PxlPlz

Scary Slimy Baddies

Nothing really exciting to report.  I’m working on some enemy behaviors and trying to put together ideas for enemies that look similar.

Here’s my (perceived) problem: I want players to instantly be able to identify that a baddie is indeed “bad” and shouldn’t be touched. Casey and I have been through a couple different type of concepts, like spikes, and animals, but nothing has really stuck for me.

A good baddie, for me at least, has to be both lovable and something that will scare you to touch. I think some IPs theme their enemies very well (Castlevania – if it’s an animal or a movie monster, don’t touch it. Humans are Friendly). Some IPs don’t, but we’ve grown up with them, so we know the good guys from the bad guys (in Mario, everything looks cute so it’s hard to tell initially who is friendly and who isn’t).

Anyway, I’m of the mind that all of the baddies need to be themed similarly so we can identify them, and they need to look dangerous.

Here’s my idea: I’m playing around with the idea that all of the baddies should be coated in sludge, and kind of drip all over the place. Think Venom in Marvel Vs Capcom.  I’m not 100% sure how this will work in the engine yet, but I have some ideas.

This can bring up some cool story elements too.

For example: Squidly and Squishy have always been cursed, but that’s never come across very well.  If we go down this route, I’m starting to think that maybe the chain should be represented by the same type of slime as the baddies.

This is just a quick photoshop drawing of an idea superimposed on a screen shot, but I’d be nice to get some impressions on said idea.

It’s not a GREAT drawing, but hopefully it gets the point across. Any thoughts? Too simple for baddies? Not scary enough? How about slimy fish, and bats, and octopi?

1 comment July 2, 2012

Enemy Art

There’s been one aspect of this game that I’ve been slacking on a little, and it’s been implementation of enemy art and behaviors. Everything is all stubbed out, but the actual enemy placement and the second to second detail is still being worked out.

Now, I can go on and on about my view that 99% of your gameplay should be interacting with the environment. Maybe I’ll post about that one day… but the real reason I haven’t gotten to it, is because it’s a heck of a lot of work. Implementing and timing all of the animations. Sandboxing all of the individual behaviors. Making sure they all work correctly in their environment.

Heck, someone testing the game caught the mini boss sneaking outside his door and wandering outside of his designated “mini boss” area the other day. Yeah, try to reproduce that bug on demand.

Wait, where was I? Oh yes – enemies! I’ve been sitting on these lovely enemy concepts for a while now. I love the style and can’t wait to get them jumping around and trying to kill Squidly!

Let me know if you have any favorites!

Add comment February 8, 2012

Boss Numbah 2

Finally got the second boss up and running! It’s a “chase type” boss with guys chasing you up a vertical corridor. I thought just for fun I’d put up a shot of the debug level and some temp art for the baddies. Remember, this is just straight out of the level tool – but I thought someone may get a kick out of it .

I’m thinking about doing a quick write-up on how we go about making levels, from concept to graph paper to blockwork and polish.  It’s an unfortunately long process – and because much of this game is content driven it takes a while.

So far, we’ve got about 20 levels or so finished (with about 5 or so being stinkers that still need work).  We’re working on getting the final order and progression done too.  Because this game has a unique non-linear progression system, and is very much an adventure game it has some unique balancing and level creation problems that need to be solved.

Ah— but I’m ranting.  Here’s the promised shot .  Enjoy!  I should add “PRO-TIP” callouts.

Add comment January 6, 2012

Sketches of the squid

Once we started going toward the direction of the “space squid”, we worked up some sketches. Here are a couple of them.

Add comment February 28, 2011

Alternate Squid Designs

I thought these may be fun to post! They are some of the alternate designs for Squidly. We did dozens of sketches, then slowly narrowed it down to these designs.

Everyone thought that the orange one just jumped out. What’s your opinion? I would love to be able to use some of these other designs… sequel maybe?

Add comment February 25, 2011