— Thanks for the offer. When I get closer to releasing the demo, I'll keep it in mind!

— For this I'm only focusing on Desktop. So PC, Mac, and Linux. So far it runs great on PC and Mac, but unfortunately I don't have a Linux machine to test on!

— Thanks for the kind words!

As far as a story synopsis goes: you start the game waking up/activating and realizing that you shouldn't be functioning yet. So you set out to find someone who can fix this.

As the game progresses, it does the common "stepping in to a much larger world" thing where you realize there is more going on than you "accidentally" activating. I'll leave it at that and not spoil the rest

Level 1 - Screen 5

This is the last screen before the boss fight.

All screens are laid out, enemies in place, and tiles set. This week I'm finishing up all dialogue conversations and (hopefully) making a snappy title intro. I also started sketching up enemy designs to get ahead.

Planning out my weeks has been very helpful. Between that and my Trello board, I'm making good time.

What's left, bc?

• This week: Last bits of dialogue and title intro
• 2nd week: pause, title, and game over screen
• 3rd week: 1/2 of enemy art
• 5th week: remaining 1/2 of enemy art
• 5th week: music and sfx
• 6th week: bugs

Bumping to see if anyone has any advice. Not really looking for a fix per say, but just best practices / what works for you.

More level design!

immortalx and byondisoft Ah thanks guys! Really appreciate the kind words

I just established a deadline (will be publicly showing the demo) and I would like it to be finished by then! Looking at the 3rd week of November right now. I'm working on this in my free time, so the pace isn't super quick. This is on top of normal human adult stuff (full-time job, playing in a band, at the gym multiple times a week, running a game dev meetup, shopping for a house).

What's left, bc? (pt. 2)

• This week: finish last 2 screens of level design
• 2nd week: finish scripted events and dialogue
• 3rd week: pause, title, and game over screen
• 4th week: 1/2 of enemy art
• 5th week: remaining 1/2 of enemy art
• 6th week: music and sfx
• 7th week: bugs

This is only a demo, so I'm not terribly worried about it being perfect. There are a lot of things I already want to add/redo, but I'd rather put something out than spend forever working on it.

I would love to hear some insight on this as well.

I totally guess right now. Having "Parallax in editor" turned on is weird since tile placement doesn't match up with the mouse.

Level 1 - Screen 4 (unfinished)

What's left, bc?

• One more level screen
• 3 more scripted dialogue scenes
• Enemy and boss art
• Title Screen
• Game Over screen

Hey dude I finally had a chance to sit down with this and give it a fair shake. Here's my critique and apologies if I'm repeating what others have said.

What I Liked

• Game ran great. No hiccups / jank / lag. Ran in-browser (Chrome).
• The graphics / artist direction. Really solid and stylized stuff, man. Gives me some serious Sega Genesis vibes with the big and beefy character feel. I LOVE the silhouettes against the color schemed backgrounds.
• At first I found the music way too short, but thinking back to those old games, that's how it was. The music would set a mood and loop so quickly that it kinda of settled in the background. Definitely a depressing / foreboding feeling. Reminds me of Blighttown from Dark Souls if you've played that.
• Those speech bubbles! Love 'em. I would be stoked it you explained / showed how you did those. I'm using a more RPG Box dialogue style right now.
• Controls felt good and made sense. Would love to see gamepad support.

What I didn't like / bugs

• I feel like I could spam the enemies. By that I mean, if I just pounded on the space bar, my animation cycle was faster than the enemies could attack and I wouldn't get hit. If this is what you were going for and would ramp up the enemies animation cycle as difficulty, that makes sense. Otherwise I felt like I could avoid getting hit. Except for those slingshot dudes. They were solid. Make them shoot faster tho!
• After the "Oldtown" sign, I fell and the fall lasted +5 seconds? Seemed a bit long. I imagine because it took me to reach the bottom of the layout. Throw in an invisible death trigger object for me to collide with to make the fall shorter.

All in all, a great effort! I would definitely pick up a full-version of this game!

Like ryanrybot said, I'm not super knowledgeable about this stuff but I tried it out on my gaming PC and my work PC and here are the results:

Gaming PC (AMD Athlon II X3 3.3 GHZ + AMD Radeon 7750 1 GB) = Dropped a few frames for the first 5 seconds and then held solid at 60. Tested in Chrome.

Work PC (i5-2500 + AMD RADEON HD 6350) = Didn't get above 30 fps Also tested in Chrome.

Anonnymitet Congrats!