Alpha Ix and the Dark Mage

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Ix and the Dark Mage
by BaBiA Game Studio
Current Version: Alpha 0.33.3.0

Story
The mysterious citadel of Mordeth the Dark Mage has appeared in the land of the Goblins, and his minions have spread throughout the land. The Goblin King, Uurn, has decreed that in the face of this invasion his people are to abandon their lands. All the Goblins have retreated to the safety of the neighbouring kingdoms. All except one - Ix.

Always headstrong the young Ix has taken it upon himself to stand up for all Goblin-kind and face off against the eternal forces of Mordeth. Only by driving the Dark Mage from their lands will Ix make the lands safe for his kin once more.

ix-mainmenu.png
ix-cliff.png

Characters
ix.png - our hero, the goblin Ix
enemies.png - a selection of Mordeth's minions
witch-sisters.png - the witch-sisters of Mordeth: Bragga, Tenok, and Leorn

Ix and The Dark Mage is an action-adventure game, similar in style to Legend of Zelda. I started work on this mainly as a learning experience and after taking a break to work on something else, found myself drawn back to this project once more with more determination to finish it.

Download "Ix and the Dark Mage" - alpha 0.33.3.0


Controls (Movement can be changed from the main menu)
Movement
- W A S D
Attack - Left mouse button
Dash - Right mouse button

Other Info
As this is still in an Alpha version, there are not a lot of sounds in the game yet. I am slowly working towards getting them in there, but as I am not a sound or music person it is just taking me a while to either find the right sounds or try to make them myself. Similarly the music is not done by me either, I'm not talented enough so have sourced all of the music from Incompetech.

I don't expect this to be a particularly long game, and I am working on it more for the learning experience, although I would be interested to hear what people think of it so far.

There are bound to be some bugs that I have yet to address, but I will be working through these as I carry on with this project.

Any feedback would be appreciated.
 
Last edited:

YanBG

Member
Hm... last few days the games posted here started to improve!

Looks good, i wish you could finish it.
 
Alpha 0.29.4.0 is now up - just follow the download link in the first post.

Changelog:
- Bug fix for issue with the health bar not decreasing even though the player health is decreasing.
- Bug fix for weird loop that could happen when player dies.
- Change to the game over text display to fit with the rest of the text displays.

Things for the coming versions:
- Add more "life" to the overland with plants, etc.
- More sounds.
- Create the main boss: Mordeth.
- New game icon.
- Splash screen.

Looks good, i wish you could finish it.
Hopefully I will. When I originally worked on this I got bogged own with too many things at once and moved onto another project to take my mind off this. Really aiming to get this finished off soon.

nice pixel art!
I would like to take credit for all the art, but I can't. I got all the art assets from http://opengameart.org (which is an awesome place to get your hands on free resources).
 
I did a gameplay review for you!
Thanks for that. I had actually forgotten that I had made this topic last year, and really don't remember uploading a demo - so it was a nice surprise to see this pop up.

I definitely agree that the difficulty is probably on the high side at the moment. I am back to working on this now, and do have balancing as something to do once I have finished off all of the systems.

Just to address a few things you have raised:
1. Name of the game - Yeah, that font is not the best for the title now I look at it. It is spelled 'eye' 'ex', but is pronounced as icks. :) I will look at making it a bit clearer as it never crossed my mind that people might not be able to see it as clearly as I do.
2. Speed of the text - I will put that as something to be changed. I will actually make it completely pause so that you have to interact before the next page is shown.
3. Why can't I attack? - There are actually 3 circles next to the weapon icon, and each time you attack it uses uses one circle. If you don't have any circles left, then you cannot attack and need to wait for them to recharge. They do recharge over time so you just need to get into a rhythm of how many times you attack and the timing of them. I got a bit influenced by Dead Cells when I saw that game mechanic, but I may not keep it in. I will consider whether to remove it, or just add some more tutorial pointers on how the attacking and dashing works (as there are 3 dash bars as well which work the same sort of way).
4. Speed of enemy attacks - Yeah, this is probably something that will change as well when I get around to the balancing. I'll also be reducing the number of enemies in some locations too (I know you had difficulty with the archer, and there is another overland location where there are actually two of them, which even I don't like). I'm just used to this level of difficulty, but will probably pull it
5. The GUI/HUD - Probably something I will look at again. I quite liked the simple white outlines, but might look at changing it later on.

Overall, good feedback and much appreciated. I have already made some changes to the game (latest build is 0.31.2.0) after being off this project for several months due to several RL things making it impossible to work on it, back last week I finally got myself back into starting this again - mainly because I only have the final boss battle to do before I have finished the main core of the game and can then start revisiting things and tidying it all up.

Thanks again.
 
A newer Alpha version has now been uploaded, and the first post has been updated to allow downloading of v0.33.3.0.

Release Notes for 0.33.3.0
Changes/Fixes:
  • Changed the title text on main menu screen to be more readable.
  • Changed the speed of any displayed text/dialog so that it will wait for player input instead of just moving on to next page of text.
  • Changed the text/dialog image so that when the page is waiting for player input it shows a folded corner in the bottom-right.
  • Reduced the speed of the animation for the Ranger so that his attacks are not so rapid.
  • Reduced the speed of the arrows shot by the Ranger so that these can be dodged better.
  • Adjusted the alignment of the HUD so that all indicators line up better.
  • Reduced the number of enemies in some overload, dungeons, and citadel locations as the difficulty was too high when facing too many enemies at once.

New Features:
  • Added title animation to the main menu screen so that first time viewing the screen with run the animation. Returning to the main menu in the same game session with not run the title animation again.
  • Final boss battle has been added, although not in finished state yet.


Once again, any feedback is appreciated - although there may not be much difference noticeable for people based on the Release Notes for this version. I am anticipating having a more complete alpha version in the next couple of weeks, hopefully with sounds added and perhaps the first version of the full final boss battle in place.
 
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