Alpha Pure Blood: A Metroidvania Hack & Slash

Kealor

Member
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Welcome
Thanks for checking this project out and i hope to pique your interest! To get access to to the most recent version of the demo check out the discord link at the bottom. We appreciate any and all advice or criticism as we have quite a long journey ahead of us!

Overview
Purity of Blood is a 2D, Metroid-Vania, platformer with a heavy focus on compelling exploration and hack-and-slash style combat. It features a character driven story which takes place in a desiccated Victorian era town, it's occult ruined manor as well as the surrounding areas once inhabited by a grand society of vampires now brought to ruin by eldritch forces. It is populated by Transylvanian folklore creatures, eldritch Lovecraftian horrors and the remains of a once thriving city barely surviving the chaos at hand. The protagonist and her brother must set off for the manor in search of their mysteriously disappeared father all the while learning about the true nature of the manor, the horrors within and the protagonists unnatural birth.

Manor_Entrance_Focus.png

The project so far
So far the project has ran rather smoothing and due to some recent coding overhauls, the rate at which we can add new content only goes up from here! The current demo showcases the core mechanics of combat, movement and enemy design with the following features:
  • Ground combo attacks with 3 distinct animations
  • Aerial combo with 3 distinct animations
  • Defensive actions like Blocking and dodging
  • Counterattack, Uppercut and 4 Directional attacks each with differing uses and properties (only first three are animated thus far)
  • Projectile weapons, spells and abilities. The Crossbow and grimoire are functionally incomplete but are missing certain assets. There are crossbow bolts of varying properties, a series of unique magical projectiles, utility abilities like a reflect spell and a grappling hook. As well as an explosion ability and a heal.
  • Many of the games rpg based menus are more than functional, including Combo management, Inventory, Equipment, Abilities, Player status, Map and options. All of the relevant systems are fully functioning as well, though are somewhat un-populated.
  • A playable region, this are is very WiP but we are working to make it a thorough example of what a player will experience throughout the game.
  • Dialog and cutscene code, with text crawling, response choices and response events.
  • A functional arena which can actively tweak arena room, enemy type, enemy data, presence of platforms/grappling hook points and more.
  • 8 enemies of varying archetypes: fodder enemy, duelist, flying, huge and caster; each with varying attack sets, movement patterns, animations and AI.
  • A functional horde mode to test your combat abilities (WiP, works but is somewhat unbalanced at the moment).
  • Basic implementation of graphical effects like dynamic rain, parallax layers, dynamic lighting, bloom, bloodstains and particle systems.
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At this stage, we wish to attract more talent, build a wider audience and develop channels for feedback. In the near future we will also be looking to set up a fully functional demo featuring subset of regions to explore, with many, if not all, of the games core mechanics available. This will act as a significant proof-of-concept alongside our future crowdfunding campaign

Future Game Features
The scope of the of the project is reasonably large and we hope to have a robust, mechanically tight game by the end of development. Many of the features below are core to the game, but still they naturally are subject to change and may scale with the development process as well as the games general scope:
  • Extensive combat
    • multiple weapons and weapon categories (scalable with development progress/success)
    • A form of "create your own combo” adaptability wherein the player can emphasize their preference of high damage and stagger vs high speed as well as other factors such as special effects, range and unique additions like multi-strike, teleportation and special movement patterns. The depth of this would be dictated by time, overall game cohesion and development cycle. Additional attacks would become available as the play uses a particular weapon weapon category.
    • Blocking dodging and countering, different weapon categories might also have a unique spin on these movements, such as a quick back-step, dashing behind an enemy to attack or vaulting out of danger.
    • Varying enemy attack sets, strengths and weaknesses as well as certain enemies and bosses that utilize similar mechanics to those above.
    • Focus on timing/quick thinking as well as "right tool for the right problem".
  • Exploration focused expansive world
    • the working concept thus far is to have the game take place in a large mansion, the surrounding city and the surrounding areas, the mansion being quite large and taking up around 60% of the playable world. The size of this world will scale with the success of the development process.
    • varying locales; the mansion itself with be host to various different areas below and above ground. Some of which quite ancient. Current areas that will be present outside of the mansion are a city and the forest.
    • a “base” featuring shops and NPCs of various purposes, more appearing as you progress throughout the game.
    • puzzles involving clever use of weapons/equipment
    • atmospheric victorian era aesthetic which become more and more eldritch as you progress throughout the game as well as return to previous areas.
  • Multi directional story line and Progression
    • Scales heavily with development pacing and game cohesion.
    • Choices the player makes determine how vampiric they become, influencing their powers and the world around them.
    • choices the player makes would potentially incur the scorn of other characters, introducing new story elements, encounters, boss fights and endings.
The Team

Robert Boehnke (Kealor)
Programming, Gameplay Designer & Project Lead
|| GameMaker Community ||

Mason Thompsen (Master Maker)
Programming and Design
|| GameMaker Community ||

Jacob_V
Design, Artwork and Animation
|| GameMaker Community || Portfolio ||

Niels Broekharst (NielsB): Design, Artwork and Animation
|| GameMaker Community || Twitter || Portfolio ||

Adam Jufer (warmsoda): Artwork and Animation
|| Twitter || Portfolio ||

Edgar Lagayada Jr. (eadgear) : Artwork and Animation
|| GameMaker Community || Deviant Art ||

Milch: Promotional Artwork (commission)
|| GameMaker Community ||

Bryan Davis (Bakuda): Music Composer (commission)
|| GameMaker Community || Portfolio ||​

Currently we are looking for additional level/environment designers, however we do not have explicit space for other roles. But if you would like to get involved in some fashion, let us know so we can keep you in mind if we intend to expand!

Also, if you just want to spectate and weigh in as a play-tester/critic then that's definitely possible as well

Contact us
To get in contact with us if you are interested in becoming part of the team or any general inquiries feel free to message in the forum, PM me or email me at [email protected].

Discord
If you wanna come join the discord just to check the project out, talk about its features or access the demo just use the link below.

https://discord.gg/uPDnFTh



Thanks for checking us out!
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Kealor

Member
Large update to the project! the original post has been edited to be up to date and has some additional info, the discord also has a new build out!
 
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Neon Gear Games

Guest
really digging the atmosphere here, great wrk on the animations!
 

Kealor

Member
Thanks everyone! currently we are working on a more interesting shader based lighting system and we should have a new build out in the next few days.
 

Kealor

Member
New dynamic shader-cross-surface based lighting engine in the works, still rough around the edges but with minimal performance impact so far! Video on the discord to see it in motions.

Just have to smoothen the edges out and apply a general light to pass through the occlusion sprites so its not as heavy.

1.png 2.png 3.png
 

Kealor

Member
Turning out pretty well imo. Need a couple of minor tweaks but its nearly done.

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I'm wondering if it may be worth developing this lighting engine as an independent add-on for the marketplace. Though I'm not sure if game maker lighting engines are saturated right now. How viable would a arbitrary occlusion surface with shader be in this market?

Its not quite done yet and id have to polish/decouple it from my project but it works as intended and has minimal performance issues (200+ light emitters in a room runs at 800fps on my GTX 1080). It would come with a blur/silhouette shader as part of the system as well.
 

RangerX

Member
I really am not a fan of shader lighting on a pixel art game but if you tone it right and use it only if necessary, I guess it could end up right.
Besides, just been lurking in your thread here and I must say you seem to have a solid project and knowing where you are going with it. Keep up !!
 

Kealor

Member
I really am not a fan of shader lighting on a pixel art game but if you tone it right and use it only if necessary!
Besides, just been lurking in your thread here and I must say you seem to have a solid project and knowing where you are going with it. Keep up !!
Thanks!

The way its set up, you can tweak a few numbers and give it a much more pixelated look by lowering the scale and lowering/removing the blur + radial blur. (though pixelated does have some artifact at edges right now)

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Kealor

Member
Its been a bit but the effects seem to be coming along quite nicely:

29.png 30.png
The image on the right has the darkness turned up to show off the effects a bit more.

Recently i was working on a dynamic shaft lighting engine, but that may be a while away since I've started implementing the item/inventory and ability systems as well as setting up more areas using our new tilesets. Some beautiful animated environmental pieces are also being added which i may show off soon.
 
L

Lonewolff

Guest
Man, very nice!

Attention to detail shows through. Right down to the light bouncing off the swords.
 

Kealor

Member
Man, very nice!

Attention to detail shows through. Right down to the light bouncing off the swords.
Haha, not sure if you are legitimately referring to the promo pic or sarcastically referring to the last two with the buggy-ish players sword.

Either way I'm going to be building a glow/light-reactivity based set of shaders into the near future, to have the forest bulbs glow individually (currently ive just placed individual lights roughly about the trees) and add shiny effects. When i do the latter ill be building the relevant normal+spec maps for additional sprites like held weapons.
 
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Lonewolff

Guest
No no, not at all.

I was reffering to the top pic in the OP. Looks awesome. No sarcasm here.
 

Kealor

Member
Some of the graphical effects in the promo like reflectivity, bloom and shafts aren't in the engine just yet, ill be working on them in the near future. Ill probably recreate the promo in engine just for a comparison.
 
L

Lonewolff

Guest
That image is actually a promotional mockup I created as an example for what the lighting could look like, with visual effects added in post.
Bummer. As that would be very achievable in GM.

Gave me some good ideas to steal then :D
 

Kealor

Member
Updated the Main post to reflect the game's current status, also here's a few screenshots :D
Bloody fountain.png hammer secret.png Spike combat.png
Were looking to start wrapping up development of the main combat and start moving on to setting up some of the more peripheral events like a few cutscenes, dialog trees and events. Naturally that means NPC's and a bit of a hub area as well. A new public build should be available in the next week or so!
 
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