^ Hah, wow, thanks! I hope to continue with these.
ALAS
I wasn’t able to get the previous game (Lodemen) done in under a week, and I found it rather difficult to continue. Newer game engines nowadays aren’t really made for tile-based gameplay, and Lode Runner’s physics system is rather finicky and kind of requires such a tile-based approach. Excuses, excuses. Bottom line, it proved difficult to reproduce for me, so alas (again with the alas) I decided to break it off. I’ve started on another Shakecan Game that I aim to finish in a week. I’m attempting for this to be much simpler - it’s going to be an “Adventures of Lolo”-style puzzle game.
In Adventures of Lolo for the NES, you controlled Lolo as you cleared a series of single-screen rooms. Each room would have a puzzle, usually, and you’d have to figure out how to move blocks, avoid enemies, or traverse the landscape in order to leave.
This game, Kyro, will be similar, but in my game you’ll control a monster woman named Maxelena who has the ability to teleport by throwing a device. The game will revolve around using this mechanic to traverse and clear the puzzles in a similar manner as the Lolo games. The game is, again, being created in the (still in an incomplete, pre-alpha status) BDX game engine.
While I do think I should be able to handle the gameplay fairly successfully, I’m not sure how many rooms and puzzles I’ll be able to make before the week ends. Given that puzzle games require, well, puzzles to work, I might not be able to get very far with this one. Guess I’ll see. :1
Hey, there. So, I’m a ways into Kyro, the second ShakeCan Game I’ve been working on. If you don’t already know, my ShakeCan Games label applies to games I’m making with a goal of finishing in a very short period of time - generally just 1 week.
So far, I have a couple of the basics of the game down - you move around and can trigger switches. Each switch can trigger any number of other “switchable” objects. Your goal in each level is to get to the stair-set, as that will allow you to move on to the next room.
(I think) I’ve yet to show or explain the “gimmick” behind this game to not make it a pure “Adventures of Lolo”-like production, but it’s turning out well nonetheless. Now, “gimmick” can kind of sound like a bad term, but I think it can just describe a trick or additional ability to traverse a puzzle that isn’t present in other titles. I think many good puzzle games employ gimmicks, especially ones on PC after the popularity of Portal 1 and 2. Those were two good games that really developed and expanded upon the portal-hopping gimmick to be interesting and engaging. It wasn’t too difficult to grasp or work with, and even relatively simple puzzles required a good amount of thought to work through. So in other words, I hope the gimmick in Kyro will be simple, interesting, and fun to work with for players in the end. Anyway, I hope I can keep up the pressure! Thanks for reading / watching!
I think you should exceed your personal deadline for this game - I feel there’s so much you can do with this idea!
Maybe an extra week to work solely on levels?
I’m a fan of games that flesh out a simple gimmick, it makes for really interesting puzzles.
I think the “The Useful Dead”, by Bootdisk Revolution, is a great example of taking a simple gimmick and making 50 levels out of it. It’s a simple 2D platformer, but when you die you leave your body behind.
Good luck, it’s looking good! I really wish I had time to do stuff like this, but alas I barely get any sleep as it is
@Thatimster - It’d probably be a good idea to sell them as a pack if I make enough of them. Thanks!
@Lucrecious - Haha, I would, but that defeats the purpose. Any game idea can be developed to the point of needing more time to complete it; this idea could be developed further, just like the next one will be able to be. I need to finish the project early and quickly, I think. But thanks - I appreciate that!
So far, I only have one thing that you’ll be able to collect (maybe), and that is the tool that the puzzling’s gonna kinda revolve around. It’s a technologically enhanced jewel that will allow the player to teleport. The puzzles will take that and run with it (hopefully).
Anyway, today I implemented transitions into the next room:
And restarting after you screw up something royal.
I also got the teleportation mechanic working OK; it just needs to be polished and refined.
Really short post, but I got the teleportation mechanic working, which is good. You press a key to throw a teleportation gem (a dimensional quartz enhanced by a lost technology), and can press the key again to teleport to the position the quartz hits. You can recall the quartz as well, in case you screw up a throw.
The game’s shaping up, though I’ve, again, already passed my mark for a week. Still have a ton of stuff to do, but it seems like it’s not that much since most of it is just placing stuff I’ve made already. :o
I love the idea of Shakecan games, making lots of small games sounds like a great way to keep game development fun. Big projects are rewarding but finishing them is so difficult.
The screenshots look good as well. The room transition effect is so slick! A question in regards to that, are all the rooms pre-loaded or are you dynamically loading them in?
^ Hey, thanks! The rooms are in different scenes entirely; I just switch to the next scene after you beat the current one. The camera slides up into view at the start of every scene, so it feels seamless, I suppose.
Yo! Soooo I missed the week deadline that I was aiming for, unfortunately (I should have been done around Friday the 24th). Oh, well; I think I’ve learned to adjust my expectations according to how much I (by now) know I’ll work on my projects. So, I think I’ll just try to make something every two weeks or so, since it seems like I can hit that pretty reliably. I will finish Kyro, though; I hope to have it done by the end of this week (at the LATEST before the end of January).
As far as development actually goes, it’s going well. I do some additions and work on the engine I’m building Kyro on (BDX) while I’m working on Kyro itself as well, so it’s kinda slow in some respects. However, it means that I have pretty good control over how things work and have a goodly amount of knowledge of how the engine works, which is cool.
I’ve gotten teleportation done and looking pretty spiffy with some particle effects, along with an enemy that just kinda waltzes around. Touch it, and you die, though in the tradition of Lolo games, it’s not particularly dangerous looking. I plan (planned) to have multiple enemies, but I’m not sure, as I don’t want this to grow into a full-blown game that takes a lot of time to create. I actually also planned to have simple combat, but wisely slashed that outta hand to focus on the puzzle gameplay. I already have five levels done, and making more shouldn’t be difficult at all, so I should be able to hit my target time. There’s not too many game elements that I’ve implemented yet that really “change” the gameplay, but it’s already looking and feeling like a cool little puzzle game. Although, I’m already looking forward to the next game, haha. :d
nice stuff. hadnt seen this. I like that ur insperation goes way back to nes days. U look into making these multi player? i have a demo if u want to look at it. and it still works.
N how do u go about selling small games like this. I dont mean off the app store. Also is it best to make an exe to hide the source? do u also use a website domain and put if for download with a creditcard payment?
@cuervo - Thanks! I put the first game on itch.io; that’s what my plan is so far. Just put it up on the marketplace and “push” it on Twitter, Facebook, and my YouTube channel. Hopefully attract additional players and get people interested in it.
@Dreamless - Thanks to you as well. I dunno; I think having a short deadline and the goal of trying to be a full-time indie developer keeps me motivated. I want to give this a solid try and see if I can’t make it work.
X-Post from my blog:
So Kyro’s coming along nicely; not completely done, but not far away. I’m sitting on around 13 levels (screens) so far; I’d like to break the 20-puzzle-mark, I think, considering there are some “introductory / tutorial” rooms that just introduce mechanics over actually being puzzles.
Hopefully I’ll finish it soon (I wanted to get it done before a certain date a few times, but kept passing it up). The game should turn out pretty fun, though.
Anyway, (in addition to other things and working on the engine the game’s based on), I got swapping in. You can swap locations with certain objects (usually ones that can move on their own) by throwing your gem next to that object.
Fans are also implemented - they can be triggered with a button press (if they’re not on already) and can lift lighter objects (not the main character, haha).
Also, “switchable” objects turn green when they’re triggered, which is helpful when you’re looking to see what a button does.
Input mapping’s done, and I designed it in such a way that it should be no problem to re-use, along with the options screen, for new BDX projects. That’s great, because it was a
h
u
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e
pain to implement. I spent hours trying to save and load JSON in Java before finally giving up and just going with plain text. Glad to be pretty much done with it. Got a couple of more levels done, and I finished the title screen, as well. Check out this video I did on the process of pixelling the main sprite:
It’s so strange to see your drawing style.
very different to my own art process.
I guess everyone has their own way of working. My own method is usually to block everything in very basic shapes right from the start until I’m happy with how everything is going to look and then just go with it from there. I’m very reluctant to make any changes or erase anything once I get going.
Whereas I can see (as far as this video shows) you tend to work and rework various elements of the picture almost to a finished quality before rejecting them and reworking again.
While I do think I should be able to handle the gameplay fairly successfully, I’m not sure how many rooms and puzzles I’ll be able to make before the week ends. Given that puzzle games require, well, puzzles to work, I might not be able to get very far with this one. Guess I’ll see. :1
