Cyberspace maze game

Discussion of programming and development for the original Game Boy and Game Boy Color.
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NovaSquirrel
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Cyberspace maze game

Post by NovaSquirrel »

Alongside my main SNES platformer project, I've been working on a side project for the Game Boy Color, involving my character Maffi going into randomly generated mazes in cyberspace and guiding lost critters to the exit while defending herself from enemies.

This project started out with me wanting to make a cool 32K game (because I liked how Catskull Electronics made it very cheap and easy to order a cart of an arbitrary 32K ROM), but I wanted something that would have a lot of replay value that would still fit in 32K, so I thought I'd go for randomly generated mazes so it could be different every time. At some point I decided I didn't want to limit myself to just 32K anymore (partially because Catskull Electronics shut down, and partially because I wanted to be able to make the game as fancy as I like without having to worry about space) but kept the randomly generated maze thing.

The objective is to step on the tiles that have an icon of a bunny-like critter on them, which will make them appear and follow behind you, and you then need to step on the exit to guide them into it. Once you get all of the critters into the exit, you can step through it as well. You can attack by pressing the A button, which uses up paint. Paint is a limited resource but it refills itself when you're not using it, and it will refill instantly when you step on a star tile. You can also hold the A button while moving to roll a paintbrush across the ground. Enemies can't spawn on painted tiles, so as you paint the level it makes it gradually safer; in the future I plan to make it do more things.

So yeah it's a weird combination of Splatoon and Sonic 3D Blast? That's probably interesting to see on the Game Boy.

This game supports the original Game Boy, and has Super Game Boy enhancements, though I haven't drawn a border yet. I feel like there's potential to use different colors on SGB to make the screen a little bit more colorful feeling than those game usually do, and this is on display here with a white/red/blue/black palette.

It's open source like anything else I work on when I have any say in it, and it'll be a free download when it's done. I'm not planning on making carts.

Let me know what you think! You can press Select to skip a level in this demo build.
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slembcke
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Re: Cyberspace maze game

Post by slembcke »

I gave this a try on my GBA tonight. It kinda reminds me of classic action/maze games like Burger Time or Amazing Penguin. It works pretty well at that. I think I played ~10 levels before it seemed like the levels were feeling a bit similar. It seems like a good start, and I think it just needs a little more variation and content. Do you plan on working on it more?

The enemy difficulty seems okay in relation to the player's attack speed and stamina. I didn't feel like overwhelmed, and I kinda like that they don't have particularly fancy pathing. It gives you a chance to manipulate them and defeat multiple enemies with a set of attacks. I'd be interested in seeing more enemy movement variation though. It's a bit problematic that the enemies don't apply knockback when they hit you though. When you let one touch you it can stand in the same position as you and your attacks seem to miss it completely requiring you to move a significant amount and lose multiple health before you can attack back.

The player's attack is okay, but I feel like it would be more satisfying with a more interesting shape than a line. Maybe a 45° circular arc that comes out of the player or an expanding spiral arc to emulate something similar to the animation/timing of a sword slash? I didn't realize I could paint the ground. In 202X people are going to expect the game to teach them that. I also had no idea what the paint on the ground meant until I re-read the instructions here.

I'll give it another play now that I know about the paint mechanic and get back to you.
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NovaSquirrel
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Re: Cyberspace maze game

Post by NovaSquirrel »

It's just the same four levels over and over currently, though because they're randomly generated the maze layouts will be different each time. This is just an initial test build to see if people like the gameplay style in the first place, and get feedback early so I can change course on things early if I need to. I am planning on continuing to work on it, and I want to add more variety to let levels feel different aside from just getting different layouts; I definitely will have more enemy types and I have a bunch of them drawn, just not implemented in the game yet, and I'd like to add multiple different sub-weapons to add some variety to attacking. I'm wary about changing the attack shape because I'm only testing against one collision box for the whole thing to save a very large amount of CPU time, so I would need a few, but maybe that's not too bad? There is the option of making it purely visual, but I'm also uncertain about that; it feels nice to see knockback happen the moment the projectile touches the enemy.

Having to stop an enemy from just continuously damaging you is something I hadn't realized I needed to fix yet, so I'll keep that in mind too. Some people did talk about feeling overwhelmed from having up to 12 enemies active so that's something I intend on lowering, at least for earlier levels.
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slembcke
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Re: Cyberspace maze game

Post by slembcke »

Ok, so now that I know what the paint mechanic is, I'm not convinced it works the way you want it to. You said the intention was that the player could paint the floor to prevent enemy spawns, but you have to paint a significant fraction of the level for it to have a noticeable difference. It seemed much easier to just kill the enemies using the attack and get the levels over as quickly as possible. I did manage to fully paint the smaller levels, but it felt like a lost cause on the big one.

If I was going to suggest an alternative, maybe the painted floor could temporarily block or slow the enemies instead. That way you can use it more strategically to cut off a group of enemies, giving the player a chance to counter attack or escape.
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