Windows Foxland: A 30 minute platformer

Its 8 days in and chances are that's the most amount of time I can devote at this time.

Here is a feature list:
- Almost 30 minutes of speed running
- Puzzle levers (pull a lever to make bridges, blocks or turn bridges and blocks hollow)
- Super stomp (to use enemies as springboards or drive through large crates)
- Mixture of levels from labyrinths to straight forward combat focused
- 10 enemy types, basic, but effective
- Secret walls
- Doors!
- In-Game Achievements
- 4 Levels of difficulty (infinite to a single life)
- 3 Save slots

I have worked a lot with art asset packs to further my engine when my artists are busy. Originally I had used an art pack, but 2 weeks into the project I replaced the art by cloning the art pack itself.

As for the engine, it has made many games, so the struggle becomes finding different mechanics to make a game feel different from the last while using the same engine. Foxland is the latest art (and music) asset game.


Super stomping through crates



Secret walls & doors!



Enemies!





End of Level Scoring!



Lever puzzles!



Super Stomp gets you higher!



Be a jerk!



For this game I enhanced the engine by adding:
- super stomp mechanic
- levers
- hollow blocks vs solid blocks
- block inventory
- doors that go to places rather than the next level
- slopes are now included in my auto-tiler
- walk through walls that become transparent and opaque
- save slots now keep notes rather than only percentages
- in-game achievements
- difficulty levels with different lives
 
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HA2ARD_R380RN

Guest
What is this? No seriously, what is this? I'll tell you what it looks like to me, it looks wonderful :D
Really great work! Love the bright and "fluffy" feel of it all. Almost reminds me of those Mario and Sonic games of old, and I say almost because it is very different in its own way and that is just great. Would love to check it out at some point and have a playthrough.
 

ReidDC

Member
love the feel the game gives. The atmosphere is well presented via the cheerful sound effects and music. Plus the sprites and tile sets are very bright and colorful, loving it. Cant wait too see more!
 
Thank you both for the kind words.

- Added a system to detect what version the levels are. If the levels are from a different version, the game rebuilds the levels.
- Added details to each level in terms of the look.
- Added gems to the levels that were missing them.
- Modified level 5 to be 2 levels making 10 levels in all.
- Modified a secret area to explain how small boxes can be placed.

Here is a video of the game as it is now:


I find it amazing that Youtube captured a nearly identical screenshot with this 25 minute video and the last 25 minute video.
 
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I spent the past 3 days (a total of 20 hours) remaking the art. Even if its the same style as it was originally, now I feel comfortable enough to do more art for the project.
 
Some games are destine to never be on Steam... so I made in game achievements:



With achievements there is now an achievements section in the game menu. Achievements, high scores and best times are now bound to their save slots. So in the off chance that anyone would ever dare have one PC used by 2 different people everything is kept separate.

Other than that, there is now a difficulty system and lives are back. Lives were always in the engine, but deactivated for a lot of games as most people feel lives are archaic. I feel infinite lives turns into bad level design. Lives can always be granted or farmed. With that said, easy mode does have infinite lives. YOLO just has the one life.



Here is a video of it all!

 
Its been a while since I've had an update, but I've still been working. I always like to start out with a fake screenshot and because Foxland has a parallax background and a middle ground, I had to copy / paste the solid area to have a section with middle ground and without middle ground.

For me art takes a while and its started to feel like work. Three days have been spent making a new tileset. Let me know what you think.



I also took the time to make a player selection screen for a previous game that can easily be imported into other projects. It features unlimited characters, character unlocking, hidden characters and a random selection.

 
M

MunchytheFox

Guest
Omg so amazing, the one of the cutest fox + level aesthetics and pixel art I've seen, definitely keen to give it a go
 

RangerX

Member
You seem a solid and fantastic looking project. Will try it just 'cause am attracted but you seem to know where you're going. I wonder what feedback you really want to have. ;)
 
You seem a solid and fantastic looking project. Will try it just 'cause am attracted but you seem to know where you're going. I wonder what feedback you really want to have. ;)
I am happy with any feedback. Its difficult to get feedback from strangers. Here on Yoyogames forum, everyone seems to give feedback which is great, because I have other dev blogs on different sites and they have zero feedback from strangers.

In other news. I am still working on the new tileset. Day 4: The Parallax.

 

RangerX

Member
You should slow down that middle background. Its too fast in my opinion. It kills a true sense of depth that you could have going on. Also, the trees middle background in your other level --- the parallax isn't the right speed again. It goes faster than the land your character runs on, meaning it could only be a foreground.
 
You should slow down that middle background. Its too fast in my opinion. It kills a true sense of depth that you could have going on. Also, the trees middle background in your other level --- the parallax isn't the right speed again. It goes faster than the land your character runs on, meaning it could only be a foreground.
Thanks for taking the time for the feedback. People on Twitter said I needed to slow it down... so I slowed it down and posted it here. Now I need to slow it down more.

How does it look now?



The other background is slower as well. Both backgrounds share the same speed.



I can use more tar! :)
 

RangerX

Member
Now it makes sense. The cave background is good although I would make it a bit faster. (Forest can be a bit faster also) Maybe something like middle speed between your character (main plane) and your far background. Anyhow, this is tweaking.
You still have mistake though with your forest background (and possibly your cave one). You adjusted X speed but not Y speed :p
Its also wierd that the forest background can move on the Y axis and not the cave's...
I would choose to let my backgrounds move on the Y axis (all of them) or none of them. It makes the game more homogenous.
 

WarpDogsVG

Member
Interesting concept and art style - I really dig it.

Also agreed that your latest changes to the background scroll are real nice
 
A

Ankokushin

Guest
Feels very nostalgic - it´s like I´m playing super nintendo. Art is good AF. Your work is professional-tier.
 
Its been a while since I touched Foxland as the game is done and I've had 2 complete projects between this and the current project. Someone I know took the time to play an alpha of Foxland and give me some feedback on it, so I spent the day working on Foxland. I've considered it done after the second week, but it could use more art to diversify the 30 minutes of game.

With his notes I tweaked levels, modified signs, added more signs including new arrow signs. A lot of people missed shortcuts after they were opened so dropping a few more arrow signs to guide the way should help.



In addition to the level tweaks, I spent three hours making a new level to hammock between the second and third levels. Its a simple 1 - 2 minute level that is straight forward with a lot of secrets along the way.

Its been two weeks since I made a level in one of my games after making 30 big levels in the span of 3 weeks. While I get burnt out designing so many levels back to back, it felt good to design a quick level that took 3 - 4 hours for all the details and secrets.

On top of that, I added some more frills from my recent two games. Players can now configure controls and set their own keys. Even though I try to keep the keys as simple as possible, this is always a good fallback for people that want to do things their own way.

There is now a toggle switch for scanlines. The game already had an old version of my scanline system, but I had removed it. Since I've noticed many people love scanlines (even my own fake scanlines) I have decided to include it in Foxland as an option.

The player character now has white shoes when he can perform a super stomp. This might change as the shoes for the sprite need to be enhanced. Before this update, the fox would change to a brighter shade of red. For a different game it would be easy to recolor the fox to say green, but foxes are so synonymous with red its tough to be anything other than the color.

 
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I have decided to release the original version of the game that uses an art pack. Please play it and let me know what you think! Stuff has changed since June like the art, but its mostly the same.

* edit *

The game did so bad I took it down.
 
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It was a fun week that turned into my most popular game on itch by far. It made it to #1 or #2 on itch.io for that week. It made some money in donations.

I gathered feedback and now, I took down the game (put the game on restricted access so no one can see it except those who donated). People just hate the jump. They hate how low the jump is and they hate the standing jump is higher than the running jump. The testers never had a problem with it.

People also had an issue with not having enemies in the first two levels. I felt those two levels were already long enough let alone watching the testers die and having to do it all over again. Some felt they had to push both Z and Y to run... rather than Z or Y like the sign said. At least there's now a way to set keyboard controls.

In the short time the game was available, I was able to get interest from a publisher that wants to take it to Steam. I have no interest to take it to Steam especially since people both disliked and hated it as much as they did. So I'll turn it into a more traditional platformer with a higher jump. Then I'll heavily modify the levels to make use of the higher jump.

Also, because a different game used the original art pack and decided to call their game Foxyland and put it on Steam, I suppose I'll rename the game and change the character to prevent more confusion from happening.
 
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It has been an interesting few weeks.

I'm uncertain sure Foxland is still Foxland for the following reasons:
- More abilities
- Jump is twice as high
- Because of the first two, each of the 11 levels have been scrapped
- License deal with the publisher has made for a pug rather than a fox

With a new character, more art, more abilities, different jump and a license deal... does Foxland stay unreleased forever (outside of the 1 week) and what it turned into is a new game?

Is this one of those things I should start a new thread for?
 

RangerX

Member
Sounds like a new game. Would make a new thread. Maybe linking this one for sorta history purposes.
 
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