Hempuli's blog

Yay.

I got some criticism related to the laziness of the newer art in the game, it was very insightful although I don’t think I’ll really do anything about it (yet). Yay. 70% done with the game!

EDIT: It’s a secret!

Boo yah, kinda Miyazaki-y.

I’ve finally started to gather a list of every single thing that needs to be fixed/added to ESA before I can be happy with it! Kind of late with that, but better late than never, I suppose! The 11th boss needs some more thinking before I can tackle it, because I recently realized a very annoying pattern in the bosses I make – they tend to be rather passive! For example, there’re a couple bosses that literally just stare at the player while spawning all sorts of enemies and so on – I think I should be a bit more creative with these later ones.

I’ve actually managed to build the world a bit further – the game’s now about 69% done! I’m getting closer to the 11th boss, although I’ll have to redesign some rooms in the current area to make them more interesting.

So there.

I haven’t been working much on ESA lately. However, there’s been some small progress and I’m quite confident I’ll get further soon! I just need to design some enemies and add certain bits of polish. I’ve been also considering certain other interesting game concepts. It’s a real surprise I’ve managed to keep my attention in ESA for so long (obviously a very good thing!)

So, I was in the Aalborg University in Copenhagen from thursday to sunday, making games and meeting cool (and occasionally less cool) people. I managed to finish two small games during the 48h game jam, one of which got music done by Joonas Turner! For reasons not related to me I didn’t get to submit my games to the voting process, but all in all I was really happy with both. However, the most important thing for me was the social aspect; I had sauna with cool people, had drinks with cool people, slept at cool people’s place and overall cool people were all around me all the time. It seems that Swedish/Danish indie developers are much cooler people than the Finnish ones – there appears to be a trend of more social and open behaviour! I wonder…

KARZ
Cheesy name aside, KARZ is a very simple arcadey arena thing where 1-2 players drive cars around a level and destroy other vehicles with HUGE SWORDS. It’s pretty hard, but I & the guys I played it with found it quite satisfying to play, which is cool. The visuals are intentionally very simplistic and weird, I didn’t really care about graphics here. The players have to cooperate, but they also compete in terms of score. Music done by Joonas Turner.

This game requires a gamepad/joystick! Xbox 360 controller recommended.

DOWNLOAD THE THING!

It’ll End Tonight
Artsy pretentious artgame with a deep message and ugly visuals. I had a simple idea and decided to get it done in about 8 hours. Overall I’m pretty happy with the result, though – I think the atmosphere works. It takes only about a minute to play through the game, so I recommend checking it out. Controls are WASD + Mouse, although joystick/gamepad is supported and even encouraged. For pads, move with left stick and use stuff with Button 1. Button 6 (right shoulder button) also does stuff.

DOWNLOAD THE THING!

I guess this might benefit from more special effects. Oh well! The boss is finished, at least.

So, I’ve gotten slowly back to working on ESA. Looking at the code after a break made me realize how many things are still relatively broken – there’re a whole lotta areas where I’ve though “I’ll come back here later, woop”. This ain’t good!

Anyway, a gif: