Antichromatic - Arkeus

[Brian Cartwright]

@Brian Cartwright: Yep, if you're not into harder games, it's probably worth avoiding. I contemplated an easy difficulty, but had I done that, people would have beat it and complained about the other difficulties. By putting an easy mode it kind of says "this is for everyone" when really it would just been the easy mode that's for everyone. Usually that ends up with me compromising and removing stuff to make all the modes easier, and I wanted to make sure I wasn't compromising the experience for the audience who likes difficult games.

A suggestion, make sure your tester base is large enough that you have a sounding board for the difficulty. A common issue with games on Xbox Live Indie Games is that a publisher has a small or nonexistent test base and gets locked into entirely defining the experience by their own abilities. Difficulty is one thing, intertwined to an intrinsic understanding of the underlying composition of the game is another. An example of a brutally difficult game I found personally rewarding was Super Meat Boy. The initial levels that function as a tutorial are wordless but form a steady but sensible ramp in teaching and skill. I still haven't beaten the game and may never but the game taught me the skills to TRY to beat the game. Another thing that SMB did terrifically well is meting out reward for incremental successes along the way (warp zones, glitch levels, secret characters, etc).

Identify as tough you'll keep some folks out. Identify as good and then say, by the way, I'm tough. Then some of us will find it irresistible.

Just ask the thousands of guys who are still chipping away at Dark Souls.

[RiotingSpectre]

The game is good, damn good. But I find it hard to see what's going on, on smaller television monitors. The faint grey and bold black can really mess with your eyes. I hooked it up to my living room television which is much bigger and the game is quite flawless

[Reaperman]

I'm really enjoying this one, but sometimes the little man doesn't behave as I'd expect when I try to jump off of platforms right at the edge and he walks right off while I'm pushing jump. Could easily be the ouya controller too, I suppose.

In any case, this is the best 'free' ouya game I've played--it's awesome. I'm not too far in, though. I've got double-jump on the white side.

[Diskarmor]

Great game, I went to purchase it after playing it a few minutes and was surprised it was free. I notice that when I wall jump, I alot of the times I die for no reason mid-air. Not sure what I am doing wrong. Let me know.

[jmminch]

Great game, I went to purchase it after playing it a few minutes and was surprised it was free. I notice that when I wall jump, I alot of the times I die for no reason mid-air. Not sure what I am doing wrong. Let me know.

I had this happen too -- I think what was actually happening was that I would put a little too much pressure on the left stick and accidentally clicked it, which kills you. I'm not sure what the purpose of the suicide button is (I didn't ever find a reason to want it -- and it's not like ways to die are exactly hard to find), but it probably should be mapped to a different button, or possibly require clicking and holding for a little while. There was one room where I had a lot of trouble (required double jumps followed by wall jumps), and I killed myself two or three times this way when I was close to the exit -- that was kind of infuriating.

Only other suggestion I'd have would be to get other controllers working -- I really prefer using a PS3 controller over the Ouya controller, and I know I'm not alone.

This was probably one of my favorite games so far. I don't know that I'll get much replay value out of it, but it kept me hooked for around an hour or so when I really should have headed to bed.

[Diskarmor]

Thanks, I forgot about the suicide button. I just completed it with 486 deaths and a playtime of 614:46:01, which is impossible since I've only owned an Ouya for around 380-390 hours.

[Reaperman]

Oh that little rainbow guy (last room?) keeps doing me in after the 3 colors. I'll get him--but probably not tonight...
I have a solid strategy to beat him, the problem is making my hands perform it when it's time...and then I start the whole room all over.

It also feels like I'm exploiting a few cheap ways to make that room a lot easier that maybe I'm not supposed to be able to do.

[Arkeus]

Oof, bunch of comments. Let's see if I can not miss any!

Great game! Played it for a while and like it very much!

Thanks! Glad you like it.

Any chance you bringing other games to OUYA?

You could charge for them, make some extra money. Art Style fits the platform and I was very impressed with gameplay. Hope to see more games released by you

I'll probably bring future games, but I'm still not sure if I want to bring any of my completed projects over. The ones I'd most like to bring over would require a lot of work to make them playable with a controller (and switching engines to make the performance reasonable).

I tend not to want to charge for things I made for Ludum Dare (which is most my stuff) since I feel if I'm going to charge for something, it should have a bit more effort than a weekend put into it. But we'll see in the future.

Just downloaded. I heard it was tough and that's what I like to hear!

Edit: After playing a while I must say, excellent job sir! I dig it.

Thank you!

Really impressed with this game and quite surprised it was free! Just completed the regular hard mode - 58 mins, 264 deaths. Very nice and challenging but fair and really well designed. Hope for more games like this. Well done and thanks!

Thanks.

A suggestion, make sure your tester base is large enough that you have a sounding board for the difficulty. A common issue with games on Xbox Live Indie Games is that a publisher has a small or nonexistent test base and gets locked into entirely defining the experience by their own abilities. Difficulty is one thing, intertwined to an intrinsic understanding of the underlying composition of the game is another. An example of a brutally difficult game I found personally rewarding was Super Meat Boy. The initial levels that function as a tutorial are wordless but form a steady but sensible ramp in teaching and skill. I still haven't beaten the game and may never but the game taught me the skills to TRY to beat the game. Another thing that SMB did terrifically well is meting out reward for incremental successes along the way (warp zones, glitch levels, secret characters, etc).

Identify as tough you'll keep some folks out. Identify as good and then say, by the way, I'm tough. Then some of us will find it irresistible.

Just ask the thousands of guys who are still chipping away at Dark Souls.

Good advice, I agree. A few reasons why I didn't follow it here:

First off, the game was made for a 48 hour competition over the course of a weekend. That severely limits how much "testing" I can have done. While making it I had to figure out who my target audience was going to be. In order to make it a reasonable sized project that I could get done before the deadlike, I chose as small an audience as I could, and worked towards making it an experience for them.

Since this was released outside the competition, I could have taken more time to build up the game, get it tested, etc. However, in the past I've found that spending more than a minimal amount of time on a competition entry causes me to lose interest in my main projects I'm working on at the time. And in one case I spend a lot of time and never end up releasing it, and end up in a lose-lose scenario. So here I wanted to keep it to a minimum: fix bugs, separate into two difficulties, and improve things such as the menus.

The game is good, damn good. But I find it hard to see what's going on, on smaller television monitors. The faint grey and bold black can really mess with your eyes. I hooked it up to my living room television which is much bigger and the game is quite flawless

I thought that might be the case. Unfortunately I didn't have any actual devices that weren't 1080p to test on. I tested at smaller resolutions on a PC, but on a PC, you're not going to get the same experience as actually testing on a small screen. I'm glad you were able to play on another screen and enjoy it though!

I'm really enjoying this one, but sometimes the little man doesn't behave as I'd expect when I try to jump off of platforms right at the edge and he walks right off while I'm pushing jump. Could easily be the ouya controller too, I suppose.

In any case, this is the best 'free' ouya game I've played--it's awesome. I'm not too far in, though. I've got double-jump on the white side.

I've never actually made anything for a joystick before, and I probably got the thresholds all wrong. There wasn't variable movement speed, so it's just "hold it far enough to walk". Unfortunately that means if you release it, it takes a second to cross that threshold and you can walk into things. I only noticed because at one point I found myself using the D-pad for more precise movement. Does anyone have any experience with binary movement on a joystick? Is it better to require the joystick be pressed all the way so you can stop moving easier? I found it took too long to start moving out of the way of obstacles when I tried that...

Great game, I went to purchase it after playing it a few minutes and was surprised it was free. I notice that when I wall jump, I alot of the times I die for no reason mid-air. Not sure what I am doing wrong. Let me know.

Thanks! As mentioned below, it's probably the suicide. I always found it hard to push, which is why I ended up putting it. I suppose depending on how you hold a controller, pressing it accidentally might be a problem...

I had this happen too -- I think what was actually happening was that I would put a little too much pressure on the left stick and accidentally clicked it, which kills you. I'm not sure what the purpose of the suicide button is (I didn't ever find a reason to want it -- and it's not like ways to die are exactly hard to find), but it probably should be mapped to a different button, or possibly require clicking and holding for a little while. There was one room where I had a lot of trouble (required double jumps followed by wall jumps), and I killed myself two or three times this way when I was close to the exit -- that was kind of infuriating.

Only other suggestion I'd have would be to get other controllers working -- I really prefer using a PS3 controller over the Ouya controller, and I know I'm not alone.

This was probably one of my favorite games so far. I don't know that I'll get much replay value out of it, but it kept me hooked for around an hour or so when I really should have headed to bed.

I'm still working on getting better controller support. I'm really intent on using the new API in the adobe air beta, since I know it will work going forward, but it's quite lackluster. Hoping it gets some improvements to make it better across controllers...

Thanks, I forgot about the suicide button. I just completed it with 486 deaths and a playtime of 614:46:01, which is impossible since I've only owned an Ouya for around 380-390 hours.

Strange, is that what it says on the Best Times section of the main menu? Not sure what would have caused that!

Oh that little rainbow guy (last room?) keeps doing me in after the 3 colors. I'll get him--but probably not tonight...
I have a solid strategy to beat him, the problem is making my hands perform it when it's time...and then I start the whole room all over.

It also feels like I'm exploiting a few cheap ways to make that room a lot easier that maybe I'm not supposed to be able to do.

Don't worry, I ended up keeping the cheap things in intentionally. After getting through all the gems, especially on Very Hard, sometimes you want to just wall jump in a corner and blast away at the boss.

[Starfighter]

I also beat it on my first session, I couldn't stop playing it. Very entertaining! I don't remember my scores exactly but it was under one hour and around 140 deaths.

[Diskarmor]

[QUOTE=Arkeus;47112]Oof, bunch of comments. Let's see if I can not miss any!


Strange, is that what it says on the Best Times section of the main menu? Not sure what would have caused that!



It showed that time on the best times and while I was playing at some point it when to 614 hours. It is not on the best times now best I completed it a second time. Thanks for such a great free game.