We’ve changed some values in the game and a bit of the mechanics :
Stella’s Energy now has a slower drop rate, losing 1 Energy per second.
The enemies start off with the same ammount of damage, but receive a bigger bonus every time the difficulty increases, making them a bit stronger than before in higher difficulties, forcing the player to dodge the attacks more often to survive.
The green spheres will pull the character towards their position in the Y axis , making the climb easier .
And now there’s a ranking system!!
Enjoy
Introduction
Hello everyone! I’m here representing my Indie game studio : Double Dash Studio.
We’re a small group from Brazil who really love the classic and challenging games. We’re working on a small project named Super Stella S2 , Its currently being developed in Unity 3.5 and its been going on for about 2 months. We would be really glad if you guys could test it and provide us with some feedback
About the Game :
Super Stella S2 is a 2D Action-Platformer . The project started in this year’s Global Game Jam and after a while we decided to continue developing it. It still doesn’t have a storyline , but it’s combat and moving system is pretty much defined already.
We have developed this as a Survival mode, and this version will serve as basis to begin the development of a story mode.
Stella’s energy works different than most games. You start at 75% energy, and it will drop all the time. Whenever you hit an enemy with a melee strike or destroy an enemy in any way, you’ll recover some energy. If your energy gets too high, you’ll overcharge and die. You can always release a special attack to lose some energy and stop yourself from overcharging.
Stella is a very agile character. She can run, jump and dash. Whenever she’s in the air, she is able to perform an extra movement. If she hits an enemy with a melee attack while in the air, she recovers her extra movement. Timing your strikes correctly allows you to stay in the air indefinitely.
Wow, just had a go of it then, and it was really fun!
It confused me at first, I couldn’t get it to work with keyboard but then I realised the joypad worked. I really like the effects, the enemy death burst on particular feels really satisfying, and after a couple of screens I was really getting into it, especially attacking the green spheres to reset the jump.
The energy mechanic is definitely unique… I can’t tell if I like it or not. Having to manage health up and down is interesting, but it also gives the game a slightly sloppy feel, you’re losing and gaining energy so much that there’s no incentive to avoid each enemy attack, which is a common thing to strive for (and rarely achieve) in these sorts of games.
There’s a slightly unsettling effect in that it feels like the game is running at multiple resolutions, and some fringing around some of the sprites, but otherwise seemed really solid. Had a weird bug where I died from lack of energy as I was falling towards a power pad, which left my corpse happily recharging to 101% before the stat screen came up.
Thanks a lot for the feedback! We do have this same feeling , that you dont really have to dodge enemy attacks at all since you recover energy so well... Well be tweaking the numbers a bit along this week and updating the game to a hopefully more fair version
We really want to explore the energy mechanic for our story mode, so we’re trying our best to balance this system so it’ll be both fun and challenging.
Please check this post out during the week as We’ll post an update here once the new version is online.
Thanks again for the feedback , We’re glad you enjoyed the game despite of all there is to fix in it
Wow, amazing graphics! Seriously great sprites, LOVED LOVED LOVED the artwork.
The slashing the balls and jumps bit was a little more frustrating than challenging.
Also the collision box on the character seems a little on the large side, you’ve got like a good foot of space between the play and the wall when up against it.
Thanks a lot! We’re working hard in making the game look nice!
We have remade all of the character’s animations and once we put them in the game, we’ll also be adjusting the collision box to try and solve this excess of space between her and the objects.
As for the slashing and jumping, it’s something that we tested but didn’t get a good response indeed. But I’d like to ask you some questions, if you’d care to answer them :
There are currently two levels that use the slash and jump mechanics. One of them has two pits and a small ammount of enemies, while the other is a large climb with a lot of enemies. Did bot levels frustrated you , or was it only one? wich one?
I think the main frustration is that I had to do this long climb with split second timing, coupled with the fact that you’re mistakes compound as you climb. Like if you’re an inch off center twice, you end up two inches next time, and so on. By the time you’re at the top it’s a slop shoot.
If I may make a suggestion, what if slashing the spheres drew your character into the center and position them? Then you could focus more on placing the difficulty around your energy currency mechanic (which I really like and is unique).
thanks a lot for the feedback! we’ve updated the game with some gameplay adjustments and a ranking system. I’ve followed Not_Sure’s suggestion about the spheres, it caused some improvement in the gameplay and we’re very thankful for that advice =]
It was still a challenge, but not an exorcize in frustration.
EDIT:
Any thoughts about adding a sound effect for when you run out of energy?
Maybe like a “flat line” sound for heart monitors, or would that be too annoying?
A flatline sound might be a bit annoying, but we already have a sound effect for the “out of energy” death, just haven’t been placed in the game yet.
Right now our programmers are cleaning up the code so we can get started with a story mode. It’ll be some time ( a month, maybe? ) before making a significant update to the game.We’re going to develop a complete level of the game, like a small demo, consisting of rooms with enemies, some with traps, objects that interact directly with Stella’s Energy mechanics, and a boss battle in the end. Our focus is to complete this level, using the Survival to test it’s features, so whenever we create one of the elements I mentioned , we’ll place them in the survival mode as a possible random chamber, wich I believe will improve the experience in the Survival as well. By the end of it , you’ll have a chance to get into a room where you receive some energy at the beggining of it and have to get through several traps and obstacles to get to the door ( this will also come with an improvement in the movement system, possibly including a wall-jump feature ) . You’ll also encounter a boss every X rooms, and new enemies that we’ll develop for the complete level itself.
I hope I can count on you guys from the unity forum to help us test the new features as we create them =]
