MEGAQUEST - Demo of Darkness

As the eldest in the village may remember, nearly a year ago I showcased here the early developments of what would be my first (and well, only) game, the mighty MEGAQÜEST. I've been working on it at somewhat erratic intervals through these past months, until recently (oh so recently) I found out this upcoming indie videogame fest taking place right here at my little hometown in Ûr-Ghûzkhûl, near the Sea of Blood, and they're running this WIPs contest for rookies. So I hastened to riggup a half-decent sample of the mighty MEGAQÜEST to send them. This demo is, alas, not good enough for public derision yet (although an imaginative reader could manage to find a way to play it, I guess), but anyway it just provided the right momentum for me to to pick up this neglected social side of the business (that I hate so much).

Alright! So we'v got us a MEGAQÜEST: DEMO OF DARKNESS coming soon! (How soon, how soon?) Soon, damn you! I need to polish several things, get me more monsters n stuff, and hopefully make up a bit of hype too. Been considering a megaTumblr, and everything – we'll see!

As for warmup, and lest we forget, here's a link to the venerable early demo, which I've pompusly redubbed MEGAQÜEST: ORIGINS (aint I an arse):

megaquest-origins.bitballoon.com

And then some screenshootin' just to see where we're heading:

I love that graphic-style!

LOVE the silhouette against color backgrounds.

I like the style, sets a dark setting well. Good job!

Small Typo In the picture.

"Cutthroaths" instead of cutthraots.

Small detail, but it could help.

The game looks fantastic!

looks good! are you planning on adding some cool effects when you destroy a bad guy?

Well thank y'all brothers and/or sisters for your kind feedback.

But anyway, forget about that amateurish wannabe that was MEGAQÜEST: ORIGINS and get yrselves ready for the bigger, badder, better amateurish wannabe that's gonna be MEGAQÜEST: DEMO OF DARKNESS! Rumor goes it may be up this weekend! Imma worried I wont have enough karma points to post you a decent link!

MQ:DoD will be the game's second great iteration, and as such includes items, npcs, more monsters, mor-- no wait, actually less backgrounds -- but cooler. It's already perfectly playable, I just need to polish a few things (“cutthraots” n so). Of course what I'm about to upload is but a beta, alpha or whatever's call'd version of the thing. The idea is, i'll be updating it these weeks coming, hopefully benefiting from the Forum's fabled wisdom, until I get something good enough to be published to scirra arcade, kongregate, u name it...

Screenshot of the day: Plague District Blues

I remember this. I think I lent you a hand when you were first getting started. Good to see you are still keeping it going.

DrewMelton indeed you did! Actually i never managed to get any controls to work half as good as those you tweakd :/

My first game (before moving on to my current project) was going to be a platformer inspired by Ninja Gaiden, so I did a ton of work to get good controls. It takes a bit of experimenting to get it right.

If you look over the original thread with the notes I wrote and the capx I sent, maybe seeing it with fresh eyes will help you get it the way you want.

greetings, mortals! I'm so proud to announce the mighty MEGAQÜEST: DEMO OF DARKNESS reached a quite commendable third place in the culturegamefest.com indie wip contest yesterday! Ha! Twas easy! I even made a short speech about the game in the fest showcase n everything. Dude it was fun

thirds shall be first!

Aha, you! Hi!

Man, A+ for visuals. That rugged style is just....wow. Everything is drawn with character, but the player in particular has some crazy awesome proportions. When people say retro games all look the same, this is the kind of game you shove in their face.

I also really enjoyed that background/palette swap mechanic, and the color choices are excellent. This plus the music really add to the atmosphere.

At the moment it still plays mostly like a button masher, but I'm sure there are greater things in store.

Congratulations on third place! Aching to see more!

Time's arrived! MEGAQÜEST: DEMO OF DARKNESS is online!!

(Yeah and it's been for a while, actually, I just never told u the link... which is...)

megaquest.bitballoon.com

(still no karma to post proper links, sorry)

(notice: If u used this address before, u may need to refresh!)

(edit: just uploaded to the arcade!

www.scirra.com/arcade/adventure-games/megaquest-demo-of-darkness-2392

my first arcade ever /edit)

This little alpha thing was premiered last friday culturegamefest.com (although this version I bring ye tonight's got some amphibian fish-like enemies which are absolutely unaided before). I got a lot of kind and useful feedback there. My first festival ever... other than music festivals, that's it... which may explain the beer policy I kind of instinctively applied… shit i'm still hanging...

What now? Well,

• mechanics are still somewhat clumsy. There's still a long way to tweak. I've downloaded

  DrewMelton 's version of my earlier demo (cheers again man!) for inspiration and guidance.

need to redo the music! I'm such a moron -- i made it in my laptop, with no decent speakers or headphones whatsoever. Now the bass is a bit overwhelming in some (most) themes. Well u learn.

The overall gameflow is kinda sketched. Everything's a bit too random yet. I intend to suggest many “little stories”, mainly through interaction with npcs... but as for now they just utter some random, usually hostile sentence... There's indeed a lot of randomness everywhere that I need to limit somehow – for instance, there's these keys you get sometimes from certain enemies... and well, there's a random factor... so, sometimes you just play and play and never ever get a key... which is frustrating coz u cant open no chest... and... yeah...

of course, as size does matter, we'll need more creeps, backgrounds, and more items, and npcs – more everything! and yeah, we definitely gonna need to get us some level bosses! Right, there's no levels as such – some area bosses then.

As for now, play, plunder, ransack, and feed me back about it!

Nixel well thanks a lot for your kind (and utterly outlandish) feedback! Praise is always nice when it comes from talented people (n thats why I love this forum).

I really like the game. Wonderful work!

it certainly looks the part, but as yet doesn't seem to have a clear focus, but I still enjoyed playing it.