Games [WIP] Laniakea (16-bit style sidescroller)

Hi,

this is my first real "bigger" game project I started this year some weeks ago for training and making games with unity.

"LANIAKEA" is inspired by the old classic 16-bit style Sidescrollers on the SNES System.

I do most of the work in my sparetime or on weekend by myself, so don't expect a "fast" development.

The first goal is to get a technical alpha build ("TAB") ready to test the main game mechanics (The TAB will include the first 20 minutes of gameplay).

Hope you like and enjoy it!

You can follow the development on gamejolt here. (LINK)

Here are some screenshots:

 

Very interesting visuals. Reminds me of original metroids and axiom verge. Compliments.
Will follow for sure.
Do you have any gameplay footage?

 

Thx, yeah Laniakea is inspired by this game. I still love the original.

Firt playable TechDemo now available:

DOWNLOAD:
https://grillstern.gamejolt.io/laniakea

 

Built patched to V0.1.1

 

Hey ho!

Finally, next update of LANIAKEA is here. V0.2.1 is a big step forward for the demoversion of the game since the complete map/world layout for it has now been finished.

There are plenty major changes in this version. The most important thing is the new playercontroller and playersprite. The animation system of the player (Lani) has changed from "sprite" to "skeleton" animation which makes it lot easier to create new poses and looks much smoother in motion - but it's currently not perfectly adapted to gamepad controll at the moment(will be fixed next weeks). Just take a look at the complete log for what has changed. (please open/expand this post for complete news)...



The current goal is to finish and polish the Demo to a final "state" until around Jan 2018. The demoversion should be around 20-25% of the complete game.
The most important missing content in V0.2.1 are 3 additional bosses (currently only placeholders) which will be added until end of the year.



After this stage "Laniakea" will change from its "techdemo" state to an offical Alphaversion.



The next step (upcoming days) is to wipe out the most anoying bugs to get a stable working gamemechanic for the Alpha...so expect some hotfixes the next days.



By the way:

If you want to give me support in developing the game, there is now a patreon page available. Get more/additional information here:

https://www.patreon.com/LaniakeaTheGame

Since I do all the assets, coding, testing, composing, on my own, this would help in speeding up the development since I could outsource some work to profesional artists. (I'm very very slow in painting new Tilesets ). All pledges will be used in the creation of new Assets.



Thanx for reading and have a great time!
And please share the game to your friends if you like it.

Benni

PS: You can always help me by sending in gameplay videos ("lets play"). Seeing how other people are playing the game, discovering the world, helps me a lot in designing the world and flow of it.



Here's the complete changelog for since V0.7 -> V0.2.1:

* ADDED : new Player animation system
* ADDED : new Player animations
* ADDED : redrawn Player sprite
* ADDED : new Backgroundtextures
* ADDED : normal maps for some bg textures
* ADDED : new StartArea
* ADDED : new Enemie "Angry Worm"
* ADDED : new Enemie "Ceiling Plant"
* ADDED : new Enemie "Tantacle Light" (blue and green)
* ADDED : new Enemie "One-Eyed Worm"
* ADDED : new ENemie "HellHound"
* ADDED : new explosion fx
* ADDED : new Weapon: Flamethrower
* ADDED : new Ability: Dash
* ADDED : Nuclear-Bomb
* ADDED : new AudioFX
* ADDED : only Savegames with correct gameversion are loadable
* ADDED : first basic implementation: Ingame Map (Radar)!
* ADDED : new UI
* ADDED : big map (Key M)
* ADDED : Inventory/Loadout (Key F)
* ADDED : Input Config Menu (O=Options)
* ADDED : 3 SaveGameSlots
* ADDED : Discovered MiniMap will now be saved to SaveGame
* ADDED : new Enemie "AlienFlower"
* ADDED : new Enemie "AlienCrab"
* ADDED : new Enemie "MediumRobot"
* ADDED : Item(Charger) Animation
* FIXED : Rockets will open yellow (and red!) portals
* FIXED : light/atmosphere improvements
* FIXED : a bug where Player could get inf. Health at Savestations
* FIXED : energiecontroller/UI did not refresh correctly
* FIXED : Savestation will instantly gain Health to 100%
* FIXED : Flamethrower can now open standard doors
* FIXED : enemies could push player out of level in vertical door
* FIXED : player can now only stand up if there is enough space above
(could result in player stucking in ceiling)
* FIXED : misc. minor bugs
* FIXED : blood hit effect on player
* FIXED : a bug where player could enter in a fly state when opening map
* FIXED : a bug where ingame map could scroll out of camera range
* FIXED : a bug where custom input mapping was not saved
* FIXED : JumpBoot strength was not saved to savegame
* FIXED : Boss1 HP reduced from 1300 to 1000
* FIXED : Using Dash ability while passing doors could result in
falling through next room
* FIXED : Player sitting animation lowered to hit smallsized enemies
* FIXED : Player can now aim down after beeing in falling state
* FIXED : PlayerBullet will pass through enemie corpses
* FIXED : Player will now only slide on slopes > 45°
* FIXED : uniform playercontrol via Keyboard & Joypad
* FIXED : Maplayout where player could stuck in deadend
* FIXED : Room7 - Player could leave map through non exist. wall
* FIXED : "Doubleexplosion" of rockets
* FIXED : First Boss slightly reduced movespeed
* FIXED : some Portals where player could stuck in
* FIXED : some enemies clipped into wall
* FIXED : "DONE-SPAM" Nameentry bug
* FIXED : BulletChargeTime dec. from 1.0 to 0.75
* FIXED : Boss didn`t use attack pattern

Get latest download here: https://gamejolt.com/games/laniakea/256726

 

Hi all!

Since LANIAKEA is a one-man-project I could use a little help with Alpha- & Betatesting:

So I’m looking for people who are interested and familiar with this kind of stuff (BugReports, Description, Bug reproduction & tracking, Screenshots…).

You should definately be a fan of retro metroidvania games for it
As reward you will get the final game for free and will be listed in the Credits.

Please send a message (best via https://laniakea.jimdosite.com/contact) until EOF April if you want to be part of the LANIAKEA dev. I will message you if selected with further information.

Get latest download here: https://gamejolt.com/games/laniakea/256726

Have a great time and please share this with you friends!

 

Really interested in testing this out - and helping with testing, but the current build is not aligned for use with a standard 360 controller, which is the most popular controller to be used on PC.

All metroidvanias should be designed to be played with controller input by default. Making the player to use mouse/keyboard to set up the controller input - is cumbersome to the users. I'd be willing to be a lot of users have decided it isn't worth messing with - just to test out the game - because of the cumbersome issues associated with input setup - to use a controller.

Also - the game defaults to gamejolt username and token log in. Strongly consider removing that 'feature' as it is not something that a lot of people use. I am a gamejolt registered user/developer - and I don't even know what my own token is. People who are not registered gamejolt users do not have these, but can still download your game and on load the game makes it seem like this information is required to proceed. It is not - but it looks like it is.

Last - the game crashed on me 3 times while setting up controller input mapping. I decided it wasn't worth the hassle to try again - so I never got a chance to play the game.

Consider making the input default to a controller input method AND mouse/keyboard on startup. When the player pushes either key or button - the game should register whichever input method the player is using.
Have all the buttons mapped entirely for controller by default. If the players do not like the default mapping - they can go into config and change the default inputs if they choose. But by default - all the buttons should be assigned - not just directionals.

If you make these changes - I believe you will get more people playing your game, which is what you are requesting for testing purposes.

The games visuals look great - but these input issues kill any desire to struggle through the setup - just to play the game.

 

I started a Discord server where you can follow the development more directly. There I will discuss and share ideas, media for game together with interested people: https://discord.gg/QCJBPy7

@theANIMATOR2b
Yeah I now the issues about the XBOS Controller since I bought one for myselfe these days Until now I only tested and player with keyboard so i did not notice...until last weeks. Will focus on this issue the next days! (so the gamejolt login will be removed on next test candidates)

 

Look forward to the update! The visuals are compelling. If the input setup is corrected - I will surely test out the game again.

 

Since Laniakea is now about 1 year in development, I want to give you a first litte alpha gameplay video to show you the current state of dev. and what you can expect of the game. The current playable dev version contains about 180 rooms - final gamesize targeted at 200 rooms. At the moment I started to begin reworking all of them from the beginning. Why?! When I started the development in March 2017 I wasn't a good Levedesigner and had just a view assets but when the world increased, the leveldesign began to be more and more "beautiful" and better since I learned how to make them nicer from Room to Room - call it some kind of a design learning curve. So the graphic assets grow up in size and variety. This resulted in beeing the last built Rooms look much better than the Levels/Rooms I started with. So I now begun to give the old ones a complete rework to give them the same look than the latest ones. This will be plenty of additional work to do, but I think this will be worth it So what is missing after the rooms/world design is finished? Release ready? Unfortunately no. Still much work to do: New enemies, all bossfights, storyline, second difficulty,... The realease is currently targeted somwhere in 2019 - it is still a hobby project. So here is the actual alpha footage...dont watch if you dont want to get spoilered.

 

Great work, it looks very interesting =D

 

Good game.
The character really needs a good animation for the stand idle.

 

Looks awesome, I love the art style. Camera needs a lot of work though, it's very rough and kind of makes me sick watching it.