FROG FORM

Ziryf just laid down the base for our game! This is the first time we’re specifically targeting mobile devices, so it should be ideal to play on your phone. And yes of course you can play it on your desktop machine. :p

It might be buggy, and it might not have an ending, but it’s here! :p

Come have a look

We’ve never made a classic rpg style game before. It’s been a huge learning experience and I can already see a huge postmortem coming up!

The battle system if finally getting somewhere!

Making an rpg might have been a bad move, so much to do! :/

Adding the  ‘  character to the bitmap font is one the many todo’s left. >.<

It’s been a good day 1.

This is our main character Shannon, a portrait and some battle pose sketches. Because there will be a kickass rpg battle system off course. :3

We’re making an RPG game. 😀

Whoo! Found a Bobomb!

http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-29/?action=preview&uid=18340

Go play: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-29/?action=preview&uid=18340

😀

.. that means still wip!

Chests are working, yay!

Title sums it up!

First, if you haven’t played it yet, go check it out here.

The idea.

As always, I was in the mood for something with a lot of explosions on screen. I wasn’t a big fan of the theme, but I could live with it. So while lying in bed on the morning of Ludum I was brainstorming. You only get one. Somehow a special move frequently occurring in old school anime’s came to mind.

You only get one, RocketFist! A rocket propelled fist is wonderfully over the top and allowed for some cool mechanics. Before starting visually I wanted to make a quick prototype to see if I could do what I wanted, and to see if it could be fun.

Graphics

It took me quite some time to settle on a graphical style. Dark shadows and a girl as the main character. It worked out quite well. Although I wasn’t able to put as much time into the backgrounds as I wanted. The doors are very detailed for example, but the sand is just  a plain flat color.

Learnings

Difficulty

The game can be pretty brutal at times. I’ve had mixed reactions to this. Some people absolutely love it and some people hate it. The trick is to find a good middle way where both parties are happy. A not so elegant way to fix this, is a difficulty setting. But there are lots of dynamic things you can implement.

Level design

As with all of my Ludum Dare entries so far, I made the levels by hand. It’s a shame because random generated levels would benefit this game greatly. The reason for this is because I simply never made a random level generator before.

So currently I’m doing some research on that. Turns out it’s tons of fun to build. 😀

I’m definitely going to apply this in a future game.

Controls

Wasd + mouse is a common setup, but not all people have qwerty keyboards. Reconfigurable keys would be a nice to have. It’s something to keep in mind, but no way that was happening in a Ludum Dare.

The fist mechanic is cool, but I got a lot of complaints that it wasn’t responsive enough. I did this on purpose because the game would be too easy if the rocket just went straight to your mouse. But it was a common issue people would bring up, so it’s definitely something to look into.

Designing for widescreen

The game plays in a 720p window. The characters aggro radius however is a circle. This means that when playing levels that go horizontally, the game feels perfectly fair. However when playing levels that go up or down, the circle aggro radius triggers enemies way to early. The fix for this would be to use an oval aggro trigger shape to compensate for the widescreen layout.

Upgrades

Upgrades are fun, but my implementation of a shop was pretty weak. You’d have to start over to return to the shopkeeper. I had planned that area to be a hub with more stuff to do, but that didn’t make it in for Ludum.

Future plans

I have no plans to continue working on RocketFist. But it has inspired me to start exploring into the roguelike genre (see random generation). I learned a lot from this jam and I’m very pleased with what was made. So I’ll definitely be mixing some elements from RocketFist into that roguelike!