Parasol - A Mobile Puzzler

Community Showcases
1

After spending about 6 months working on my solo project, I feel that it’s finally at a point where I can start showing people.

Parasol, our hero, loves them apples. Unfortunately for him, he can’t fly. So, it’s up to you to guide him there, and simultaneously give him a ‘crash course’ in the finer points of flight.

To kick things off, here’s an alpha gameplay video of one of the levels:

Controls are simple. Drag your finger, or use a twist gesture to rotate the level, tap the screen to make Parasol fall to a block. Currently if no block is below him, it prevents him from falling into the abyss.

Some stills of the art of the game:

Parasol, our protagonist.

Basic block.

Rickety block. You can only step on these once, after exiting a rickety block, it falls out of the level.

Switch block. Switches turn a group of blocks on or off.

A delicious apple. This is the goal of the level, guide Parasol here!

Star! If you get to the apple in the least number of drops possible, you will be awarded with this shiny thing!

Parasol is being programmed entirely with playMaker, and I’m also using a couple of plugins to make things easier here and there.

As for release platforms, I’m going to be targeting iOS devices first, then afterwards I’ll be investigating Android.

Stay tuned!

  • Mark
2

Great job! Simple concept yet unique. I like how you took advantage of the 3d tools in Unity for this mobile concept. Great idea with rotating to fall onto the next block. It makes you think a step ahead.

3

Nice twist to the classic platformer! : )

4

Really really awesome Marcos!
Great concept, real simple and very nice artwork to. Parasol is such a cool character with comedic animations and face expressions. He feels alive and you did a really good job on it. And I love how you kept the same style from your previous turtle game.

Hope to see this appear on Playmakers homepage like your “Tumble the Turtle”. Looking forward to seeing your updates!

5

Thank you! Hoping to have some challenging levels that make you think several steps ahead!

I see what you did there :wink: Cheers!
By the way, I was in Gothenburg a couple of months ago. :slight_smile:

Thanks for the nice words! I was hoping that the character would be received well :slight_smile: though I may tweak it a little bit later on.

I actually came up with the idea for both games around the same time, but didn’t really know how to approach this one until I had spent some time exploring Unity and playMaker, which probably explains why they have a similar style.

As for appearing on the playMaker page, that’d be nice. We’ll see what happens!

6

Pinched some hats from my turtle, I’m sure they won’t mind!

These will be rewards for collecting a certain amount of stars. Right now I’m thinking that the player should be able to get one every 5 or so.

I’ll likely add some more before I finish (Parasol probably needs some kind of a helmet!) and rework the textures of some of these ones.

7

Haha, nice ones : D

8

that art is awesome, I really like the wood

9

Happy New Year, everyone! Been a bit distracted over the holiday season, but here’s a mini update, the first of five new hats:

Hope you all like it! Lots more coming soon. :slight_smile:

Thanks for the kind words, it motivates me a lot!

10

Had a busy couple of days texturing the last four hats.

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Safety first!

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Transatlantic cap and goggles.

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P-1000 cybernetic eye.

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Ironic glasses, hat and summer scarf.

Hope you all like them! :slight_smile:

11

Hello!

So, I’ve been a little bit busy ticking lots and lots of things off of my Parasol to-do list.

Here’s a new gameplay video that shows the current state of the game:

As you can see, the menu system is in place, as is the system to save progress and track what levels you have a star on. Sound effects and music now exist, and can be muted individually. I updated the UI to match the colour scheme and feel of the game, and the fonts have also been updated to be more consistent and friendly. Furthermore, I added little touches like the win text changing based on what hat you’re wearing, this text and the level title scales based on how long the string is.

Currently there are 24 levels in game, the rest of the planned 40 should be done within the week. The first four levels act as a tutorial, the first of which you can see in the video.

I’ll make a post about how I design levels soon, likely when I start to tackle the remaining 16.

Anyway, hope you like the update. Getting close to the home stretch now!

  • Mark.
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Here are some screenshots of the new interface:

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Also, Parasol is on IndieDB now!

13

I really think you can give the entire ui font stuff and level select a much better look. This looks nothing like the usual quality you pump out left and right.
It’s really weird, the entire 3d artwork is soooooo good but the ui elements look like they are still in mockup mode.
Brown and white and black for such a crazycoolcat game, I would love to see what you can come up with when you put it all together seamlessly !
I mean you have these tilted wooden buttons, yet the font is totally straight not even rotated to fit the setup, just as an example. :slight_smile:

14

Hey, thanks for the feedback, Fabian!

I was trying to just keep it simple for the ui stuff, just colour sampling from textures and trying to use a minimal palette.

I definitely agree that the 2D over 3D looks odd. Maybe I’ll whip up a 2D background plate for buttons to see if that makes things more consistent. Otherwise I’ll have to have a look at it all once all of the levels are done.

Thanks again!

PS What phone do you have?

15

I have a very old samsung phone :smile:
It can send text messages and phone people !
I do have an iPod Touch 4 and an iPad 2, though to compensate :stuck_out_tongue:

I totally understand the simple approach, still I think it’s worth to check out and compare to some other apps that use a s imilar 3d style and how they approach their menus and UI assets. Maybe have a look here: www.playpeep.tumblr.com
It just caught my eye, because the ingame art is topnotch quality and the menu seems like a task that you didn’t enjoy or didn’t spend as much time to polish it out.
It’s definitely worth it, since people see the main menu and level select screens first. First impression is important, too :slight_smile:

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That blog is so good! My first reaction when I saw all of the awesome interfaces was “Oh.”

Browsing through it to get some good inspiration :slight_smile:

I don’t mind the shape of the Parasol buttons, but I’ll try some tests with different shading things, and perhaps framing it all better.

Let me know if you’d be interested in testing, I remember you were keen to test Tumble the Turtle, but it didn’t quite reach that point… :wink: …yet.

17

Ha of course I’m interested.
Sweet, that this was of some use. I love to get hit by playpeeps every once in a while:)

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Cool! I’ll let you know.

So, I’ve been quiet, but busy!

What’s new:

  • 40 levels
  • New UI, with anchors and so on for different screen aspect ratios. All buttons now have down states too.
  • Hat unlock system
  • Victory Screen
  • Win camera animation
  • New logo

Here are some new screenshots:

Next up will be some random technical things and optimisation.

Mark

19

ha, so worth the iteration ! much much better looking ui now :slight_smile:
Looks tons time more casual, cartoony, fresh and neat.

20

Thanks!

I added an option to make the control scheme snap to rotate around only one axis at a time.

Currently brainstorming to see if there are any improvements I can do to the first tutorial level. Maybe limit the player to perform only certain rotations and actions, with a subtitle prompt at the bottom of the screen guiding them through it. I think that once a first time player understands the mechanics of the first level, the rest is easy.

Also, subscribed to Unity Pro, delicious splash screen!

Though, must say I’m a bit sad that (as far as I can tell) there is no good mobile depth of field image effect that I can use out of the box.

Anyone got any solutions in that regard? Would need to work with Skyshop.

  • Mark