X^3! 2D Retro Arcade Game!

Hey Everyone!

From Sunfire Games, I officially present you with X^3!



X^3 is a Slick retro arcade game with Juicy visuals, guaranteed to cure your boredom and a little something small to pass the time while having Fun!

Gameplay Breakdown:




In X^3, the goal is to destroy blocks before they can reach the edge of the screen,
every block that touches the edge of the screen explodes and reduces your health bar
while every 5 combos heals you for a percentage of your current combo (Bigger the combo, Bigger the heal!)...
When your health bar reduces to zero, its Game Over!

Different Blocks have different ways of being destroyed! Some blocks sometimes requires you to click on them,
some drag the cursor along their individual pattern, some mash at them while others even require you to spin them!

So What's your Highest score? What's the biggest combo you can make?​

Current Platforms:

-Newgrounds
-Kongregate




Who am I?
Just another aspiring Indie game developer trying to get a piece of the Indie game pie


Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sunfiregames
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SF_Ra1den
Email: Sunfirera1den@hotmail.com
Blog: https://sunfiredevblog.wordpress.com/

I Love to hear what you think about it! Positive or Negative! Thank You!


Update 1:

-Updated the Main Menu, Added some new sections! (How to play,About etc..)

-Fixed In-game background (Was too bright sometimes)

-Added Some Quality of life updates to the gameplay, plays a little smoother now! ^^ (Fixed mostly colliders)

-Fixed the Difficulty bug! (Fixed the bug where blocks were spawning a little faster than originally intended making the game harder than it was supposed to be )

Update 2:

-Added Theme music for the Main menu and the Game! (Last Music wasn't meant to be in the final game)

-Clarity Update! Some feedback effects when clicking on blocks, though it still needs work (Sounds etc.) Should be muuuch easier to see now

-Fixed a bug where blocks would disappear randomly....

-Updated Pause menu functionality! also added a mute button!

Update 3:

-Added Tutorial Level & About Level!
-How many points gained is now shown...
-More Visual effects added to blocks and feedback effects!
-Brief pause whenever the direction changes now!

Update 4:

-Added New Game Sound effects!
-Smoothed Game Difficulty curve (Overall Shortening Game time + Adding higher level of difficulty)
-Added Score Screen!
- Updated Post Format
-Removed Old links and Pictures + Added new one's!
- Added Current Platform Links!
- Added Who am I Section
-Included Sunfire Logo

 

My goodness! after working out how to load a level, (Didn't know what to do to start with! ) It looked simple, but soon got REAL INTENSIVE!

So overall, this has the potential of being the next 2048! Or damn flappy bird...

 

Haha I think games these days are saturated with too many instructions i wanted to go back to the old "Discovery" sort of game! (My opinion, I might be wrong about this )

@FuzzyQuills
Wow like "flappy bird"? You really think so? >_< lol

EDIT: Also I know its still pretty buggy at the moment so hopefully after feedback i'll sort it out in the next following days!

 

@Ra1den: trust me, the amount of games that leave people hooked for hours are the kind that sell on mobiles! (Also leaves you wondering where these people get the money to pay for such things... )

And yes, my advice is: have a clear idea of what the game will be like, exploit it in the best way you can, then blast the app store with it: the flappy bird WILL FEEL THE BURN! And hopefully fly away for good, that is until some idiot necroes him...

 

Bump

 

@Ra1den

Hey man I have been wanting to try out your demo but for some reason that web player link will not work for me?
I have tried a few more on the forums to make sure it wasn't something wrong on my end. I'm looking forward to trying it out though!

 

@Jaqal: Worked for me!
If you use proxy, check the filters, it may have blocked web player from running.
If not... Have no idea what the problem could be!

 

@Jaqal

The website maybe?

I don't know but i'll look into it!

 

bump

 

Okay decided I'm gonna move the game to a new hosting site... Do you guys know any trustworthy web hosting sites that support Unity Webplayer? ^^

 

A lot of people use dropbox i believe

 

Yeah man i've had no luck playing your demo and I tried my pc and laptop.

 

@Ashment

Thanks for the suggestion! I made it work with Google Drive though

@Jaqal

You should be good to go! ^^

 

I checked out the demo and the visuals look really good! I had the same problem as Jaqal and happily its all fixed now. The first thing I noticed was the lack of a tutorial. It took me a while before I figured it out. Afterwards though it was a lot of fun. I did notice though that the colors that change during the game were a little to bright and vibrant. It threw me off a couple of times. One last thing, a bunch of the buttons didn't seem to work. For example the pause button and the yellow button on the main menu.

Except for those couple of bugs it was really good and a lot fun. Keep up the good work!

 

@NickHaldon

Thanks! I really appreciate the feedback!

Okay Lets get in to it

The lack of tutorial: I still don't want to add plain old boring text to the game but a lot of people have been lost on what to do (at first) so i have been looking for something that would add more clarity to how the game is played (I may even have to change the main menu) but until then I'm gonna post a video soon which should help with people who want to know how to play really quick( For Now)

Colors too bright and vibrant: Agreed! working on it!

Pause button: The Pause button is for the Android/Iphone version on windows its "Esc" to pause (I should point that out in-game and I will)

Yellow Block on the main menu: Oops I didn't know that! (It was supposed to be put on a later bulid) Thanks for bringing that to my attention! I will update it soon!


EDIT: Already Added the Link to the Gameplay video!

 

Glad to help!

For the tutorial maybe do one of those ones that pop up on screen with the little gif type thing that shows what to do. This could probably fit into the style pretty well.

I took a couple of screenshots to show the colors that worked and that didn't.
This one was perfect. Not to bright and it was easy to see the blocks.


This one made the blocks hard to see and was just a little to bright.


That's just my two sense. I don't mean to pick your game apart.

 

@NickHaldon

No no no! By all means pick it apart....That's what feedback is all about and All Feedback is welcomed!

You've actually made my job 10x Easier!

 

Well if it makes your job easier... Time to get dissecting tools ready!

 

More Screens:

 

First and second look really good. The third could maybe use less particles. Fourth and 5th I think are a little to shiny.

Seriously though, how do you create such nice multi colors? And your GUI stuff, nGUI or normal GUI?

 

Short Answer: Spend A lot of time with unity! xD

More Detailed Answer(More Serious too?): Haha Okay hmmm the bulk of GUI and Art for the blocks is all created in illustrator and then all I've gone and done is play around with unity effects (such as glows,particles,flares etc) just too the right settings to achieve the visuals you see now (Which did take time!)... Experiment with unity's particle effects you can be really amazed at what you can create!

EDIT: The multiple Background colors are all set with the Main Camera's Background Color!

 

Spend a lot of useful time in Unity. Definitely more serious. When you say Illustrator you mean Gimp or Photoshop right? Or is there a Photoshop like thing named Illustrator? I'll have to go spend a couple of hours or so looking at all the particle stuff. After I learn how to Script. And model.

 

If Photoshop is God then illustrator is Jesus my friend xD

(But seriously) You should check it out! i prefer illustrator's workflow and the way it handles better than Photoshop but everything you do in illustrator can be done in Photoshop (More or less)

Illustrator: Powerful Vector creating tool
Photoshop: Best Art asset creating tool in the world (arguably )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Illustrator

 

Haha

I'll look at it sometime. I am just not even close to being artistically inclined so I probably wont even use it for a while.

I have Photoshop I just never learned how to use it. Whenever I opened it I just stared at it blankly. The only times I used it was to retouch photos and add text to them. The main problem is that I have absolutely no idea how to use it in a game developing sense. I am trying to learn Gimp now because its way smaller on my Laptop and my space is precious. I haven't gotten anywhere but its a work in progress.

 

Gimp! lots of people around the web use it and call it the "free photoshop" and from what i've seen people do with it it's pretty good...You're me like 5/6 months ago lol Just experiment! look at some art sites (to get motivated), look at some tutorials here and there and of course give yourself time... I wouldn't call myself an artist (acutally i'm still far from it) but now at the very least i am able to create something in Illustrator/Photoshop

 

Its pretty similar to Photoshop. It has a weird setup that's kind of annoying but I am getting used to it. 5/6 months just seems like SOOO long. I find all my motivation from all the WIPs here. Its all just so impressive.

For tutorials would you recommend a tutorial on how to use Gimp or how to use Gimp in games? I just cant figure out which one to look for. I think that one of my main problems is that I just have so many questions that are kind of hard to look up. I cant wrap my mind around this stuff and it messes me up with other stuff.

I created a simple background thing yesterday that I was actually pleased with. I know that next to anything that anyone else has done it will look horrific but to me its the first coherent thing I created so its kind of special.

 

@NickHaldon

5/6 months was just me! I had never used anything like Photoshop before and originally i'm a programmer so i was doing the whole Photoshop thing and coding a few things on the side..... If you're serious you can easily get it in less than a month!

Though i don't know much about Gimp,I could maybe help you with the whole art workflow side of it and how it can possibly help you build art assets for your games.... PM me your problems or questions!

 

@Ra1den: personally, I use both blender 3D AND photoshop together!

 

I'll be Men in Black serious. I think I'll just resign myself to a ton of tutorials for the next couple of weeks. I still have to learn coding first so I can actually do stuff with my art.

I will be sure to take you up on this! Thanks a ton!

 

bump

 

Updated the menu and added some quality of life game updates! will post next update soon!

 

It's pretty tricky
I started the game without reading any instructions I ended up losing like five times cause I'm stupid.

But after knowing the gameplay it's a quite nice combination between the retro Bricks game and the gameplay you added.

 

Don't worry many people have said that too so i'm adding a little "how to play" section in the game

I appreciate the feedback btw! Thanks!

 

Updated!

 

Loving the project so far man. The colors are mesmerizing!

 

Thanks! ^^

 

Bump

 

hey there,

That's a great project your working on. Would you let us in on how you created the background for the game? That would help me out!

 

Sure! but can you be more specific on what part of the background you're trying to achieve?

 

@Ra1den:

Probably the really nice particles in some scenes!

 

The particles?! haha they look pretty but I am sure I can work my way around it. I was interested in the lighting, the blurry glowing light effect in the background.

 

Oh that! That's just the unity fog particle! I achieved that effect by playing around with color and energy settings

 

ok! thanks a lot mate. Wish you all the best!

 

No problem! Thanks for the feedback!

 

Just finished the Facebook integration! (It's About time )

The game will finally go on Facebook in the next following days!

EDIT: Due to some unseen circumstances this will take longer than expected

 

@Ra1den: so this is a facebook game? never knew that...

 

Facebook is the first platform...Hopefully if everything works out i will release it on other platforms as well... At the moment resolutions on the android are giving me trouble #sigh

 

#bump

 

Hey man,

this game has been on my must-comment list for quite a while now but I never really found the time.

Anyway, I've played the game for 2 rounds. In the first one it took me a couple of minutes to figure out what to do so I failed almost immediately. My second attempt was quite the opposite and I got to 300 points without taking a single hit, until I kinda lost interest since the music is not quite my cup of tee.

Visually the game is absolutely stunning! I love the background and all the effects going on, but it lacks of visual feedback for your actions. Clicking a block does not give you any visual indication that you did something. I think this is partly the reason why it took me so long to figure out what to do. Just making them blink or twitch or whatever would help a lot I think.
Also the idea with the trail for the mouse courser is really cool but feels unfinished. Right now you are just enabling and disabling the trail renderer making it pop in and out and glitch all over the place since the trail doesn't get reset. Maybe try instead setting the time value to 0 to get a nicer disappear effect?

I also really really dislike the main menu. It doesn't really fit the theme, looks kinda rushed and took me waaaaaaaay too long to start the game That might be just me being dumb, but still!

Conclusion: I like it! I really do! But I think it still needs a lot of work and polish to really shine. Keep it up!

Also: Whooo quake!

 

A few people have complained about the lack of feedback and i'm still currently working on interesting ways to convey feedback to the player ... The In-game music which i never mentioned wasn't gonna be the music in the final game (my bad ) Is gonna change, I got a sound artist and we've been going at it to try and create a decent soundtrack for the game.... You're right about the mouse cursor but I've been trying to think of a "cool" way to deal
with that and kinda pushed that to the wayside but I did always feel that it was kinda unfinished and lastly you disliking the main menu...... Redesigning the main menu has been on my list for a while (or at least redesigning some parts) It perfectly makes sense why you wouldn't like it but not to worry i'm on it

Much Appreciated, Thanks for the feedback! ^^