Hey guys
I've started a project that I've wanted to do for a long time. Basically it's a new take on Turrican on the Amiga (at least the way I remember it), mixed with more varied adventure and exploration. The thing for me is pacing and getting the right balance of gunplay and exploration. Most of the story is told through the environment but the pure story beats will be spread out over the game an push the action forward.
CYCLOSA
You play Kit, who crash lands on an planet overrun by a robot army. Your battle suit and your gun are intact but underpowered, and you have to collect key components of your destroyed spaceship (spread out over the land) to regain power and make it out of there.
My thoughts so far:
- Second-to-second running and gunning should be tight, lots of focus on feedback, movement, and finding the right difficulty sweet-spot.
- Make it kick-ass in a low-fi kind of way. No over-rendering of the visuals - if the right feeling is there then it's done.
- Target resolution is 320x200. Use a 16 color palette for each area. Limitation is key here as a challenge, just to see how far I can push it.
Some stuff>
Title screen (because yeah why not)
Player char. This will change as I go and refine game play. Right now I'm using a 16x32 sprite set up for crouch and 8direction firing (the gun is a separate object rotating at the shoulder). Having a lot of trouble to get basic movement to feel right as I was using the Jump-through plugin on my tiles. I think I'll end up dropping that and go for a less "jumpy" style of play. If the crouch/run/climb stuff doesn't feel right I might do a more super-mario style control and then I'd have to revise these decisions..
quick mockup/concept of an environment. I like how it's set up for parallax fx but it feels a bit dull when its so gray. I'll have to tweak it, more popping colors and more interesting shapes. Some environments should be very post apocalyptic but with signs of robot invasion (alien tech etc). I'm also thinking about adding an alien flora/fauna that's connected with the invading robot aliens.. We'll see.
Thanks for looking guys, any thoughts on this so far?
cheers