Little Soul Master (In development)

Hi guys!

A couple weeks ago I made a Super Meat Boy example. The idea was to see if I was capable of recreating the movement and controls of such a top notch game.

Then a couple days ago I though to myself, could I implement some other features SMB has?

So I implemented deaths, respawns, win conditions,the replay feature and tweaked the movement I had.

Prototype Video:

youtube.com/watch

Then casually talking with my brother we came up with an idea for a game, a full game, not only a prototype and this is the result.

Little Soul Master.

GAMEPLAY:

Little Soul Master will be in the gameplay perspectie what we could call(and probably almost everyone will) a Super Meat Boy clone. But hey! I love Super Meat Boy and if I come even close to making a game as polished and fun I dont care what people could say.

STORY:

In the Story deparment is where the biggest differences appear.

BASIC Description: Although the "Hero" is trying to reach someone in every level, he is not trying to rescue a Princess/Girfriend, in fact he is rescuing no one. He is trying to catch his rebel soul.

The "Hero" is a Soul Master, well... A Little Soul Master and his job is to steal as many souls as he can from the living world, but lets say that he is a little weird for the Soul Master's standards. He likes to wear a baby blue outfit instead of the traditional black, he also only gets souls from bunnies, squirrels and the like... He doesnt even steal their souls for enjoyment, he only does when this little creatures are dying, so they wont suffer anymore.

Because of this particular behavior is that his own Soul is the target of every joke in the underworld. So his soul, tired, decides to escape.

The story is planned to be voice acted, and in every level the story will progress, as the "Hero" gets closer and closer to having his soul back.

The idea is to have a weird and funny story to enchance the hopefully fun gameplay without leaving it as a simple excuse to give sense to the gameplay. The Story is planned to be as important as the gameplay.

Please, give me your feedback if you feel you can in this early stage and with so little to actually see.

I'll keep this post updated as development advances.

See you.

I like the replay feature, how did you do that?

Why not try add a new element to the Super Meat Boy framework you've created, keep platforming at the core but remix it to give it value as its own thing? Easier said than done, but it could be worth playing about with some mechanics to experiment, you might find you end up with a cool idea.

Might be more worth your time experimenting / being creative with the idea than working on a story which is often superfluous in arcade games (though I'd love to be proven wrong on that!)

CrudeMik

To make the replay feature I 'm just recording the X and Y position of the player and then setting its position to this value every tick once Replay time has come. First I tried with text obejects to save this data and it worked really well, then changed to intance variables and got the same result, really good. Then looking for a "better" implementation I found an example by RojoHound using arrays and again was the same, so i stick with it since I couldnt came up with a better idea. you can found the example here:

scirra.com/forum/replay-like-meatboy_topic61661_page1.html

Definetely I will add new mechanics. In the prototype i was flat out copying SMB, but I'm palning some core differences. Anyways the movement will keep as an straight clone so most people will see it like that.

I think I can pull off a funny story, but believe me, I will scrap it in 1 second if it becomes a chore.

Ty for the comment