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Games Cave Brawlers - Hack 'n Slash

Discussion in 'Works In Progress - Archive' started by Samuel411, Jan 28, 2015.

  1. Samuel411

    Samuel411

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    Cave Brawlers is a 2D hack 'n slash which takes inspiration from games like Castle Crashers, Wonder Boy in Monster Land and from Shovel Knight. The game will require the player to use different moves and combinations to take down enemies and succeed. For example the player may need to attack downwards to hit a smaller enemy or upwards to attack an enemy from above.


    Background
    Cave Brawlers is a 2D hack 'n slash which takes inspiration from games like Castle Crashers, Wonder Boy in Monster Land, and Shovel Knight. The game requires the player to use different moves and combinations to take down enemies and succeed.

    Cave Brawlers was originally made for a Ludum Dare, a 48 hour game jam, in April 2014. After receiving positive criticism from the game I decided to run with it and complete it. The original game can still be played, from the Ludum Dare website (ludumdare.com).

    Gameplay
    I find some of today's games to have just too many controls and over complicate things. Sometimes I just want to play a game, not learn a control map to play or constantly go into my settings to see what the controls are. Many times I will pass a game's tutorial and play a few levels and put it down for a month or longer and have no idea what I'm doing.

    This is my solution. The controls are very simple or at least I think so... I mean I have been making this thing for two years...

    Story
    In a kingdom very far away and in a time long long ago there lived a King in his castle. In that castle worked a soldier that stood guard outside the royal palace. After a long day's work he goes to the local pub/club to unwind and relax. During his time there a explosion could be heard outside, an explosion so strong that it knocked down the disco ball and took out the electricity. The soldier rushes out to find out what has happened. Upon leaving he finds out that he is too late. His co-worker has been trapped and left behind in a cage... but by who...

    The explosion had knocked out the wall built by Trolnald Chimp, the 45th king of the land, to keep out the unwanted pests. You must rush to the old castle wall and defend the city with a turret. Upon completing this you free your co-worker and return to the castle to learn more about the invasion.

    The Cave Dwellers had invaded the surface and kidnapped many of the soldiers and country-folk. Find out what happens next...





    Follow me on Twitter - Here



    Thanks for reading, please comment with any issues or suggestions you have for Cave Brawlers. Also don't forget to hit that like button!
     
    Last edited: Mar 27, 2021
  2. SubZeroGaming

    SubZeroGaming

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    Looks good man!
     
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  3. Samuel411

    Samuel411

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    Fixed the web player link. It was linking to an older build of the game.
     
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  4. hippocoder

    hippocoder

    Digital Ape

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    Cool!
     
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  5. Samuel411

    Samuel411

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    Update 2!
    I've been SUPER busy this month, but I was able finished the cutscenes, village, the interior of the player's house and the interior of the castle. There is also a much nicer transition effect. The pause menu is much more advanced, it now has the options menu in it and you can see the controls from there too!

    Play the build here
     
    Last edited: Jul 20, 2015
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  6. tweedie

    tweedie

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    Great stuff! Solid work
    Big fan of the transitions and camera shake
     
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  7. SubZeroGaming

    SubZeroGaming

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    Love the new update. Keep it up ;)
     
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  8. Dominic.Shea

    Dominic.Shea

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    Looks great sam! keep it up:)
     
  9. theANMATOR2b

    theANMATOR2b

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    Hey Samuel I've been watching this thread for a while - I normally don't comment unless I have something to add or have an idea to solve an issue someone is having, so I haven't commented here at all.

    With that said I just had to post to show my support for your development. I really like what your working on here. There is something that is 'catchy' I can't quite tell what "it" is.
    Possibly the smooth movement and the camera work. I don't know. The aesthetics are a little quirky and vibrant - in a good way.

    Keep up the good work!
     
  10. Samuel411

    Samuel411

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    Thank you, It truly does help a lot to hear that someone likes your work :)
     
  11. Samuel411

    Samuel411

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    Just thought I should reply to let everyone know that I am alive and so is the project. I am fixing some bugs and getting the levels done as well as getting some more enemies in :)
     
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  12. GarBenjamin

    GarBenjamin

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    Just played the latest build. This is really awesome. The artwork is fantastic. You are using an ultra low res and it appears you are also using a low color palette much like my current game. I think it really says a lot about how people can get so caught up in graphics trying to make things look like real life or even better than real life they lose sight of the important stuff. While playing the game I had to actually stop and take a good look at the screen. Because my mind told me I had found some apple trees. However when taking a close look those apples are just small dabs of large pixel colors. lol But it just goes to show how our minds take a "little" and fill in the extra pieces. That is how all of the games of old did it as well.

    Overall, everything really looks superb. And it has a great adventure feel to it already. Seeking out the King and learning more about the scope of the event and getting the quest.

    KEEP GOING! I am looking forward to playing this game.
     
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  13. Samuel411

    Samuel411

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    Thank you! It's good to find someone else who enjoys the game part of games rather than the graphical side of things, often times I find myself playing the newest Call Of Duty game or Battlefield and I realize I played this 6 times before every year before, it just looks a little better every year. I read your thread in the Game Design section, "Why Are Games Nearly Always The Same Ole Thing?" and I couldn't agree more.

    Shame on you for taking a good look at the red pixels! You were supposed to walk by them and not notice that they weren't apples... you had one job. lol I guess I gotta add more to the background to draw your attention away from the terrible apples. I'll definitively add some villagers so you can interact with to keep your eyes away.

    Your game looks interesting, can't wait to try it out.
     
  14. Razputin

    Razputin

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    Can i ask how you do the background in the first picture? Is it just a solid image or did you do something with the camera to make the blues transition.
     
  15. Samuel411

    Samuel411

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    It's a solid image sprite in the background.
     
    Last edited: Apr 7, 2015
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  16. GarBenjamin

    GarBenjamin

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    The trees and apples are excellent as is. A player sees "tree" and "apples". A cool touch would be to make one fall occasionally. Perhaps as a source of nourishment. I kept making the screen shake thinking one might fall.
     
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  17. Samuel411

    Samuel411

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    Good idea :) I am also adding in a "leaves" (green pixels) particle effect to give more life to the scene.
     
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  18. Razputin

    Razputin

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    Can I also ask how you do your cutscenes? That's something i'm wondering about for my own game.
     
  19. Samuel411

    Samuel411

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    I don't know what the "professional" way of doing it is but for me I just created some animations in Unity's default animation system and used animation triggers when I wanted to change the text being displayed. The animation inside the player's house is just the player's sprites looking left to right then I disable those sprites and enable the real player. The text advancing is part of a custom script I made. I use this script in the king cut scene as well.

    I plan on opening the source code in the near future so be sure to look out for that ;)
     
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  20. Samuel411

    Samuel411

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    Sorry for the long wait, been busy with some exams and I still have another one left :(

    I managed to get the source of my project out on GitHub. The source is licensed with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, there is more information on the license.txt file in the source. My code isn't perfect, in fact if I could go back and change how I did things I would but it works. I've learned so many new programming techniques since I began this project.
     
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  21. Samuel411

    Samuel411

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    I ended up making my own website from scratch using the ASP.NET framework and MVC, replacing the old ugly slow site. Check it out - http://cavebrawlers.com/
     
  22. Samuel411

    Samuel411

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    New update and level 1! Sorry for the long wait, it's nearing the end of the school year here and there are a ton of tests...
    Anyway I added NPCs that the player can talk to and can maybe find some more information about what happened. There are currently 3 NPCs but as you rescue villagers from the cave dwellers you'll have more to talk to :)
    I also added particle effects and movement to the clouds to give the scene more life. I integrated unity analytics as well so I get more information about everyone playing.

    If your browser does not support NPAPI then you can download the game, there's a button on my site. Thanks for reading and have fun!
     
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  23. Samuel411

    Samuel411

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    Working on the levels but here's a little showcase of the ledge grabbing systems I've been working on.
     
    Last edited: Jul 6, 2015
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  24. Samuel411

    Samuel411

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    Have a gif!
    Looks like the color may have been messed up during the gif was processing :<
    New breakable loot system! I'll be adding more things than just a table ;)

     
    Last edited: Jul 6, 2015
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  25. Samuel411

    Samuel411

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    I changed a bit of the UI and added lights to the scenes. I've gotten great progress level wise and I'll make a new build soon. I won't get much progress done since my main computer is going to be sent to ASUS to fix some hardware failures and errors. I hope to get it back as soon as possible and will continue working on my game.

    Since I added lights I'll need to go through every level and add lighting which will take me some time.

    Here are some screenies!



     
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  26. Samuel411

    Samuel411

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    Yes... It is.

    So I have some explaining to do for this long of a pause on any news or updates.

    I completely restarted the code base and re-programmed it all from scratch and changed the story up a little bit. The code base was getting sort of unmanageable and was very messy. I guess you learn from your mistakes, I know I did.
    Another thing I noticed and learned from is that I had like 3 different chat systems in that game, 1 was just some text that popped up at the top of the screen, another with a little popup box, and finally another one where you could choose responses. So I completely got rid of all of it and just now have a instruction text box and popup box with text.

    The game data is managed in text files now, you can see it in the source code. This is much more neat in my opinion and lets me edit things as I need without needing to open unity and allows me to test with builds.

    I made a small demo with 5 playable levels and a playable prologue. It's available at the website.

    I am on Steam Greenlight now too :D

     
    Last edited: Dec 2, 2016
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  27. dogzerx2

    dogzerx2

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    The humor and characters of this game are amazing!
     
    Last edited: Dec 6, 2016
  28. Samuel411

    Samuel411

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    Thank you Dogzer, I appreciate the encouragement!
     
  29. dogzerx2

    dogzerx2

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    No problem!
    Hey how many votes you have so far? You gotta keep us posted!
     
  30. Samuel411

    Samuel411

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    115 Yes votes so far, some ways to go...
     
  31. dogzerx2

    dogzerx2

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  32. Samuel411

    Samuel411

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    That's lame, here you go.

    I've gotten nearly 3x as much no votes. People seemingly see it as just another generic game. I'll need to take this info and learn from it. Next time add more silly stuff like that smoking lizard ;)
     
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  33. Samuel411

    Samuel411

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    Cave Brawlers was greenlit this morning. At 1:33 AM on February 16, 2017 I got the notification that Cave Brawlers has been greenlit. That’s right. I am incredibly grateful and joyful. This could not have been achieved without such a great community like this who has supported our campaign.

    I am currently looking for pixel artists and soon to come community managers who would be interested in working for profit share and as a portfolio piece that is on Steam. Please contact me if you or anyone you know is interested.
    I am building more levels and redesigning some enemies and levels. I will be working hard to follow feedback received during the campaign and make this an enjoyable game for many.
     
  34. dogzerx2

    dogzerx2

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    YEEEEEAHHHHHHH!!!! It's real!!

    Congratulations Sam!
     
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  35. Samuel411

    Samuel411

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    The game has been released on Steam as of today (1/15/2018). Nearly 3 years from the date I posted this! It has been a really long journey. I started the game my freshmen year at highschool, I'm on my final semester now. This game has been through my care for a very long time and has experienced some pretty big changes (code and gameplay wise). I am VERY happy with the result and am ready to move on to the next project in my life. I really hope everyone enjoys this game. I've learned a ton and will be doing a live AMA at the end of the month to answer any questions anyone has in general. PM me to get notified of the time and date and get a link. I'll post here as well.

    Link to steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/731500/
     
  36. GibTreaty

    GibTreaty

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    Congrats! Can't believe it's been that long!
     
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  37. Samuel411

    Samuel411

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    Time flies when you're having fun :)
     
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