Every game project comes at that point where, as developer, you have to show it to the world.. since I basically changed a lot of stuff in this game it’s like showing a new game since the last prototype video’s. So let’s do this quickly, watch, enjoy, then continue reading:
The biggest change I made is probably the removal of the scrolling-background, and returning the game back to it’s original state: an arena shooter. Which was what the original Groundskeeper really was.
I made this decision because GK2 was starting to look a LOT like a Gunslugs on steroids, and also was not bringing anything special to the table. Moving the gameplay area back to this smaller arena slowly gave me back the focus this project needed. A lot of the pieces fell back into place, and the gameplay really works as it is now.
The game starts very, very, basic and opens up as you learn the ropes. It’s something I learned from Heroes of Loot, and it worked fairly good in that one. I think I improved that skill on this game tho, it’s much more fluent growth that the game does when you play, and a more balanced end game when you reach the harder regions of the game.
The video shows a game which has about 70% of the guns/powerups unlocked, and missing a few levels.
Right now I haven’t managed to unlock everything myself yet, which is probably a good reason to add some extra power-ups and thingies to make that a bigger possibility, but I also noticed that playing this game with any hardware controller gives you a huge advantage, so that’s even more balancing I need to do right there!
Besides the gameplay, the graphics have gotten a little overhaul. Gone is the wobbly-floor (I’m keeping that code for future games) as I believe this more 3D-ish look at the game area fits the arena feel more then a 2D platform floor.. even tho the wobbly-effect looked awesome! I also gave the graphics clear black outlining, because there’s so much going on on screen this makes it easier to identify objects.
So still a lot of work to do on the game, and most of that won’t be really visible as it’s a lot of balancing and extremely small detailed changes to improve the “game feel”.
