Games Dolus - 2D indie platformer about Grief

Hey everyone,

My name is Antoine, I am a dev and I am currently working on my first indie 2D game made with Unity !



Dolus is an introspective journey into the world of grief. You will have to find your way through the five stages of loss in this hand drawn adventure platformer.




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Ratgibnak

 

Hello World !

I just finished creating a new monster with several bloom effects on only one emission map ! I made a video to show you how I created the shader. Hope it helps

Ratgibnak

 

Hi !

We made a lot of progress this week on all the animations from our main character. We just finished the Death animation ! We would love to have some feedback on what you think about this animation, let us know !

Ratgibnak

 

My game is 2D also but we took so different approach. The animation looks fantastic

1 qurstion, the game is about sorrow and gried but dam the character is so cute i could hug him!

 

Thanks !
I am glad you like the design of the character He is cute but will still be very sad I am afraid ^^ What I love with 2D is that you can do soooo many different things and each will have a unique style !

We fully finished a new animation ! In Dolus you will be able to slide on walls ! How cool is that ?


Ratgibnak

 

For this week's update we finally have a monster to show you ! The Reaper himself !

Ratgibnak

 

My jump animation is done ! With some smoke particles on the ground And the light shining on the character depending on the necklace position !

Ratgibnak

 

Try again, back to life !

In Dolus, you can actually die. But until you go through all the stages of your own grief, you will come back to face it ! This is your destiny, your only way out. Going through every daemon, every emotion.


What do you think of the respawn animation ? I still have to fix a few light issues but it's already looking pretty good

Ratgibnak

 

Saturday news !

We finalized our attack animation, added some particles emitting light coming out of the necklace and some hits particles for the monster !


And as a bonus, here is the dash animation !

 

Death Animation for the One Eye Monster

This is what happen when the demons of your unconscious dare resisting your progress !



What do you think of the dissolve effect at the end with the flying particles ?

Ratgibnak

 

We had some fun articulating these chains and animating the whole thing.

Can you guess what this odd mechanism will do to our sad little fellow ??



We will improve on this trap all week long !

 

I updated the animation from our trap and added some lights. Hinge Joints are so fun !
But most important of all, we now have a dangerous mystical shiny ball coming out of it ! Make sure to avoid it !



Ratgibnak

 

Improved animation !

The eye is now rolling and you can interact with the remains from the demons of your unconscious before it dissolves.


Ratgibnak

 

This is how our little fellow defeated this monstruous trap that stood between him and his redemption. But beware the several others, they may be not that easy to take down !



Ratgibnak

 

New platforms are in place ! And for the first time we are proud to show you the wall jump with the wall slide !

Have you noticed the moving stars in the background ?
We will soon share more on this !

Ratgibnak

 

We are starting the level design for Dolus and the rules tiles are so easy ! We made good progress this week !

 

Strong emotions should not be repressed. Understand them, feel them fully and make them your shield !



Today we have a new ability to show you ! The player will be able to spawn an energy shield to prevent damages. What do you think of the shield's design ?

Ratgibnak

 

Now that you know how to put boundaries that protect your emotions and soul, you can use it on demand.



As you can see we have some particles bursting out of the shield when it's impacted by an attack. We are thinking about adding some visual effect to the creature attack to notify the player that this specific attack was blocked. Do you think it's too much ? We already have the particles showing that a block happened. Should the player's character have an animation ?

A few weeks ago we shared this creature :


Well we are starting the animation process for it ! We will soon share more on this monster and also on the parallax system with the background full of objects ! See you soon !

 

Very cool look!

 

Concentrated Power Attack !

This is what you will be able to cast in Dolus once you gather enough energy through time and defeating your demons.



How could we improve this ? Does it look good to you ?



We also made some progress on a new monster that will be part of the Denial level.


Creepy right ? ^^

Next step is to work on the animations to kill that monster ! You will have to hit it several times to be able to get rid of it !

 

The ripples of your suffering can bend the reality around you !



We added a new effect when the player takes damages ! I am creating this shock wave effect via a shader. It took me a bit of time but it was worth it ! We will add more shaders like this in the future.

Should I make it a bit faster or go further ?

 

This other-worldly monster won't miss any of your movement ! His gaze will follow you everywhere !



Next time we will show you what it looks like when you hurt it !

 

Last week we joined LaGameCup contest for French indie games !


We are very happy with the current progress we made on Dolus and all the feedbacks we got from the community. We hope to win the contest ! Wish us good luck


To celebrate here is a short clip from the video presentation that we made for the competition :

As you can see we have added a new object in the environment The Flames ! They will light your path !

Next week we will show you some cool stuff we made for the stars. We also have another great news but it's still a bit early to tell



Ratgibnak

 

Last week we revealed the composer that will work with us on Dolus !



You can check out the demo sound he made for the Denial level :

https://twitter.com/DolusTheGame/status/1405910676917215238

This is an early concept but we are quite happy with the overall mood of the music !

 

We listened to your feedbacks about the effect from the trap hitting the ground and improved it ! It's now shattering in pieces



You can also have a glimpse of a new column that will be part of the Denial level

 

We are back from holidays ! Fresh and ready to work hard on the boss from the Denial level !



Do you recognize it from the artwork that we posted a while ago ?
All the patterns from the different attacks are now ready. We will show you in the coming weeks all the animations that we have for this boss.

 

The Knight of Denial Idle Animation !



After facing the dark walls of the fortress of Denial, will you be able to defeat your biggest fear ? What is that fear ?
Your Own Emotions !

 

The death of Death ☠️ The Reaper being reaped !

https://twitter.com/DolusTheGame/status/1446860504501268486

New animation for Dolus ! The death of this Denial monster, the Reaper.

What do you think about this ? Let us know and we'll get your comments into consideration for further improvements.

 

The first boss of Dolus ! This knight will prevent you from leaving the Denial level. You will have to break all the armor parts to unleash the emotions from your loss !



You can here have a glimpse of what raw emotions looks like. We now need to add lighting and an emission to the Knight for some blur effect ✨

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We just added this new animation for the reaper !



Can you notice the heatwave effect behind the flames near the statue ?

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First Parallax test ! We will add more layers later on and tweak the speed a bit



Can you guess who made the placeholders ? Is it Thomas the artist or Antoine the MSPaint master ? ^^

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Camera following the player !

The goal is to be able to see above/below when you are on high grounds so you can anticipate traps and monsters.
And to keep the cam low when you are on the ground in order to not waste space with the bottom of the scene.



What do you think ? Is the cam moving too fast ? How do you do it in your own games ?

 

Last post before the Holiday season ! We just finished a new animation !







How impressive the explosion feels to you ?

We will add more particles in Unity after that, can’t wait to share these with you !

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Even in death your enemies can still hurt you !

Once killed the medusa will burst into pieces. If one of the tentacles is touched, it will inflict terrible pain, forcing the player to start everything again !



What do you think about the new animation ?

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Dolus is a hand drawn adventure platformer about the five stages of loss and grief.
Follow us in our game development journey !

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Ratgibnak

 

Looks great. I like the art style.

 

Thank you Carking ! I am glad you like our style


We finished all animations from 3/5 of the monsters from the Denial level ! We are very proud of our progress on the first stage of grief

Here is some gameplay with the monsters that will be in your way to healing



We are now working on the attacks from the boss. Thomas is making some very nice spritesheets that we will soon share with you

 

New heavy attack animation from the boss of the first stage of Grief !

Do you think you will be able to dodge it ?



Thomas is currently drawing all the animations for the boss. Next time we will try to show you how it looks ingame !

 

Here is Thomas’ drawing process for the Reaper !
All animations from Dolus are made with Procreate️

We import the animations to Unity as spritesheets. We then add an emission map and a normal map to the sprites to give them bloom and some depth thanks to the lights !

What software do you use to draw your characters ?

 

The Denial Knight will make your world crumble away ! Nothing will be left but the Truth.

What do you think about the animation finally added in the game ? With all the lights and the particles it is coming to life !



This is only one of the three attacks the Denial Knight will throw at the player. As you go on, the fight will become more and more difficult.

 

This is a really nice, interesting concept. The art is lovely.

 

Thank you Waking Dragon !

This is how we make the backgrounds have different level of blur. You will need to stack cameras with different Volumes.

Each camera will film a specific background layer and will have it's own volume assigned. The volumes will have different blur values. I am sharing this since I struggled a lot to find a solution on this topic myself. Hope it helps someone

This solution is only working with alpha version 2022.1.0a13 of Unity and with URP version 13.1.

 

From idea to concept art to artwork to ingame character !



We started this game a long time ago and we are very proud of our progression.
You can see that the character design that we had in mind at the beginning is very close to what we currently have. Don't you want to hug that little fellow ?

 

⛈️ Thunderstruck ⛈️



What do you think about this thunderbolt particle effect ? It will be a futur trap for another level of grief

It is still a work in progress but I like the way it moves

 

Water simulation
After working on lightning, I am now working on water that will be implemented in another level of Grief !



Pretty cool, right ?
Later on I will add some effects and change the texture of the water so it looks even more realistic !

 

It looks a bit psychedelic and I like it. This is not the best art style for optimizing sales, though. It's FAR from mainstream and it will hurt your sales.

 

Hello Tosho, I am glad you like it. The style is intentionaly psychedelic


We are proud of showing you the second attack from the Denial Knight !



Do you like the blackhole effect of the projectile ? It will go way faster and I'll add particles when it will hit the ground ✨

 

Jump jump

Final attack from our first boss ! It is a sweep attack where the player will have to jump to avoid to be hit in the face ;(



The boss is almost complete now ! We only need to make the animations from the boss taking damages and dying.