Fight with grappling hooks in Skyhook, a local multiplayer platformer out now on Steam Early Access
Hi everyone!
My name is Qazi. I am the developer of Skyhook. This is my first commercial game so I hope to share some of my process and get valuable feedback from everyone here. I am doing all the programming, art and sound effects for the game so I’d appreciate any and all critiques, especially those in regards to the pixel art and animation.
As I push the next few months to take the game from Early Access to full release, I’ll be posting dev logs and progress updates here on the forums.
Cheers,
Wase Qazi
Who is developing the game?
Skyhook is created by Megastorm Games, and its sole developer Wase Qazi. You can learn more about him at wqazi.com
How did it get started?
Skyhook started as a tiny prototype at a Unity game jam where two mountain climbers would fight each other with grappling hooks. It has since evolved it into a full local multiplayer platformer with crazy characters in a bizarre pirate world.
When will it be released?
Skyhook released on Steam Early Access in May 2015. I am hoping to do a full release in early 2016.
What is it being developed in?
Skyhook is being developed using the Unity Engine.
For games like this, the game has to move really fast action wise to keep the player drawn in. I would add a secondary weapon; preferably something slower than the grappling hook but stronger. Like a semi time delayed stick of dynimite which players could chuck at one another. Too close to the explosion kills the player; or highly diminishes health and those nearby could be pushed back by its explosive force.
But all n all the game looks good; keep up the great work.
@Rombie Thanks! I absolutely agree with you about a secondary attack system. Which is why I came to post about the introduction of Melee combat!!
Today I pushed one of the biggest updates to Steam, the introduction of Melee combat to Skyhook!
Melee Combat!
There’s a new way to kill your enemies, like slashing them in the face as Jade or chomping their face off as Fin! Melee makes close combat scenarios much more interesting now. And yes, you can chomp incoming hooks to deflect them.
With the introduction of the melee mechanic, I was also able to use it as a pass button in Sky Ball mode. If you have the ball perform a melee attack to pass the ball to your teammate!
New moving and zooming camera to focus on the action! You’re sky battles have never been more epic.
These updates are going to make Skyhook look and feel a way it never has before. I’m looking forward to hearing what everyone thinks. Thank you so much for your feedback so far!
Earlier this week, I was getting ready to start my daily Twitch stream when my good friend Daniel Snd suggested why not make playing Skyhook on stream even more interesting by showing the names of people in chat over the bots in the game. He showed me the TwitchIRC-Unity project on GitHub that basically throws some basic twitch stuff into your game with one C# script!
After about an hour on stream, we had members in chat showing up as bots in the game.
It was so much fun interacting with the twitch chat in a whole new way. The system is fairly basic: Whenever someone send a message in chat, the game parses the message, gets the username, and stores it to a dictionary. Whenever you start a new match, the game then gets random usernames from the dictionary to assign to the bots that are spawned.
People seemed to have a blast watching the AI version of themselves try to take me out. Even though it was technically not what I planned to do today, big shout out to Daniel for suggesting the idea and helping me through the process.
I’m excited to take the integration to the next level by giving people the ability to suggest actions to the bots and influence the matches through the twitch chat!
You can see the full stream over at my YouTube channel:
This weekend I finished the first unlockable character in the game, Grimlock the Crab Captain!
This brings the roster of characters to 5. I’m excited for players to figure out how to unlock him. Grimlock’s special dodge ability is that he deflects any melee attacks or hooks while dodging. His melee attack is a vicious crab pinch. Also he wears pink.
I also added Twitch integration. When users connect their twitch account, people in chat can spawn in as ai opponents and vote for what powerups everyone gets during matches. I recorded a short test of the feature during one of my recent twitch streams:
