Design Need opinions on game design (Super Hiking League)

nesrocks

Member
Heeey there! I've been working full time on a game for almost a year now. I have experience in the industry while working on other teams, but I was not fully satisfied with how things went on those projects. So I decided I'd make at least one game by myself and put it on steam.

I have done the Super Pitfall 30th Anniversary hack, a modification of the NES game Super Pitfall. The result was liked by most. Even David Crane responded positively when I e-mailed him about the hack.

So it gave me confidence and I moved on. I started working on a game similar to Super Pitfall, using some of the original assets I made for the hack. I chose Game Maker as my engine. I worked about 4-5 months on this idea.

But then I started to realize there are many, maaaaany games like this (2d platformer, explore, kill baddies, etc). So I wanted something different. I changed the game design to something like a 1 vs 1, split screen vertically scrolling 2D platformer. Think puyo puyo or tetris attack, but instead of a puzzle it's a platformer. The player would have a series of levels of increasing difficulty, facing one enemy on each level. It can be played on story mode (vs CPU), or on 2 players mode.

This is where I am now, and I'm at a creative halt. The player can walk, jump, climb ladders, attack with a melee weapon, charge the attack by holding the button, and I'm making rope physics like umihara kawase.

I haven't completely decided if the characters should meet in the game and fight directly, or if they should each have their sepparate, equal level to traverse and "interact" similarly to the mentioned puzzles.

But what would the objective be? I feel like just getting to the top first is kind of bland... Maybe I need a normal big platformer level.

Here's a video of what I have. I wrote the song, but it was more of a study on composing than anything. I think the style doesn't fit the game well. Maaaybe for a final boss. Also, the AI is just placeholder, I realize it looks dumb/unrealistic, I just wanted something to play against, so it was quickly programmed. My idea is to have a convincing AI. Anyway, check it out:


Here's a video of the work in progress of the rope. The rope should never stretch that far, I was just playing around. The rope is to be used to swing and pull things, maybe including the other player.


Gameplay of umihara kawase:


Features that I have programmed but have been removed for now:
- world map with paths like super mario bros 3
- swimming in water
- traversing horizontal ropes (like Aladdin for the genesis)
- talking npcs with dialog boxes
- frogs that follow you for no reason
- minimap in super metroid / castlevania sotn style

Impressions, comments, critiques, opinions are all welcome! Help me out :D
 

Yal

šŸ§ *penguin noises*
GMC Elder
In Puyo Puyo Tetris, you don't fight directly, but making good progress in your "world" creates obstacles for the other player. Perhaps a system like that could work for the competitive elements? E.g. all monsters you kill becomes ghosts that move over to the other player's world, then resurrects. (or perhaps becomes extra-difficult ghost versions). Perhaps this is limited to enemies defeated a certain way, so it's not too unbalanced?

If both sides of the screen scroll at the same speed, and sticks with the player that's the closest to the top, this could add a competitive element too (if players that fall down too far die, the game would be a mad scramble to climb as fast as possible). Conversely, if they scroll independently, things like enemies becoming ghosts could get more dynamic (they won't necessarily show up in the same spot as they were in your world).

Also consider non-symmetric levels, i.e. the levels are roughly the same difficulty but the left and right sides are different. Perhaps you make the level in 4 parts and shuffle them differently for each player's side (and if you make a system for this, it's not too hard to make randomly generated levels either! Just pick X random chunks from the list of premade level parts, then use those in random orders for each player).

I'd say, keep the stuff you made in. You'll find an use for it eventually. Mother 3 used frogs as savepoints, so if you wanna do something like that, you can use both the frog code and the NPC code at once :p

The game looks awesome so far, keep up the good work :)
 

nesrocks

Member
That's some great food for thought. Yeah, making it more defined is better, but it is so easy to get lost on features. At one point I had 8 characters running around at the same time! I'll stick to players not interacting directly, maybe have a sepparate battle mode later. Although this reminds me of Dustforce and the battle mode was mostly left untouched by me on that game.

One's plain progress being one of the things that sends baddies to the other player sounds like a good idea. Also, it just occurred to me that I haven't implemented the "rounds" mechanic (akin to street fighter, tetris attack), in which you must beat a player twice to win the match. I think that would make things clearer and fairer.

Swimming sounds more like a gimmick than a great gameplay element at this point, since the game is about going up, but I just tested and it still works (along with passive up/down motion, air meter and bubble particles), so I'll consider leaving it in. I "only" need to draw the swimming sprites for all the other 7 characters and program some water baddies.

edit:
@Yal Just had the greatest idea ^^ thanks for the comments! The game design will change substantially, but I'll keep everything I have.
 
Last edited:
Top