[LynxMas 2020] New game: "RED"

[LordKraken]

Hello!

 

RED is my little contribution for the lynXmas 2020 game jam.

 

Quote

RED is an action-survival game where you play RED, one of Santa's little dark elves, who must go deeper and deeper to find Santa while avoiding all the deadly mechanisms he left behind.

 

24 days to save Christmas and as many rooms to survive.

 

There will be blood. RED's blood.

 

GET IT HERE: https://krakendev.itch.io/red

 

Feel free to give feedback. There is a small chance I add all the deadly traps I wanted to add, and polished the game a little more, for a physical release

 

Edited December 15, 2020 by LordKraken

[Nop90]

yes, I didi it! ?

[+karri]

Don't add too much enemies to the final version. I am still stuck. But RED will get a pretty good vote from me at least.

 

RED is the most brutal Christmas game so far. Blood all over the place.

[BadPricey]

Looks cool. Minor niggle but I can't help it. Cancelled with two L's, sorry ?

[LordKraken]

3 minutes ago, BadPricey said:

Cancelled with two L's

I'm a grammar maniac when I'm writing in my own language, so I get it, don't worry I'll fix that one, thanks

[4ever2600]

Nice!  I can't wait to try this one!

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

TOMORROW ZeroPage Homebrew can finally unveil the consolized Atari Lynx II modded by @Igor from Atari Gamer / K-Retro and begin to play all the incredible Lynx homebrew that's been released! We'll be playing RED on our first Lynx LIVE broadcast on Twitch! Hope you can join us!

 

Tue Jan 31, 2023 | LIVE @ 6PM PT | 9PM ET | 2AM GMT+1Day

WATCH LIVE: https://www.twitch.tv/zeropagehomebrew/
WATCH LATER: https://youtube.com/zeropagehomebrew/

 

Games:

• Odynexus (2020 Demo | Lynx) by Alex Hiza @LordKraken & Alexander Grade @Anderlex (Created By) / Drozerix (Music) / Michal Szpilowski @miker (Music Adaption)
• A Bug's Trip (2020 Final | Lynx) by Frédéric Descharmes @Fadest (Code, Graphics) / Romuald (Graphics) / Carl Forhan @Songbird (Music, SFX)
• CSS Traffic (2022 Final | Lynx) by Frédéric Descharmes @Fadest (Code & Graphics), Zerosquare @Zerosquare (Code), Templeton (Graphics), VectorPocket from freepik.com (Graphics), Michal Szpilowski @miker (Music & SFX)
• Timeloop (2020 Final | Lynx) by Dr. Ludos @drludos
• RED (2020 WIP | Lynx) by Alex Hisa @LordKraken
• Silas Adventure (2019 | Lynx) by Krzysztof Kluczek @KK/Altair (Code, Gfx, Design) / kirill777 (Intro Character)

(WATCH AT 1080P60 FOR BEST QUALITY)

 

[LordKraken]

Hello everyone!

 

Three years (!!!) after its debut at LynXmas 2020 game jam, RED has now became a fully fletched game with a ton more content and many surprises. The game will get a physical release around spring 2024, but more information on that later. To ease the wait, we have just published a very generous demo with the beginning of the story mode, and the complete arcade mode. So please take the time to try the game and have a lot of fun repainting your beloved console in crimson RED!

 

Demo announcement: https://ancientworld.itch.io/red/devlog/640608/red-gets-a-new-demo-before-release

Game page on itch: https://ancientworld.itch.io/red

 

Edited November 25, 2023 by LordKraken

[xhul]

Just back from a testing session on Handy 0.98-alt, that's impressive.

I've only finished the story mode so far.

Here's some feedback, to thank you for having uploaded the demo:

 

- If you check the highscores once, everything's fine.

But if you do it a second time right away, the big font size is used in the first screen, instead of the small one.

I guess the easy fix would be to relocate|duplicate the small font size initialisation.

 

- I came across a level where there's an unavoidable death at the very beginning.

More specifically, you start cornered in a corridor, and the location|direction of the nearby enemy makes it impossible to reach the nearest safe spot.

Not sure if that enemy always moves towards the player when that level is initialised, or if i was just screwed by randomness.

Unfortunately, i forgot to note which level it was, i might retry if i unlock enough time.

Edited November 25, 2023 by xhul

[agradeneu]

I noticed that too, but your player is invincible until you make the first move (indicated by the bubble)

[xhul]

It's 3-7, but yeah, forget it, it's just required to take advantage of the grace period, like agradeneu said.

[LordKraken]

Thanks for the quick feedback @xhul! I just fixed it and updated the binary on itch. This is one of this thing you test once and you're like "perfect" hehe but no no no, always test multiples times the same thing :)

[agradeneu]

Congrats Alex! A super stylish original game, enjoyed it a lot!

[xhul]

6 hours ago, LordKraken said:

Thanks for the quick feedback @xhul! I just fixed it and updated the binary on itch. This is one of this thing you test once and you're like "perfect" hehe but no no no, always test multiples times the same thing :)

My pleasure =]

Yes, definitely the kind of thing that you don't bother testing intensively.

 

Want some more?

When it comes to the invincibility bubble (the display only), it basically vanishes as soon as a D-pad key is pressed, no matter if RED coordinates actually change or not.

However, the actual invincibility itself seems to be a coordinates check instead, so you'll get it as long as RED stands at the starting spot.

So you can for example start a level, move around, go back to the starting spot (without dying), and you'll survive any enemy collision there.

That of course requires to place RED at the exact coordinates, and is only an issue in levels where enemies can actually go there.

Up to you to see if it's worth fixing, not as easy as it seems if i had to guess.

Edited November 26, 2023 by xhul

[LordKraken]

ok you got me check my code again because this is a surprising behaviour. The invicibility is bound to a certain state flag, that is removed as soon as you press a direction, and put back when you die. I think I might have an idea to what is happening here though (something quite different in fact), thanks for bringing it up

[xhul]

In case you need to replicate the bug easily, world 3-7 is ideal, simply walk left as soon as the level starts, the bubble will go off, but not the invincibility.

That's where i discovered the behaviour.

In that particular example, the coordinates don't change, but i discovered later that it doesn't matter, you can move around and come back to the spot and invincibility will trigger again, in any level.

 

EDIT:

3-5 is also great to show that you can actually change the coordinates before becoming invincible again.

When the level starts, walk right as far as you want, then left until blocked by the wall again, and wait for the enemy (the collision will be ignored).

Edited November 26, 2023 by xhul

[LordKraken]

and... well... I spoke too fast... I actually had a check on the starting position that disable killing 

(I didn't remember exactly why i had this line... and git blame later, I discovered that it was how I implemented the bubble protection initially, then I moved to the state system which is more elegant but forgot to remove that line in the process).

 

Thx a lot for notifying me

[xhul]

17 minutes ago, LordKraken said:

Thx a lot for notifying me

Thanks to the design of world 3, i would probably never have found that occurrence without the walls.

 

Other than that, i tried hard to break the level transitions as much as possible, but you seem to have coded them in a very sturdy way, good job =]

I'll see what i can find in the arcade mode, will let you know if i catch something...

[LordKraken]

14 hours ago, xhul said:

Thanks to the design of world 3, i would probably never have found that occurrence without the walls.

 

Other than that, i tried hard to break the level transitions as much as possible, but you seem to have coded them in a very sturdy way, good job =]

I'll see what i can find in the arcade mode, will let you know if i catch something...

Remind me to hire you as a playtester when I release the full game

[Nop90]

I just received my custom copy of RED. Thank you LordKraken. 

 

Have to try the story mode yet, but the game looks great. 

 

During the holidays I'll try to reach again a perfect score with the new version, if the game hasn't changed too much I should still be able to beat most of the levels (I remember only three was really hard because after memorizing the right path, there was some precise short pause to to take along the way).

 

 

[agradeneu]

There is another minor issue I have recently. 

So the player sprite overlaps environment tiles/obstacles (more than 3/4 of the player sprite) and collision takes a bit of a guessing. I know probably why you did that, but its not consistent with the enemies. Any enemy will kill you if it contacts a larger area of the sprite image, which is what I would expect. Cant wait for the release of the final game, though I hope its the final version finally. Cheers! 

Edited January 29 by agradeneu

[LordKraken]

you are very likely correct, the collision box on the environment are quite permissive, to allow the player to take more risk by running around. There will be definitely some difficulty tweaking in the last weeks of development

 

So far all content are in but the boss and the music, so thing looks pretty bright for a release before the summer

[LordKraken]

Thanks everyone who voted for the game, and stay tuned for the commercial release coming this spring!

 

 

[xhul]

8 hours ago, LordKraken said:

Thanks everyone who voted for the game, and stay tuned for the commercial release coming this spring!