Invisigun Heroes

Hi everyone! I've been working on my project Invisigun Heroes for almost a year, and have just recently submitted it to Indiecade and the PAX Indie Megabooth (fingers crossed). To summarize: it's a local (+online in the works) multiplayer single-screen battle arena, but everyone's invisible! You have to keep an eye out for environmental tells such as footsteps in water, etc, to spot your opponents. In addition, whenever you bump into obstacles, fire your weapon, or use a special ability, you momentarily give yourself away. It's definitely intended to be immediately fun for casual parties, but with enough depth to reward practice, deception, risk, and awareness for more competitive play. Thanks in advance for taking a look!

The game is still in alpha, and the art will be completely overhauled in the next several months. It will remain low-res (I am too fond of pixel art and it suits this bomberman-style throwback), but is being redone to be more clear and simple. I have a contract artist working on some character designs and promotional art (she is amazingly talented), and the music is well underway. I am pleased that online/net play is actually working without too many issues, and am hoping that I'll have time to implement a single player puzzle-mode that uses these invisible mechanics as you traverse from room to room. I plan to update this (and the official dev log) as the game progresses. Here are some of the features:

• 2-4 players
• Local & online multiplayer
• Many maps spread across distinct planets, each with their own environmental "tells" (footsteps in water and snow, proximity doors, birds scattering, hazards, etc)
• A variety of heroes to choose from
• A variety of special abilities to choose from
• A variety of game modes playable on all maps
• Instant replays that show where players were while invisible

A little background: I previously worked on the PC mech game Hawken for about 3 years, and have been working on this (a passion project) since Adhesive Games closed up shop. It was perfect timing as I made a prototype with the release of Unity's 2D tool set in v4.6, but I've since ported it to Unity 5 and all is going well so far. Here are some relevant links, and thanks again! <3

Steam greenlight: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=435731971
Dev blog: sombr.com
Twitter: twitter.com/shadiradio

 

This game looks so good, it reminds me to (quite different) Bomberman

 

Thanks Chemaxmax - Bomberman was definitely one of the early influences, as well as some recent excellent local multiplayer games (Towerfall, etc).

 

I like the artwork. Good job

 

Thanks! Just wanted to post a quick update on some sprite / tileset progress. Pretty much all of the artwork in the current build (what's viewable in the teaser) is placeholder, and I'm finally getting to be able to work on the final assets. I've been focusing on making boundaries and object silhouettes more clear and simple, with a more limited color palette (per tile). To me, it's much more readable, and I'm satisfied with the look so far. My goal is to have 5 distinct planets at launch, each with their own theme and hazards. I'm starting with the forest tileset, and here's how it's going so far (some heavy Link to the Past influence):

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Also just wanted to note on my dev blog (sombr.com), I have a bunch of posts that might be of some use. I'm not new to game dev in general, but this is my first "real" Unity project so the blog was serving to document things I've discovered along the way. Some topics that might be helpful:

• custom tiled map editor in Unity
• screen effects & custom shaders
• custom build tools
  
• object pooling for performance
  
• parabolic motion for bouncing debris
  
• behaviors with delegates and events
  
• self destructing test builds

Hopefully something there is useful! Thanks for your time.

 

Some great news: it was greenlit! It took a little less than a couple weeks, which makes the blackbox of the green light process and interpreting its metrics even more mysterious. :|

I decided to change the name/spelling slightly to "Invisigun Heroes" since that was the way most people seemed to naturally spell it. At the same time, it was a good opportunity to finalize the logo, so I updated it:

 

A minor update, but I've been slowly chipping away at replacing a bunch of prototype placeholder art. Here's the protective shield powerup: