Thanks, the art is brand new, but I've been working on this game for a long time now. The engine for the game is almost complete, so I'm going through and drawing original tiles to replace my placeholder art. I've been working on this game, if you count engine work, for 4 years now, although if you want to get picky, this project didn't turn into this specific game until about a year ago. Still, I conceptualized it long ago and I hope to have it out this summer.
I call my game Ninja vs Pirates, and I wanted to take a stab at making an action game ala Earthworm Jim or Contra or Shinobi III and add my own unique twist to it. The game's tone isn't very serious, with the story being that Pirates from Space have invaded the earth, and are unleashing hordes of "warrior races" to wipe out humanity. Warrior races in this instance refers to just about every "epic warrior" meme on the internet - samurai, raptors, zombies, aliens, monsters, cowboys, indians, lumberjacks, etc. You play the role of The Perfect K, a super secret government ninja who has been called in to battle these warriors and repel the evil space pirates. And yes, the space pirates are just like high-seas pirates, only in space.
Because the underlying engine for my game is my own NeedleMouse engine, my game will have platforming very reminiscent of Sonic the Hedgehog 1. This isn't to say it's a sonic clone, however. Rather, the physics system in the game is identical to the one from Sonic 1. The very first move you get in the game is a dash move, which is what you see the guy preforming in the screenshot above. This move works a lot like rolling around and doing the spindash worked in Sonic the Hedgehog. When you dash, you can run along walls and what not, provided you have enough speed.
To clarify, though, my game is NOT a strict platformer, but actually an action-RPG. Gameplay wise, the closest comparison you could make would be Ninja Gaiden on the NES, only as a metroid-vania instead of a linear action game. You traverse the large world, finding power ups which enable you to over come obsticals which block your path in order to get to the final boss. There are branching paths in this game, too, so depending on where you go, different routes will open up later in the game.
Combat is straight out of Ninja Gaiden. Move left and right, press one button to preform a light, medium, or hard sword attack, and one button to jump. If you press down and jump together, you use your current item. On the surface, it feels just like ninja gaiden.
Where the game deviates from other traditional action/metroid-vania games is that it includes a pretty deep combat system that is actually more remeniscent of street fighter once you dive deeper. There are over 100 special moves you can preform in the game, ranging from fireballs to dragon punches, to spinning kicks, to even stuff like self-healing or parries. The trick in this game is that you don't actually have every special move.
Rather, mapping out your special moves works similarly to the materia system from Final Fantasy VII. As you go through the game, you'll collect icons which represent either directional inputs, button presses, or effects. As you progress through the game, you'll find the special moves in special areas. The first special move you find in the game, for example, is the Dash.
When you find the dash, you also find 2 direction icons, a button icon, and a fire effect icon. Now, when you go to equip the special move, you find that each special move has a number of slots available where you can place these icons. Depending on how leveled up each special move is, it'll have more or less icons.
Now, there are 2 required icons to equip a special move - 2 inputs. Just like with materia, you place the icons in slots and depending on how they connect, they'll work differently. When you get the Dash move, you also get 4 icons - two "forward" directional icons, a "left trigger" icon, and a fire effect icon. Your level 1 dash has 3 slots open. Now, you are required to put down 2 input icons before you can use it. Depending on what icons you choose, you can map out how the move is preformed. So, if you place one forward icon in the first input, and the second forward icon in the second input, then pressing "forward forward" in the game makes you dash. However, you could map it, instead, to "Forward+Left trigger."
Also, the order in which you place the inputs matters. "Forward+Left Trigger" is not the same as "Left trigger+Forward." The first icon must be pressed before you press the second. So, later on when you have the parry special move and the fireball special move, you could map parry to "quarter circle back + light Attack" and fireball to "Light Attack + Quarter circle forward." The advantage to doing this is that you can press light attack once to do both moves. So, when an enemy attacks, you press quarter circle back, then hold light attack to parry, then while he's stunned, you press quarter circle forward then release light attack, and you'll auto-combo into a fireball.
So back to the Dash. We've mapped it to "Forward+Forward" but we still have 1 slot left. This is an effects slot. You can place effects icons in here and it'll alter the special move. For example, if we place the fire effect in Dash, then when we dash, we become engulfed in a flame and we can use the dash to attack enemies (normally you can't). These effects can be chained later for bigger effects.
Take later in the game when you have the a leveled up heal special move. You can place the auto-counter+ input into it's 2 input slots (auto-counter+ takes up 2 input slots), a fire effect icon into one effect slot, and a super effect icon into the other effect slot. Auto-Counter+ works like normal auto-counter (which will counter with the special move it's paired with 10% of the time) except that when you're at less than 20% of your health, it auto-counters 80% of the time. Super combines with the fire effect to create a super fire effect, which is a much powered up version of the previous effect. So, using this combination, when you're at less than 20% health, you'll auto-counter 80% of the time by automatically healing yourself, then casting super-fire damage to the attacking enemy.
All of these moves are regulated by your EX bar. The EX bar works like the super meter from capcom and SNK's fighters, except the number of stocks you can carry increases as you level up. Every special move in the game uses up some of this EX bar. Luckily, the EX bar is refilled everytime you collect the floating blue, red, or green jewels. Blue gives you a little EX energy, red jewels give you twice as much, and green jewels fill you up 1 entire stock.
These jewels also refill your life bar. However, they refill your life bar much slower than they refill your EX bar, and enemies do far more damage than a single jewel refills. Again, blue refills a little life, red refils twice as much, and green gives you a whole extra life.
In additional to these special moves, you also have standard armor, boots, helmet, and accessories which change your stats.
Does any of that make sense? I promise it's more intuitive in-game than I'm explaining.
Seriously though, if even half this stuff works out I'd say you're going to get a lot of interest. I like your inspiration/influences.
is book. ki (木
