Feedback King'n Knight - DEMO is out now!

[Crin]

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Hi all, I would like to share my project with you.


King'n Knight is game I currently working on. It's an adventure platformer inspired by Ghosts'n Goblins and Megaman. It's playable solo or coop (local or online).
The game is hard. It's composed of 13 levels, each with unique environments (structured like this : 1st part / 2nd part / boss), in which you will collect golds. You can then buy items from merchants like weapons, magics or passive items.


The online work with the steamworks.gml (by YellowAfterLife)

Steam link

King'n Knight on Steam

King’n Knight is an arcade platform game that takes place in a medival fantasy world. Play solo or coop in this game inspired by Ghosts’n Goblins and Megaman.

store.steampowered.com

Trailer

Screens




I hope you like this !

 

[Crin]

Add fog to the swamp

 

[Crin]

This week, I worked on several points :

- synchronization of some data online
- the level " the Mountain " : I worked on the boss and the background
- the level "the Tunnel" : I added a lighting system and some details


I think a demo will be available soon

 

[Crin]

Demo version is available on Steam !
solo/coop (1-4 players local/online)

Any feedback is welcome !

King'n Knight on Steam

King’n Knight is an arcade platform game that takes place in a medival fantasy world. Play solo or coop in this game inspired by Ghosts’n Goblins and Megaman.

store.steampowered.com

 

[DaveInDev]

Hi, I tested your demo on steam, but alas, when the game run, it starts fullscreen and it seems that I only see the upper left quarter of the screen... I had to kill the task to exit... (under win10).

 

[binarypearl]

This looks to be a fun game; a couple suggestions / ideas:

Upon launch, would be nice to be able to press Escape key to exit full screen. When I launch any game, I usually need to adjust the volume in Windows task bar before I get to playing it.

I noticed on an Xbox One controller, if I press jump and left or right at the same time, player jumps as expected. But if there is any delay between jump and pressing left/right the player only jumps straight up, in which I got hit a lot in that situation.

Similarly when I was firing the weapon, the player stops moving while pressing left/right. Personal preference I would like the player to keep moving when firing the weapon and moving in a left/right direction.

 

[Crin]

Thank you for your feedback!

Hi, I tested your demo on steam, but alas, when the game run, it starts fullscreen and it seems that I only see the upper left quarter of the screen... I had to kill the task to exit... (under win10).

I have already had problems with the fullscreen, but never this one ... Have you tried several times?
I made some modification on the launch of the game, the problem should be fixed!
(if it didn't work, you can try pressing F4

I updated the demo !

This looks to be a fun game; a couple suggestions / ideas:

Upon launch, would be nice to be able to press Escape key to exit full screen. When I launch any game, I usually need to adjust the volume in Windows task bar before I get to playing it.

I noticed on an Xbox One controller, if I press jump and left or right at the same time, player jumps as expected. But if there is any delay between jump and pressing left/right the player only jumps straight up, in which I got hit a lot in that situation.

Similarly when I was firing the weapon, the player stops moving while pressing left/right. Personal preference I would like the player to keep moving when firing the weapon and moving in a left/right direction.

You can exit/come back to fullscreen by pressing F4.

I will do some tests. Maybe I'll add a sort of "coyote time". This will give 3-4 frames to choose the jump direction.

The stopping time during the attack depends on the weapon. Dagger or sickle have a short attack time, Axe has a long one.
I plan to add an animation during the attack.


work in progress...

 

[DaveInDev]

the fullscreen works now. Also the windowed version. But do you really need a gamepad ? I don't have one, and I did not find the normal keys to play the game...

 

[Crin]

Keep F1 pressed to see the controls.
Apparently It works without the update (upload failed, it will be available in a few minutes).

 

[Yrbiax]

Hey, i tried your demo.

Controls felt kinda clumsy, but i suppose thats on purpose. I kinda hated and loved it at the same time
Enemies spawning right where you stand didnt feel fair thought.



I made it to this boss, but i had no idea how i was supposed to avoid that attack from that boss.
It seemed to cover whole area. Did i miss something?

 

[Crin]

Thanks for testing the demo !

Yes the controls are deliberately rigid, that's the concept of the game.
I will modify the zombies spawn to avoid the spawn underfoot.

To this boss, you must use the grave.

 

[hogwater]

You know, you really managed to recreate the feeling of playing Ghosts N Goblins. Frustrating at times, but you have to keep playing. Played the whole thing. I feel like perhaps the duck should get lower than it does currently (at least visually) because it doesn't quite read as a duck. The enemies that speed up when they get close to you move a little too fast imo (when close to you).

Nice job!

 

[kburkhart84]

I didn't test the demo, but looking at the above post where you added fog to the swamp...I recommend you change the color some on the trees in the background(as compared to the ones in the foreground with branches you walk on). The two trees bleed together somewhat, and though the sizes of the trees helps to know which is a platform and which is just background, IMO the colors being different would help as well.

 

[Crin]

@hogwater
Thanks for playing the demo and for your encouraging feedback!
"The feeling of Ghosts'n Goblins", not everyone likes it but that's the feeling I was looking for. Did you finish the demo?

Duck? haha there are no ducks in my game.
you talk about an enemy from Level 2?




@kburkhart84
Thank you for your advice! Indeed, the trees were much darker than the rest of the foreground.
I lightened the trees in the foreground and darkened those in the background.
Now we can distinguish much better the platforms.

 

[kburkhart84]

Thank you for your advice! Indeed, the trees were much darker than the rest of the foreground.
I lightened the trees in the foreground and darkened those in the background.
Now we can distinguish much better the platforms.

Much better!!! The trick is to modify brightness(make it darker), or modify saturation(lowering saturation in the background), or both. But considering the game theme, and the level theme, simply darkening the trees makes perfect sense and looks well done!!!

 

[hogwater]

@hogwater
Thanks for playing the demo and for your encouraging feedback!
"The feeling of Ghosts'n Goblins", not everyone likes it but that's the feeling I was looking for. Did you finish the demo?

Duck? haha there are no ducks in my game.
you talk about an enemy from Level 2?

View attachment 37880

When I say "duck" I mean crouch. The player character ducking, or crouching. And yeah, I reached the part where it just says "end of demo" on the screen, lol. I want to play more!

 

[GoK]

Finished! And not just finished, but also record it. Consider it a playtest data. Is it any useful? I don't know... it might be.
There is no commentary or editing, just raw footage of an average non-hardcore gamer plays your game for the first time:

PLAYLIST THERE

Unfortunately, I beat level 1 off-camera and start recording only from level 2. So my very-very first experience with the game is lost... Sorry.

As for opinions, I think the game is mostly good! Frustrating at times, but it's okay. Not a fan of jumps with zero air control though. I understand that it was a thing in GnG and it's intentional, but still.
If you jumped and a zombi spawns in a spot of your landing or some projectile flies from the age of a screen, you can't do anything about it. You also need to be careful when jumping forward from an idle position to not accidentally press jump before moving. And this pit: CLICK. You HAVE TO jump to cover it, that's just silly. While on the subject of pits, some of them could be a bit shorter: CLICK. Soldown the video - I definitely touched the other side. Projectiles on level 2 are annoying, they small, fast, blends with a background, and can fly from the age of a screen. Killed me multiple times. Overall the combat system is good though. Bosses are great too. The music is nice.

I wish you good luck with your project!

 

[ZELPAD]

Congratulations

 

[Zizka]

I looked at the screens only and it seems like a fun tribute to GnG (although you ditched the armor = health mechanic).
Need some animation for that spear throwing though! Just having it disappear doesn’t cut it and your game is worth it .

 

[Crin]

Thanks all for your feedback!

@hogwater Ahah ok! I did not know this expression.
I'm reworking the characters sprites and annimations. I will modify that! Thanks!

@GoK Wow! thanks for your letsplay!
In the level 2, I will rework the ambiguous and imprecise jumps. I don't like plant projectiles too, I'm going to modify them.
Musics of levels 1-2-3 and boss 1 are almost final. the rest will be changed.

@ZELPAD Thanks!

@Zizka Thanks for your comment. I did not reproduce the armor drop because the system is less efficient with 3 lifes.
Of course, animations are coming!

 

[Zizka]

A couple of things were bugging me so I did an edit with some suggestions:

• In keeping true to the GnG spirit, I suggest using armor to represent health markers as opposed to hearts which are generic. I tried a couple of designs of shields as well as spent shield on the right.
• Considering how much space you have on top, I see no reason why to crunch everything in the top left corner, so I recommend optimizing the space available.
• Next to the scroll icon on top is a blue bar with four units I think. I'd take advantage of the black contrast to get rid of a color. In the example above.
• Another reason why the clock is difficult to read is because it's needlessly crushed in the upper right. If you put it side by side with the coin, you have more room to breathe.
• At such a small size, the clock separation hurt the readability while providing non-essential information.
• The clock dark brown outline makes it difficult to make out from the black outline. I used the brown in the scroll for the sake of palette preservation.
• I moved the P1 next to the health bar once again to better use the space you have at hand.
• I reworked both the clock and the coin for readability.

I don't know if this is interesting to you but I have more suggestions if you want to hear them.

 

[Crin]

@Zizka thanks for your suggestions. HUD is designed for 1 to 4 players. The number of lives is variable (3 basic but variable from 2 to 5) and P1, ..., P4 are replaced by the players nicknames in online multiplayer. The varying health counts (and abilities such as healing) make it difficult to use the armor system (but it's true, that's cool). I have the idea to do some tests with a progressive loss of armor (loss of the helmet then loss of the armor) but I think it will be confusing.

(click to enlarge)

 

[Crin]

Progress this month

I worked on the animation of characters : add attack animation and modifie run animation.

I also worked on the musics. Almost all levels have their own music. I use tfmmaker.

Logo coloring and new title screen theme.

After 4-5 redesign of the ice level... There're some details missing but I am satisfied with the result.

I calculated the theoretical dps of weapons to start the balancing


Also a lot of debugging. I tried the whole game with 2 players online, everything works! Next time I will test with 4 players!

 

[CMAllen]

The newer animations are an improvement, but if I might suggest one further tweak, add a little 'hop' (like maybe 1 pixel upward) somewhere around the mid-frame. The characters still don't quite 'move' enough when moving.

 

[Crin]

@CMAllen Thanks for your suggestion! I did some tests:

For me, D is the best

This month I worked on the final level and final boss, but I can’t show it to you! I also made many bug fix and minor contents.

I also worked on the illustrations for the steam page:



What do you think? Do you have any suggestions?

 

[CMAllen]

D is the winner, yeah.

 

[Crin]