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Level 0I like games DANDARA - Metroidvania for touchscreen + gamepads [LAUNCHED! :D] « on: November 07, 2015, 05:24:19 PM »

hello all hello all

We launched! Get the game here!

Hey I've been away for a long time since development got really heavy, and I ended up never returning here. The game is launched, you can get it on the link above.









After 6-month project on Unity ! (It is already making about 2 years)



So what is the game about?









In Dandara, you explore a SPOILERS to reach your only goal: free it from it's own SPOILERS ! Erm, something about Freedom, Salt and Stones!



Sure, you will meet lots of a few zany characters along the way, friends and foes! The story came a long way and we feel that it should be shrouded of mystery to correctly give a more intense feeling of exploring a strange world!



Features:

The game is an action-adventure where you're free to explore anywhere as long you have the power to do it.

But there is a twist: in this world, gravity isn't constant and instead of classic platforming, you're jumping from surface to surface.

The game is inspired in the metroidvania genre.

Each room has a distinct feeling, challenge to overcome, story to look at. We're trying to have no filler at all!

As is tradition in these types of games, you will upgrade alongside the way by straying from the main path and looking around for every nook and cranny, acquiring stuff like health upgrades and weapons.



The idea of no gravity (and many other features) came from designing an action-adventure specifically for touch-screens. We aren't very fond of emulated game controllers in any touch-screen game, so we tried to do something different about the game design and successfully create a unique exploration action-adventure game specifically for mobile phones. That was our main goal with this game, in the beginning.



Now, after we experimented with using controllers with it, we realized this game might also work in consoles, giving a really fresh experience giving its origins. Along with that, came a lot of opportunities, including a publishing deal. So in the last months we worked hard pushing the game into a console game. It was our goal, as a game studio, to reach consoles since the beginning, we just didn't think we would do it this time yet.







How to play (with a very, very old GIF)





A snippet from the tutorial. The game already looks and feels very different but it is still played this way! A snippet from the tutorial. The game already looks and feels very different but it is still played this way!

What we have right now









Concept made by Lucas Concept made by Lucas









More recent gameplay gifs.

More recent gameplay gifs.

Our team is comprised of two programmers/game designers. Art right now was initially done by us as well, but now we leave most pixel-pushing to artist









The game is made in Unity, and we are using Tiled for level design. There's a great tool called



The game is done and launched, We might work more on the game, as more content or DLC, and I may talk about the development of further content here. It's just that I cannot confirm anything yet.



We crave for feedback. Seriously.



Facebook Newsletter Twitter - Hey I've been away for a long time since development got really heavy, and I ended up never returning here. The game is launched, you can get it on the link above.After Magenta Arcade , we decided to finally make the change to Unity and pursue better projects. We made a simple, casual mobile game called Miguel: The Incredible to learn it, and now we feel confident enough to make another! (It is already making about 2 years)In Dandara, you explore ato reach your only goal: free it from it's own! Erm, something about Freedom, Salt and Stones!Sure, you will meeta few zany characters along the way, friends and foes! The story came a long way and we feel that it should be shrouded of mystery to correctly give a more intense feeling of exploring a strange world!Features:The idea of no gravity (and many other features) came from designing an action-adventure specifically for touch-screens. We aren't very fond of emulated game controllers in any touch-screen game, so we tried to do something different about the game design and successfully create a unique exploration action-adventure game specifically for mobile phones. That was our main goal with this game, in the beginning.Now, after we experimented with using controllers with it, we realized this game might also work in consoles, giving a really fresh experience giving its origins. Along with that, came a lot of opportunities, including a publishing deal. So in the last months we worked hard pushing the game into a console game. It was our goal, as a game studio, to reach consoles since the beginning, we just didn't think we would do it this time yet.Our team is comprised of two programmers/game designers. Art right now was initially done by us as well, but now we leave most pixel-pushing to artist Victor Leão . The music and sfx are all in the hands of the magician Thommaz Kauffmann The game is made in Unity, and we are using Tiled for level design. There's a great tool called Tiled2Unity to make Tiled work in Unity and that's what we've been using by now.The game is done and launched, you can get it here! on the game, as more content or DLC, and I may talk about the development of further content here. It's just that I cannot confirm anything yet.We crave for feedback. Seriously. « Last Edit: September 24, 2018, 08:54:53 AM by brantkings » Logged



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brantkings







I like games





Level 0I like games Re: Project Dandara - Explore a twirling metaphorical world in a metroidvania « Reply #1 on: November 15, 2015, 09:26:25 PM »







These are the first artwork for them. The ghost, which floats around, follows the player around when detected(hence the red eye) and dies in a few shots.



The dogs (yeah, they look like llamas and maybe cats, still a WIP), that runs around the level, making the player jump to another surface to evade a hit.



And the spiky target, that appears after the player is in a detection radius, and should act as a obstacle for the player to shoot before jumping on.



The hope is that with these 3 enemies as a base, we can make a fun level to show to people around in local events.











Last week, we worked on enemy design. To initially come up with some basic enemies, we thought that we should have 3 main classes of enemies: grounded, stationary and aerial, so we came up with some drafts:These are the first artwork for them. The, which floats around, follows the player around when detected(hence the red eye) and dies in a few shots.The(yeah, they look like llamas and maybe cats, still a WIP), that runs around the level, making the player jump to another surface to evade a hit.And the, that appears after the player is in a detection radius, and should act as a obstacle for the player to shoot before jumping on.The hope is that with these 3 enemies as a base, we can make a fun level to show to people around in local events. « Last Edit: November 23, 2015, 01:28:53 PM by brantkings » Logged



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Level 0I like games Re: Project Dandara - Explore a twirling metaphorical world in a metroidvania « Reply #3 on: November 19, 2015, 02:39:39 PM »







Quote from: Jimym GIMBERT on November 15, 2015, 09:35:04 PM looks rad!



Thank you!





19/11/2015



So while we prepare our monsters for the demo at a local event next month, we also prototyped the ways you could evolve in the game a la metroidvania. We came up with stones (which are metaphorical) that enables you to activate and interact with certain special platforms in the world.





The stones, in the menu.



Examples of the special platforms. As a bonus, some doors.

In the game, you can interact with some objects by stepping over them and trying to jump towards the ground. That's how you enter doors, for instance. We are trying to figure out the transition between rooms right now, any ideas are welcome.



Also, we built our save system . It is really inspired by Dark Souls: you light the save point, and if you die (and lose all lives), you go back to it BUT everything you've done for the story is saved and don't need to be redone. I believe this will be iterated a lot during development!





Here's the save point, and ! I actually believe this art is final for the game!





Thank you!So while we prepare our monsters for the demo at a local event next month, we also prototyped the ways you could evolve in the game a la metroidvania. We came up with stones (which are metaphorical) that enables you to activate and interact with certain special platforms in the world.In the game, you can interact with some objects by stepping over them and trying to jump towards the ground. That's how you enter doors, for instance. We are trying to figure out the transition between rooms right now, any ideas are welcome.Also, we built our save system. It is really inspired by Dark Souls: you light the save point, and if you die (and lose all lives), you go back to it BUT everything you've done for the story is saved and don't need to be redone. I believe this will be iterated a lot during development! Logged



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Level 0I like games Re: Project Dandara - Explore a twirling metaphorical world in a metroidvania « Reply #5 on: November 25, 2015, 02:55:14 PM »



We've been doing enemies that shoot projectiles, puzzles with moving platforms, and more. There are still obvious defects everywhere, but it's gonna be a developer event, not anything else.



On the plus side, code for miscellaneous like saving, translation, game over, is mostly done, hooray.



Well, some gifs to illustrate this post:





A mockup of a scene:





Yeah, I know that the background all look the same. It's because it is! But hang in there, people, we're gonna work on that after the MIND festival. So we've been hard work at "polishing" our little demo for the local event. I think we got a better game feel overall, I'm really excited to see what everyone is gonna think about this.We've been doing enemies that shoot projectiles, puzzles with moving platforms, and more. There are still obvious defects everywhere, but it's gonna be a developer event, not anything else.On the plus side, code for miscellaneous like saving, translation, game over, is mostly done, hooray.Well, some gifs to illustrate this post:A mockup of a scene:Yeah, I know that the background all look the same. It's because it is! But hang in there, people, we're gonna work on that after the MIND festival. Logged



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Level 0I like games Re: DANDARA - Twirling metaphorical world in a gravity-less metroidvania « Reply #8 on: December 06, 2015, 11:04:10 AM »



More on the event, it is actually next week! So we should go ahead and start working on the alpha (which you guys will be invited, so we can get real feedback from far away people). So next week: pickups, bosses and more level design!



The best thing we did last week was updating the tilesets, I guess. Begone, ugly gray thing and let's start experimenting with things we would use in the final game.





Whoa, is that parallax? This week, there was a important change in the game mechanics: now you can jump on the right side, because that gives you more precision. There is gonna be an option for left-handed people. Also, aiming shots is as easy as ever, almost automatic. But those changes I can't show you with screens and gifs!More on the event, it is actually next week! So we should go ahead and start working on the alpha (which you guys will be invited, so we can get real feedback from far away people). So next week: pickups, bosses and more level design!The best thing we did last week was updating the, I guess. Begone, ugly gray thing and let's start experimenting with things we would use in the final game. « Last Edit: December 06, 2015, 09:02:19 PM by brantkings » Logged



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Level 0I like games Re: DANDARA - Twirling metaphorical world in a gravity-less metroidvania « Reply #9 on: December 09, 2015, 07:32:55 PM »



We've just finished with the main camp code, following our design for changing weapons. We concluded that 2 weapons at once will be a design problem (it will eat simplicity, for us and for the player) and one weapon is not gonna be a problem with there are a lot of opportunities to change weapons along the way, which is what we're gonna do anyway. So, the menus.





Also, we may have decided that the game is gonna be called DANDARA, and only that. We thought about names like Cogito Dandara and Direction Dandara, but really we can't find anything better than one-worded Dandara, both for the game's story and marketing. There's a small possibility that may still change, though.



Well, I'd like to say too that we've been trying to do something like this devlog in our

Well, the road for the first alpha demo is now on! We hope to have it done before mid-January, so we are running with it even in the holidays.We've just finished with the main camp code, following our design for changing weapons. We concluded that 2 weapons at once will be a design problem (it will eat simplicity, for us and for the player) and one weapon is not gonna be a problem with there are a lot of opportunities to change weapons along the way, which is what we're gonna do anyway. So, the menus.Also, we may have decided that the game is gonna be called, and only that. We thought about names like Cogito Dandara and Direction Dandara, but really we can't find anything better than one-worded Dandara, both for the game's story and marketing. There's a small possibility that may still change, though.Well, I'd like to say too that we've been trying to do something like this devlog in our Twitter as well. There's way more gifs over there. « Last Edit: December 10, 2015, 05:48:10 PM by brantkings » Logged



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I like games





Level 0I like games Re: DANDARA - Twirling metaphorical world in a gravity-less metroidvania « Reply #13 on: December 21, 2015, 03:00:38 PM »



So, we've been iterating through our tutorials A LOT. It is not perfect yet, and the camera got decentralized in the last update, but I have gifs that can at least show the idea of it:





Wow imgur destroyed the quality :/

We are right now working on changing these finger stamps to more direct "hands holding a touch-screen" method, because believe it or not people try to use the index finger to move, and that is not the way we thought they would play! (Or maybe WE are wrong, who knows).



vitorlanna, thanks for the feedback! We iterated in the forest based on it! We gave up on the trees in the default ground and threw them to the parallax foreground and I'm getting good vibes from this use of the bigger vegetation.



Finally, we're iterating through our HUDs (you can see it in the gif above) and the dialogue system. The text isn't final, of course, but maybe this positioning is good for the final game? We hope it is.





Hey! A somewhat late update here!So, we've been iterating through our tutorials A LOT. It is not perfect yet, and the camera got decentralized in the last update, but I have gifs that can at least show the idea of it:We are right now working on changing these finger stamps to more direct "hands holding a touch-screen" method, because believe it or not people try to use the index finger to move, and that is not the way we thought they would play! (Or maybe WE are wrong, who knows)., thanks for the feedback! We iterated in the forest based on it! We gave up on the trees in the default ground and threw them to the parallax foreground and I'm getting good vibes from this use of the bigger vegetation.Finally, we're iterating through our HUDs (you can see it in the gif above) and the dialogue system. The text isn't final, of course, but maybe this positioning is good for the final game? We hope it is. Logged



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Level 1 Re: DANDARA - Twirling metaphorical world in a gravity-less metroidvania « Reply #17 on: December 22, 2015, 05:08:17 PM » Oh! So that spiral is a fingerprint, I hadn’t realized that before.



I think the trees and the parallax are looking great =]



I like the font you guys are using. One thought, though: maybe the name of the area could be on top (since the dialogue is on the bottom)? That way you could push the dialogue further down. And the character name could them be on top of the dialogue, since it occupies less space and allows you to see more of the screen.



Anyway, pretty cool =D Logged Tumblr|Devlog|Twitter