoyable feeling to it, even when the players and monsters were only 8x8 pixel sprites.

The game wasn’t perfect, it had some bugs, but the core mechanics are quite solid. That’s another point that makes me proud of myself, even if others cannot see it. The basic core of the game is quite solid and easily expanded to include more things like new characters, monsters, levels and so on. Normally during a game jam there isn’t time to make neat code, as long as it works, it is fine. It just needs to be a game that can pass the competition, not the long future. However, 64x64 ill-fated is already neatly packaged, making it a good starting point for quick future developments.

From Lysa Radvan’s point of view:

“This is the first time I’ve ever done a game jam, and even though I only did the art for the game, I thought it was a pretty challenging, yet fun experience. I’m relatively new to the whole game art scene and thought this was an absolutely wonderful opportunity for me to develop my skill in another art medium. Simone’s been asking me to do a jam with him for over a year now, and I’m glad I said yes for this one because it was a great excuse and motivational tool to get me to be creative. I wish I could have done more for Simone considering he did, in my opinion, all the hard work, but other work came first unfortunately. I’m hoping we can spend more time on this game later on to develop it further because, for one, its super fun to create something and actually be able to interact with it. And two, it’s very satisfying seeing other people enjoy something you create, it gives you a purpose. I hope everyone that got to play the game enjoyed it, and even if you didn’t, criticism is ALWAYS welcome and appreciated!

Many thanks to Simone for doing so much work and for being patient with me when I had other work priorities!”

To conclude, I really appreciate the collaboration with Lysa, we did a pretty good and solid job, and people are having fun with it. There are good chances that this game will see future developments, and the first bug fixed version was even uploaded the other day. The next goal is to create a new “director’s cut” version. It will include all the features that the game was supposed to have during the jam, but we simply couldn’t include due to priorities in our private lives, and time consumed from fixing nasty bugs.

If you would like to see more development on 64x64 ill-fated, please stay in touch with us and let us know what you think. This is the best help you can give us. Thank you!

Simone Tropea
Biim Games

New version 0.2.2 online

The new version 0.2.2 has been uploaded.

Here the changing:

V.0.2.2

NEW: Added sound effect when players and monsters fall out cliffs or similar.
UPDATE: Added new lighting for Rogue, Cleric and Mage.
UPDATE: Now Mage use also Mind while attacking and recover it slowly. Be careful to don't drain it!
UPDATE: "Bullets" are stopped by scenic elements.
UPDATE: Larger depth of walking area.

FIXED: Fireball collision.
FIXED: Dim-light in the cave.
FIXED: Light source now disappear when players fall.
FIXED: Sprite overlapping due to the depth was sometime imperfect.

Enjoy the new version!

New testing

Testing heroes stats on start screen, portraits and tired animations for 64x64 ill-fated.

What do you think about it?

New version 0.2.3 online

- NEW: New heroes stats screen during Title Page.
- NEW: Heroes faces are now displayed next to the stats during the game.
- NEW: New heroes animations when they are tired (stamina = 0)
- NEW: Players and monsters speed reduced when tired
- NEW: Time bar with players level position

- UPDATE: Created a smaller font

- FIXED: Gamepad/Joystick movement was too fast in controller selection screen.
- FIXED: Players bar were messed up when going on level 2 if some players died in the previous level.
- FIXED: Players dead during the first level were present in the second level as well.