Looks great, Keep it up!
Looks nice, and I´m curious to see how many people will buy it for the 2 dollars 
Yeah, it does seem a bit loud. Volume normalization isn’t my strong suit, haha. Fixed it and uploaded a new version to itch.
Not worth $2.
It’s worth more I think haha
I’m 30 minutes in - I’m having a lot of fun with it! Music is awesome too.
Just a few minor issues I had: (I know you’re done with the game, just giving some thoughts)
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I had a hard time with the depth perception. It’s not really obvious what’s on the same plane, on any axis. Sometimes I don’t know what plane the platforms are on: if they’re too high or too low. I would like to hear what anyone else has to say because maybe it’s just me.
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A save/load system would have been nice. Pausing is fine, but it doesn’t stop the music
3 Your levels, I think, are very well designed! The talking sign thing doesn’t really need to be there, but he/she does add a lot of charm to the game, which is great. Maybe if he/she talked about random stuff, like its life as a sign, hahaha, or the main character’s past, because she’s a fish type thing right?
I’m liking the game a lot so far! Worth the buy.
Edit:
So I finished the game! The “Have a Chat” level really confused me hahaha
The only problem I had with it was that it felt like it was trying to hide the solution from me. Like it gave me extra pieces to the puzzle, and I was there trying to make these extra pieces fit. Why not just give the correct amount of pieces? Unless, I’m missing other solutions to this puzzle? (Kind of a cheap way to create difficulty imo, thoughts behind that level?)
Anyways, I recommend people play the game! The ending music was freakin’ awesome - I left it on for a while. d: Can’t wait to see what else you have in store.
SolarLune your awesome!.. your work is very inspiring, after seeing your postings even one of my brothers has become interested in blender…
@Lucrecious - Thanks for purchasing and playing the game, I appreciate it!
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Yeah, I got that problem with depth perception from another player as well. I tried to do as much as I could with the camera angle, and that was probably to my detriment. I think I should have just done a quick test level at the beginning to test and make sure I could do with a bigger room, rather than resorting to so much depth-based issues. Making the camera follow the player also would have worked acceptably.
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Yeah, saving and loading would’ve been nice. The next game should support that.
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Thanks! Yeah, I liked that sign character; having more random filler dialogue would’ve been nice to have. I think it does a lot to add to the feeling of the game.
That one level was specifically created as a red herring level. It was indeed a sort of “cop-out” on my end, especially since that wasn’t telegraphed earlier in the game (like in Antichamber). I probably should’ve just thought more about how to create one additional “real” puzzle rather than resorting specifically to making something that was complete misdirection.
@hanzo - Thanks! Glad that people have become interesting in creating games.
X-Post of sorts from my IndieDB page (been awhile since I last frequented it, haha):
So the next game that I’m working on is going to be a Famicom Detective-like game, where you have to solve a murder that takes place in a school (so far, that’s the plan). The “codename” for the game is “Famidet” for that reason; I’ll probably change it soon once I get an idea of the plot. The idea at this point is that you’re a teacher at the school, but that definitely doesn’t make a lot of sense. Then again, it doesn’t really have to, haha. It just has to be fun and engaging.
I’m making this game with Java in the pre-alpha LibGDX-based game engine, BDX. It’s going okay so far; I’ve got a few of the commands working. You can talk with the person about different topics that they know about, and I built it to be easy to change that depending on the state of the game. This should allow you to learn more about the crime at hand, gradually growing in understanding what the situation is by talking to different people and taking what you learn to others still.
Speaking of flags, the game state (what you’ve done) is comprised almost entirely of string pairs; one for the flag name, and one for the flag state (i.e. “talkedToGymTeacher”, “true”). This should mean that it was trivial to set up saving game data (just save the name of the flag and the value to a text file), and it should be easy to handle the game state as well (no need to transfer save data to the game and back; the save data is the game data, in a sense). This would make it easy to edit the save data to cheat at the game, but this is a game made in a couple of weeks - I’ve gotta cut myself a little slack, at least, haha.
Much like the Ace Attorney games, I’ve built the underlying framework in such a way that the character you’re talking to can emote heavily depending on what they’re saying. Rather than simply setting dialog, each character has a behavior list that they step through when talked to, which means that they should be able to support a lot of different actions (saying something, setting their emotion, spawning an object or flashing the screen, disappearing, slowing down the message speed, etc). This’ll make it a lot more interesting to talk to the characters, hopefully.
Above is an example character “idling” and talking in both normal and sad states.
The “Think” command will be used to process what you learn and continue the plot, if you reach a point where you have gathered all available information. At least, that’s what I think it’d be used for. You can also use it to be reminded of what, in general, you should do next. I might trim this feature down (or even cut it out) in the future depending on if I want to press on with it or not - limited time, and all that.
This indeed is looking to be quite the challenge; I’ll see if I can succeed in just another week or two!
Anyway, thanks for watching and reading!
Cool.
I’m also making a kind of dialog based game at the moment, I didn’t think of showing emotions…
I may use a simple floating icon, like this: 
or this 
above an NPC’s head because I’m so lazy and don’t want to spend a lot of time on faces. :):)
Solar, I have to say that your pixel art and animation skills are amazing!
With your knowledge and skills you can easily do a game competitive to all those “commercial” games out there.
Looking good Solarlune.
I thought about the “Have a Chat” level more, and I’ve come to like it. I mean, you tried to make it super obvious that it was misdirection (I just didn’t catch it for a awhile). I’m glad there was at least one level like that because you did really well in exploring many of the possibilities.
On another note, is this third game going to be built more on “if then” statements, or more like a “tree” type of thing with multiple branches?
Edit: Also, maybe on your patreon you could have monthly game rewards - people who contribute 2 - 4 dollars a month get your games for “free”? Just a suggestion - I know that it’s harder and takes more commitment on your part, but maybe you’ll get more from it?
Good luck with everything!
Thanks. Yeah, I dunno, I think I’m glad to have explored that “branch” of level possibilities, at least in Kyro.
The game is going to be built on a series of if-statements. I’m going to directly wire the gameplay of what happens directly to the save game data flags, which is a hashmap (dictionary) of strings (flag names) to strings (values). So, for example, your inventory starts off as a blank string (""), and adding something to it is just adding whatever the object’s name is to the save data’s “inventory” key (“pieceofchalk”). When I want to save, I just need to save each flag and its corresponding value out to a file. It’s trivial for a player to cheat and change the game, but I don’t really mind about that; this game is being made over a couple of weeks, after all!
Anyway, I haven’t been doing too much with the actual game development, as some things have come up that could be good for me that I’m working on. Most of the game is writing, though, so just thinking about it is making progress. I’ve been drawing different scenes and characters as well; the top-right scene isn’t finished.
The characters have gotten a bump from 64x64 to 96x96 in their sprite sheet size, and I’m using perspective grids to draw the scenes, rather than going freehand. They’re really, really useful to map out and plan the shape of a room. I’d be having a lot more trouble without it, for sure.
Anyway, thanks for watching. Hope the game’ll be fun to play!
Hey, so I didn’t post it here, but I decided to pause production on this one, as I was finding writing pretty difficult to do. Maybe I’ll be able to pull it off in the future sometime, though.
In the meantime, I’ve been working on BDX a lot, and have been thinking about different concepts and ideas; I’ve made a mock-up of tiles and I have a general idea for the character for the next game. I’ve got it working in-engine with some basic movement and walking up stairs and stuff, which is pretty nice. I’d like for it to just be a fun Metroid-like title. I don’t know how possible that will be, but it shouldn’t be any less possible than any other game (I don’t think it’s inherently more complex by a greater margin), though it very well might be. Only time will tell.
Just got a bit so far.
So I’ve been doing some stuff here and there. Today I worked on the starting area, which is a blank “space between dimensions”. Basically, the game takes place in a big jumbled up maze that can pull things and environments from all through Earth’s time and space (which means a lot of rooms, but that can be outside, inside, on fire, snowing, etc.) I suppose it’ll mainly just be for variety over actual game mechanics; there’s a lot I could do with the idea, but I probably won’t get around to really having top-notch level design, haha.
Anyway, I got movement and jumping working OK. Stair-climbing also works pretty well. The idea of this game is to be a Metroid-like with smooth movement, where the game doesn’t really get in your way as you traverse and explore the environment. Not sure if I’ll be able to pull it off, but it’s worth a shot, I think. Not much to show at the moment, but here you go.
I have to work on the GUI some more, but it’s OK for now. I’ll have to keep iterating it over and over to get something that I’m satisfied with, but I think I have a good core idea for how it should look and work.
Anyway, I’ll have to get to work!
Hey, there. It’s been awhile since my last post. I decided to scrap that last project as it was just too large conceptually. I keep doing this, haha. 
I think I need to back it down considerably if I’m considering a Metroid-like or otherwise Adventure-y game - games that seem to be expansive are easy to spin out of control. At the very least, I think I should plan out the overall structure and mechanics of the gameplay before I get too far with it. Otherwise i just end up burning myself out, in a sense.
In any case, I’m now working on a relatively simple maze game. I’m planning for it to be somewhat like Pacman with more hazards and drifting…? You go into a maze, try to collect all of the whatevers, and then make it to the exit. Meanwhile, there are enemy cars and other hazards that threaten you.
So far, I’ve got driving, turning and reversing for the player’s car. The controls are a bit awkward, but I think it could work, so I’m going to keep trying to work on it. Surprisingly, it keeps feeling slightly more fun the more I keep improving on it, and that goes for the graphics, as well. Kinda feels like I might be able to finish this, hah.
Anyway, thanks for reading!
Looks great.
Do you reuse your movement, sprite animation and level generation scripts from project to project, or are you rewriting them each time?
I know what you mean about burning out. Sometimes it’s going great with a project, and then next moment I hate it. Usually if I file it away somewhere I can pick it up again later, but mostly it needs a big break.
Thanks! I’m writing some things new, but I’m starting to re-use stuff more-so by writing them in component-form. I tend to upload components I’ve written for re-use to my Github SolHelp repo - I recently added particle system-related components, which is similar to X-Emitter’s particle system.
So I’ve completed a few graphical improvements here and there. The next things to do are some interact-ables and getting the drifting / boosting mechanics working, I think.
Keep @ it!
Your work is top notch.
after this… why not revist your older projects?
simplfy and kick their asses with your new knowledge!
Thanks! I might end up doing that, but I might just start another small project. I recently got a full-time job, so these “Shakecan Games” are less time-focused and more content-focused, I guess; I haven’t had much time where I wanted to work on this, but we’ll see how this one turns out.
I added gas cans that refuel your boost meter when you touch them. They’re 3D spinning models at the moment, but I’m not sure if they clash with the style of the game or not (as the character isn’t 3D; just the gas can). Anyway, we’ll see as things go along, I guess.