Developer looking for advice and feedback

2016-09-18 07:29:22 pm

I am currently developing a Metroidvania that is close to having a playable demo available. We showed our game at Magfest last year, where I met someone who had recorded a game for AGDQ. He recommended that I check out your community, as one of our goals is to make sequence breaking and speedrunning a deliberate and fun part of the game.

Would it be acceptable to post a link here? I am not here to spam, so if not, I would still like to become part of this community and ask questions on what makes a game fun to speedrun as we continue work on our level design.

Thread title:

GinTatsu

Edit history:

GinTatsu: 2016-09-18 07:44:28 pm

2016-09-18 07:43:24 pm

Rad... They have taken me...

The most important thing in my opinion that makes a game feel good to run, is fluidity of movement and control. All the sequence breaking and glitches in the world mean nothing if the game feels clunky.

xud9dab2

2016-09-19 08:10:24 am

heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh heh

Make sure the game is fun to play, and that means make sure every aspect of it is at least passable. No one will speedrun a metroidvania game who's level design is reminiscent of modern FPS maps no matter how good the controls are. Likewise, fantastically challenging walljumps through a complicated spike maze mean nothing when controls/movement is/are too clunky/slugging/delayed what have you to pull them off. Beyond that make sure there's an accurate ingame timer, the ability to skip cutscenes is present, and that nothing is too dependant on RNG.

Ekelbatzen

2016-09-19 11:06:19 am

Also add or use static variables to define if the game is loading and in which level you are, so it is easier to write autosplitters and load removers for LiveSplit.

Personally I would welcome a demo to play.

Justin_SkyTy

2016-09-19 05:47:17 pm

Our game is Seafoam Empress. Our main goal is to create a large exploration game combined with the moment to moment gameplay of a tighter, linear platformer, with a lot of inspiration pulled from Capcom's NES Disney games. The main character is a mermaid, and much of the basic gameplay focuses on jumping in and out of water pools, with a surface to interact with on most screens. She can only attack by throwing items (mostly shells, but also treasure chests and even pieces of enemies), which can have various effects for puzzle or combat use. Throwing an item downward pushes her up, acting as a double jump, and it's this mechanic that we're pushing for expert play as much as possible. Upgrades come in the form of animal partners, but while these are treated as separate characters, they appear as part of the sprite fluidly during play, acting more like a regular ability upgrade. We intend to make the game beatable without a single upgrade, by allowing players to move themselves around with shells and other items instead, and with enough soft gates that you can get just about anywhere if you can figure out how.

Please have a look at this short article with gifs explaining how this works using the basic items found in the beginning of the game: http://www.skytyrannosaur.com/empress-advanced-tricks/

We're aiming to put out an official trailer and playable demo within the next month or so, and I'd love to hear any feedback you guys may have.

This gameplay video shows the game structure well, but was taken last year, and many things have improved since, particularly the camera:

This is more recent:

Please excuse the potato quality. The game itself runs fine, but we don't have a good setup for recording yet.

Our game is Seafoam Empress. Our main goal is to create a large exploration game combined with the moment to moment gameplay of a tighter, linear platformer, with a lot of inspiration pulled from Capcom's NES Disney games. The main character is a mermaid, and much of the basic gameplay focuses on jumping in and out of water pools, with a surface to interact with on most screens. She can only attack by throwing items (mostly shells, but also treasure chests and even pieces of enemies), which can have various effects for puzzle or combat use. Throwing an item downward pushes her up, acting as a double jump, and it's this mechanic that we're pushing for expert play as much as possible. Upgrades come in the form of animal partners, but while these are treated as separate characters, they appear as part of the sprite fluidly during play, acting more like a regular ability upgrade. We intend to make the game beatable without a single upgrade, by allowing players to move themselves around with shells and other items instead, and with enough soft gates that you can get just about anywhere if you can figure out how.

Please have a look at this short article with gifs explaining how this works using the basic items found in the beginning of the game: http://www.skytyrannosaur.com/empress-advanced-tricks/

We're aiming to put out an official trailer and playable demo within the next month or so, and I'd love to hear any feedback you guys may have.

This gameplay video shows the game structure well, but was taken last year, and many things have improved since, particularly the camera:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pA2-4akesRY

This is more recent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZDXJ-pMt1E

Please excuse the potato quality. The game itself runs fine, but we don't have a good setup for recording yet.

Melodia

2016-09-19 06:51:27 pm

Some of the obvious stuff if you want to encourage speedrunning -- make cutscenes skipable, put in hard to find but intended shortcuts (think Metroid Zero Mission) and one thing that it boggles me some games on PC don't do -- ALLOW AS MANY SAVES AS THE PLAYER WANTS. I love, for instance, the Shantae games but having three saves max is very limiting for speedrunning stuff.

Justin_SkyTy

2016-09-19 07:02:35 pm

Cutscenes will definitely be skippable, and a high number of save slots shouldn't be an issue for PC.

A personal favorite shortcut of mine is the poisoned waterway in Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, particularly the way that a max health item halfway through is valuable for the full heal. Compared with most handheld Castlevanias (including that one) using boxes, doors, or gaps for sliding that you simply can't interact with until you have that item, the waterway stood out.

GinTatsu

2016-09-23 12:08:45 pm

Rad... They have taken me...

I am really enjoying the way this looks. Looking forward to playing the demo