AlmyriganHero
Member
Well, where do I even begin? After a few fangame projects on MFGG, one of which was finished and enjoyed moderate success and acclaim with a Game of the Month and a "Most original gameplay" Game of the Year award, I've just started my first major indie project, and I want to discuss...well, pretty much everything. So, I'll just start with what the game is actually all about.
It's a bit complicated, but to put it semi-briefly, it's a Metroidvania-style action-platformer-adventure with a story and tone inspired by the old Kirby anime, a bit of Kirby and Yoshi influence in the gameplay, a ton of collectibles, a few very light RPG elements, and a rather unique character with a rather unique moveset. It's actually a lot simpler than it sounds, but it's kind of hard to condense it into words.
So, we'll start with Kiku herself. What is Kiku? She's a Nova Jelly, which is a...uh...she's from space.
Here's a bit of (read: a lot of) concept art.
Now that you're nice and confused on multiple levels, here's the gist of the core gameplay. Everything that Kiku eats gets digested into Nova Dust, and with a sticky chameleon-like tongue, an elastic body, and a stomach that compresses space by reducing the distance between the atoms that constitute its contents (because science,) she can certainly pack it away.
What's so useful about that? Well, her tail just happens to be a sort of biological rocket engine that runs on Nova Dust! No seriously. She can fly at very high speeds, but only the Nova Dust in her tail can be used for propulsion, and its capacity is much lower than her stomach, which serves as a reservoir that refills her tail when she's on the ground. This serves to balance the high-speed flight concept, giving you a large overall fuel capacity but preventing you from basically being able to fly over everything. I'm also thinking of adding fall damage to punish the player for using or abusing flight too recklessly.
Well, that's all for the core gameplay, but now it's onto the game's structure! As stated before, it's a 2D, semi-open-world, Metroidvania-style affair. To try and describe it as concisely as possible, there are three major units of area; Regions, Zones, Town Zones, and Dungeon Zones. A Region basically represents a difficulty tier, and each Region contains multiple large Zones, all of which are close in challenge level. The Zones within a Region are all interconnected with each other and Town Zones at various points, and you can tackle them in any order you want, but in order to reach the next Region, you must beat every Zone boss in a region to unlock that region's Dungeon Zone; a much more linear, "level" like area that culminates in the Region Boss. Beating the Region Boss opens up one or more options to proceed to the next zone. Town zones
I'll just give an example using the scenario I have planned for the first Region. Every time you beat one of the three Zone Boss monsters of the region, you obtain a piece of the Palace Gate Key. Collect all three and you can journey to the castle right outside the Region's Town Zone, enter the region's Dungeon Zone, and knock some sense into the king, who is under the true villain's control. After that, he'll open the gate to Region 2's swamp Zone (Reluctantly. He...STILL doesn't really like you that much.) but if you don't want to take on the swamp Zone right away, you can buy some dynamite at the shop that opens up in town, go to the forest Zone of Region 1, blow up a big boulder, and enter Region 2's cave Zone.
Also, here're a few prototype sprites:
More concept art and details will be posted as I come up with them.
It's a bit complicated, but to put it semi-briefly, it's a Metroidvania-style action-platformer-adventure with a story and tone inspired by the old Kirby anime, a bit of Kirby and Yoshi influence in the gameplay, a ton of collectibles, a few very light RPG elements, and a rather unique character with a rather unique moveset. It's actually a lot simpler than it sounds, but it's kind of hard to condense it into words.
So, we'll start with Kiku herself. What is Kiku? She's a Nova Jelly, which is a...uh...she's from space.
Here's a bit of (read: a lot of) concept art.
Now that you're nice and confused on multiple levels, here's the gist of the core gameplay. Everything that Kiku eats gets digested into Nova Dust, and with a sticky chameleon-like tongue, an elastic body, and a stomach that compresses space by reducing the distance between the atoms that constitute its contents (because science,) she can certainly pack it away.
What's so useful about that? Well, her tail just happens to be a sort of biological rocket engine that runs on Nova Dust! No seriously. She can fly at very high speeds, but only the Nova Dust in her tail can be used for propulsion, and its capacity is much lower than her stomach, which serves as a reservoir that refills her tail when she's on the ground. This serves to balance the high-speed flight concept, giving you a large overall fuel capacity but preventing you from basically being able to fly over everything. I'm also thinking of adding fall damage to punish the player for using or abusing flight too recklessly.
Well, that's all for the core gameplay, but now it's onto the game's structure! As stated before, it's a 2D, semi-open-world, Metroidvania-style affair. To try and describe it as concisely as possible, there are three major units of area; Regions, Zones, Town Zones, and Dungeon Zones. A Region basically represents a difficulty tier, and each Region contains multiple large Zones, all of which are close in challenge level. The Zones within a Region are all interconnected with each other and Town Zones at various points, and you can tackle them in any order you want, but in order to reach the next Region, you must beat every Zone boss in a region to unlock that region's Dungeon Zone; a much more linear, "level" like area that culminates in the Region Boss. Beating the Region Boss opens up one or more options to proceed to the next zone. Town zones
I'll just give an example using the scenario I have planned for the first Region. Every time you beat one of the three Zone Boss monsters of the region, you obtain a piece of the Palace Gate Key. Collect all three and you can journey to the castle right outside the Region's Town Zone, enter the region's Dungeon Zone, and knock some sense into the king, who is under the true villain's control. After that, he'll open the gate to Region 2's swamp Zone (Reluctantly. He...STILL doesn't really like you that much.) but if you don't want to take on the swamp Zone right away, you can buy some dynamite at the shop that opens up in town, go to the forest Zone of Region 1, blow up a big boulder, and enter Region 2's cave Zone.
Also, here're a few prototype sprites:
More concept art and details will be posted as I come up with them.
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