Day 7 – Final

UPDATE: I have released  my game on Game Jolt, you can find it  here.

It was an awesome week, the game is ready and I’m more than satisfied with the result, in the last day the most time was spent on implementing the end game, correcting bugs and making tweaks.

Full Gameplay Video:

Game break down:

The game starts with our hero, the White Knight, which finds himself in a mysterious, cold world. The game level can be divided in more parts:

1. The tutorial area (Death is missing)

In the beginning the player is familiarized with our hero’s control:

– if you are waiting few seconds without pressing the right arrow key, our hero will tell to the player that we can use the left and right arrow  keys to move the character

– after making a few steps our hero has the first encounter with an enemy, the player is quickly prompted to press the Q key for shooting projectiles but something strange is happening, a slow motion sequence starts in which we can find out that death is missing, the enemies can’t be killed, and also our hero can’t be killed

– if our hero is being hit by the enemy, he suggests to the player that he can try to jump the enemy by pressing the space bar key

– after our hero jumps the first enemy, another challenge appears, a pit with spikes on the bottom, if our hero falls in the pit he will not die but will be paralyzed in pain and informs  the player that he can teleport back at the start of the level by pressing the R key

2. Finding missing Death area (Death is useful)

On his way to the unknown our hero finds out a huge ice block with something trapped in it. If we destroy the ice block we have a big surprise, the person inside was the Death himself.  Our hero’s act does not pass unnoticed and Death is offering a reward from 3 possible choices. This choices are actually a way to manipulate dynamically the gameplay difficulty:

– easy difficulty: is the reward which grants extra 2 lives and 3 checkpoints during the level, the checkpoints are activated by killing an enemy after a certain point. The end of the level is at ~8000 position in game units,  the checkpoints are at the positions: 1550, 3900, 7700

– medium difficulty: is the reward which grants extra stamina power for the hero’s weapon and one checkpoint at game world position: 3900.

– hard difficulty: is the reward which halves the stamina power for the weapon, removes all the checkpoints and gives a timer which our hero needs to feed by killing enemies, if the timer reaches 0 seconds, our hero will die and will return at the start of the level. In this case we can say that Death cursed our hero :D.

The reward will be activated after our hero dies. The chosen reward is not permanent, the player can choose to change the active reward by breaking again the ice block where death was found. If you have activated a checkpoint further than the ice block’s location, you can always teleport at the start of the level by pressing the R key.

The active reward  acts also as a multiplier for the player’s score:

– easy difficulty reward: 0.5 multiplier, receives 50 points for killing an enemy

– medium difficulty reward: 1.0 multiplier, receives 100 points for killing an enemy

– hard difficulty reward: 2.5 multiplier, receives 250 points for killing an enemy,

3. Enemies area ( The first real challenge )

In this area our hero will face a wave of enemies:

– imp enemies with sword: after being attacked they will boost their speed and if they get near our hero they will use a lethal sword thrust

– imp enemies with pitchfork: very dangerous from long range, they have a devastating pitchfork ranged attack, but they are not too smart, you often can see them hitting their fellow imp enemies

4. Auto-scrolling area ( Stalking Spike Imp )

A wild huge imp appears wielding a big spike trap, his only purpose in life is to stalk our player and squash him if he has the chance.

In this area you need to be careful at the stalking Spike Imp which comes from behind, and also to the other fellow imp enemies which are waiting for us ahead.

5. Platforming area ( Jump, jump, jump )

Finally ! our escape from the Stalking Spike Imp, but we need to be careful, the platforms are not unguarded, and bellow them there is a sea of spikes waiting for us…

6. Final Boss Battle area ( And awesome game end )

The final area is not a easy one, we have 2 Stalking Spike Imps which try to crush us, we are lucky that we have some platforms where we can jump and the spike imps can’t reach us, but we are not lucky for long, from an unreachable platform a Necromancer Imp spawns big Ice Blocks having Pitchfork Imps in them. Only the worthy will find the strategy and power to surpass them.

The love for details

– in some cases there is some chance for the projectiles to bounce and hit back the one which launched them, being our hero or the enemy: hitting the spike wall carried by the Spike Imps or hitting the enemies when Death is missing

– if is taking too long time to decide which reward you will choose, Death will become impatient and will tell you: „I’m very late for my job, chose your reward already”

– there are some  wood signs with posters which are signaling that Death is missing, after Death is found the posters are updated accordingly 🙂

The HUD

1. Weapon’s stamina indicator
2. Active reward (visible after selected reward offered by Death)
3. Life remaining count
4. Seconds remaining count (visible only on the hard difficulty reward)
5. Death counter
6. Score counter
7. Enemy health bar

Technical  info

– the game was developed using DirectX 9 and C++ using Visual Studio 2013

– for audio was used Microsoft Cross-Platform Audio Creation Tool (XACT) and Nero Wave Editor

– for creating and editing sprites sheet was used Corel(Ulead) PhotoImpact X3

– the majority of the assets are taken from the http://opengameart.org/ website

Credits:
Game developed by Eusebiu Biroaș (AngeReveur) 

White Knight: irmir
Winter tiles and accesories: Marta Nowaczyk
Imp enemy: William.Thompsonj  as contributor and Redshrike as graphic artist.
Cute reaper: Tracy
End Game sprites: lancelot_gao

Sound effects credits:
Snow footsteps: Jute 
Projectiles: Michel Baradari 
Main BGM: jobromedia 
Death encounter BGM: Gianmarco Leone
End game BGM: Gianmarco Leone
White Knight voice 🙂 : Eusebiu Biroaș (AngeReveur)