Hell in his Hand (Working Title)

Hi,
This is an Action-Platformer that I've been working on since October last year. The Idea is, to combine Platforming with Combat from Beat'em Up's like Smash Brothers.

This Version features the First 5 Levels of the Game, no Sound or Music and only place-holder Graphics.
So far the Platforming works fine, but the Combat is still pretty wonky.

The Controls are as follows:
W,A,S,D for Movement
Space for Jumping
Left Mouse Button for Attacking
Right Mouse Button + a Direction for Special-Attack
Q and E for dodging to a Side. View attachment $HIHH-DemoBuild.rar
Alternativly you can use J,K,L instead of the Mouse Buttons.

Constructive Criticism is highly appreciated.

Link to the Webplayer:
http://www.kongregate.com/games/NWegener/hell-in-his-hand-prototype

And a couple of Screenshots:




View attachment $HIHH-DemoBuild.rar

 

Thats a good start! Really fun looking game.

 

New Statusreport:
I recently finished the first Version of Level 4-1 and now have 16 Levels under my belt. I planned for 5 Worlds + 1 Special World with 5 Levels in each World, around 30 Levels in Total. I currently focus on the Levels, because I think that will make further Work on the Game easier. I also try to make each Level stand out in its own way, as you can see from the Demo in the First post where all 5 Levels are different from another.


Level 4-1 is an autoscrolling Level, where you can control the blue Platform you are standing on in all 4 Directions. You have to navigate around the Geometry and the Mines, which explode if you come closer. Enemies can also stand on the blue Platforms and be an Issue.


I hope to update this thread a bit more in the Future.

Thank you.
I hoped for a bit more feedback, but I take what I can get.
I'm also looking forward how this will develop and what it will look like further down the road.

 

Hey NW, I think the combat system needs some tweaking, I just stood there and spammed RMB+D and all the enemies died. It seemed to be the easiest way to kill an enemy, and had no risk to myself. I think you should focus your efforts on polishing and tweaking the combat to a level you're happy with, if you nail the core concept, the game will be very enjoyable.

Also I'd recommend changing either the background or the players' color in the prototype level, having them both brown is painful on the eyes. I couldn't see my character most of the game.

 

Thank you for commenting.

The Combat-System needs a lot of tweaking, going into melee is too risky with too small a Range (Plus the LMB-Attack is virtually useless) and the ranged attack is too strong, because the AI does not react correctly to it. This will need a lot of time to design and a lot of Trial and Error to get it feel just right. Another Issue I think is that all Enemies in the first Levels are too similar to each other, so you are never required to use a different approach. The Time I currently spend for Designing is coming up with ways to make the Combat more engaging, while I use the Time I currently spend on Implementation is used to make more levels.

For the Background thing, I honestly did not notice, I think I got too used to it. Changed to a more manageable Color:

Will upload the fixed Version now.

Again thanks for taking the Time to comment.

 

Looks much better, I'm looking forward to future updates. Keep up the good work NW!

 

Too long since I last posted.
Levels 4-2 and 4-3 done. I actually wanted to make a Video for them but didn't get to it yet.

I'm currently working on the Combat-System a bit and changed the Normal-Attacks and the Blocking-System (you now Block Up or Down).
I also resized the Characters by a Factor of 1.4, which means that I now have to check every Level and rework them for the bigger Characters.
Still not happy with the Combat-System, but I think the Changes have made it a lot better.

I will upload a new Demo once I checked all levels and gone over the Level-Design again. Hopefully it will be done sometime next Week.

 

Looks good so far, keep it up.

I'm wondering if building actual levels before finishing the core gameplay mechanics is a good idea. Usually I start by coding the player's abilities and interactions with enemies and environment set pieces, using a generic level that contains all of these potential interactions. You seem to be taking a different approach, care to explain why you chose that and what the benefits are?

 

I don't think our approaches are that different as I started out with a test-level.
I'm definitely not sure if it is a good idea or if I made the right choice, but I can try to explain why I did it like this .

I did start out doing all basic Interactions like jumping, the first attacks, climbing, the Platform-Physics and so on in a test-level and once all those worked and I was relatively happy with it, did I start the actual Levels. The reason for that was that a) I wasn't 100% sure how everything should work and b) I didn't want to put too much time polishing something that I am going to change later on anyway.
You design Levels differently when it is just a testlevel, than if it is supposed to be a real Level and I wanted to see how the Game plays in a real scenario and than use that experience to evaluate the basic Gameplay.
Well that is the main reason why I went down that route: I thought that I could better iterate over the Core aspects if I know what happens in the real Levels. What is important and which Elements fall flat with my style of Level-Design.

Another reason is, that I wanted a big Focus on the Level-Design and having the Core of the Levels done early means iterating earlier over them. I also believe, that the levels will be better of if Game-Design and Level-Design influence each other from an early stage.

The third reason is a psychological one: I have not made a game before and thus have little experience. Doing the levels was less abstract and felt more like Progress to me .

I hope I explained myself good enough, I don't know if I can explain myself better.
I still have the Testlevel lying around on my PC, so I can upload it if it still works.

 

I uploaded a new Version with the reworked Combat and Blocking-System. The Player can also now dodge to the Side with Q and E. I don't know if the Problems I still have with the Combat-System are because of the lack of polish or because the Core-Mechanics still need work.

I also implemented a Difficulty-System, where GameObjects are deactivated or activated, based on the chosen Difficulty. Not much is affected by it yet, only the First Level and the Level "Gauntlet-1".
I also designed a total of 4 new Levels, one of which, "Gauntlet-1", is added to the demo-build I'll upload here.

What I want to tackle next is implementing a co-op-mode, or at least see what exactly I need for that one. I'm sure that is not gonna be an easy task, but the sooner I solve that, the less problems I'm gonna have later.