A short play test on most of the more structurally complete levels.
In the video I’m testing out a few different player control variables. I’ve been tweaking and honing in on as close to perfect player control as I can. I’ve created 6 snapshots of differing variable sets to flick through in game and I’m playing through each level with each set to eliminate my least favourite one at a time.
You would imagine playing 9 mostly short levels with each of the 6 control sets wouldn’t take very long, especially on a game you’ve been playing for about 4 months straight, right? Nope.
Anyway the video shows all my successful attempts on each level using control set 3 (my current favourite). I’ve narrowed down the sets to 3 now.
Hope you enjoy the preview and sorry there’s no music. I’ve have yet to contact the artist 🙂
Gemi Games 
July 9, 2013 at 4:28 am
This is looking really nice. It’s great to hear that you’re doing tests of multiple control schemes–most people don’t go through so much revision.
I’m seeing you toe the Super Meat Boy line quite a bit. I’d be careful to not slip into “clone land.” How do you plan to differentiate yourself?
I’m also liking the cleaned up look. Do you plan to put the background back in, or have it as a gradient? I’m wondering if you could have some repetition of the straight lines of the shadow shapes with the sunburst you had in the previous screenshots.
Thanks for sharing the video, it was a pleasure to watch.
Ryan Davis
LikeLike
July 12, 2013 at 2:07 am
Thank you Ryan. I’m really glad you liked the video and the cleaner look.
To be honest it’s a relief that I won’t have as many sprites to design and draw now (theoretically). That will save me a lot of time since detailed drawing is my weakest skill but I can’t believe how much you learn and get better from just doing it. Again referring to your Anyone can make beautiful games post, your right that it’s not purely a natural gift skill type because before making games I never drew and sketched anything, ever.
Anyway, I can relax a bit and spend more time in other areas, which for a pure game like this is probably far more important. Things like difficulty pacing, level-mechanic variety and the one area that pretty much has to be perfect. Controls.
I’m still undecided on the background. On one hand a lone gradient fits well into the tile layer gradients but I agree with you that it could be improved. Hopefully some simple clouds and basic hills would work because I was sad to see all the work I put into a robust paralax system relegated to just a simple gradient editor. I plan to play around with that this weekend and see if I can get anything nice from it.
About the Super Meat Boy line, my rebuttal for that was so long that I decided to make a blog post about it. I have been deeply concerned about straying too close to SMB but I may have a convincing argument if you’d pardon the legal vocabulary.
Thank you very much for your comments. I’m always glad to hear good feedback because without it it’s so easy to get locked in and not be willing to change things that even yourself feels needs changing.
-Marios
LikeLike
July 12, 2013 at 5:10 pm
The parallax should also give the level a sense of bigness it otherwise wouldn’t have. No one wants to feel like they’re playing in a little box.
Keep up the great work!
LikeLike
July 12, 2013 at 7:17 pm
Of course it would. I feel like such a idiot for forgetting how important paralax is. So many things to keep track of i guess. Thank you for the reminder 🙂
LikeLike