Weebish Mines (WIP), est. release Dec. 2013

Hi guys!

I've been posting sporadically on the DevBlogs however now that I've noticed there's a CT section for WIP / released games I shall now blab about it here.

Weebish Mines is a platform adventure game with Metroidvania elements to it. The plan is to try and have multiple ways of going about things. The objective is to help a family of 4 venture into the nearby mine / dungeon to locate and save their pets.

Each character has a 'free to use' default weapon, though there are many additional items and weapons that can either be found or bought. These are all divided into one of three different 'color types'. Reds are mostly offensive and powered by ruby gems. Blues are scientific / magic and powered by sapphire gems. Lastly greens are auxillary items powered by emerald gems. Every character can use these special items however they each have different gem consumption rates. (ex. the Father, Del, can use red items for no gem cost while the kids' costs are considerably more).

So as much as it's a game about locating your pets, it's also as much about resource management. Take a character into the mine with certain items they're good with to collect more gems or items that somebody else is good with. Can't make that jump? Grab some boots! Can't get any boots? No problem, how about using that emergency ladder you have back in storage? No ladder? Try the umbrella to glide across a ravine and bomb open a surface shortcut for later.

There's no 'dying' in Weebish Mines. If you run out of HP's you are STATUE-IZED and turned into a lifelike decorative stone dungeon piece for the ages and then taken back to the house to pick from another character who's left. If all 4 characters get turned into statues, it's game over. There are hammer items that can be found or bought to smash these statues open and save the characters trapped within however, so be on the lookout for those all the while.

This game is heavily influenced by my favorite NES game of all time, Legacy of the Wizard. You can go back to the house at any time to swap out characters or storage items for example. Anyone who's played that awesome game will immediately see the similarities however happily there's enough about Weebish Mines that's different and will set it apart quickly once you start playing it yourself.

Unlike LotW this one is decidedly more forgiving as anybody CAN use any item, provided you have the gems in stock. If all else fails there's an option on the pause menu to 'give up' if you get stuck and turn into an instant statue and grab somebody else.

Here's a new gameplay video that shows a bunch of beginning stuff:

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EDIT: Honestly, what's up with embedding YouTube videos in your posts now. Did they change it so you can't anymore or did I just forget how to do it? XD

Thanks, HGF!

The game is coming along just great and I've submitted the 1st beta to my tester core just today so hopefully I'll be able to get some good feedback on the gameplay soon. I have about 70% of the total map area completed so far.

As it is, I've reduced the amount of gems needed to use items overall- so that some characters can use them for free. I don't think this will stick though, so maybe what will happen is that there'll be maybe a single item that each can use for free and have a reduced cost for others in that color type (ex. maybe Del can use the pickaxe for free and all other red items would cost 1 ruby each).

Otherwise, there's a simple but effective XP / level system in place now too. Killing enemies will get you XP, and upon reaching the next level you'll get an instant randomized reward like full health, extra gems, money, or even bonus items sent to your storage room. All characters share the same XP and level bar, so becoming statue-ized doesn't mean your next guy will start out at level 1 necessarily.

I've added a lot of new enemy types too, which should make things interesting.

If you happen to get stuck somewhere because you've either run out of gems or used up / don't have an item you need to get out, there's an option on the game's ESC menu to give up called "I'm Stuck!". Selecting this will instantly turn your character into a statue and take you back to the rest of the guys at the house. This was necessary due to the unpredictable nature of how people will choose to spend their gems or find / purchase items.

P.S.- I forgot to mention but I've changed it so that the shop is only open during the day now. So that picture of the guy in the shop at night is now a collectible or some **** now haha.

The game's going to get pushed back a little- but only a little bit, nothing like Hasslevania 2 territory thank God

I've been adding a lot to it and making it more enjoyable which of course is always nice. The map is very far along and there are more boss / special enemies to fight. The best part is that now all special enemies drop better rewards.

The shop now only carries a randomized set of 5 items ever. So every game your shop will carry just those 5 items and after that it'll be up to you to go and find or fight for more items to assist you. This adds a lot to the challenge, as you may imagine it would.

The gem cost system was changed back to what it was previously however now there's a set XP reward for reaching level 6 and that's a gem reduction cost for everyone (which sets it to what it was above). This is a good balance IMO.

The character's hit detection boxes were given more leeway so that running up to your foes to smack them around won't always mean you're going to get hit and take damage.

Oh and also robots explode, 55 gallon drums leak noxious fumes, chests can have active bomb traps in them, and the amazon Queen rides a battle tiger.

Hooray!

Here's the new trailer, guys. Should be done in hopefully a month or so.

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Happy New Year!
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I've made some new additions to the game as well as wrote down a lot of ideas to add later.

Firstly, there's now a wishing well on the surface. To make a wish, simply toss in $1. You can only make 1 wish per day. Maybe something good will happen if you make enough wishes. Gee I wonder???

Secondly, the game's magic sword got a huge power boost. Swinging it still deals 3 damage (pretty good in this game) and costs rubies to use but now there's a 25% chance to summon a bolt of lightning around the player. Lightning bolts can hit any destructible or enemy directly to the left, right, or above the player. Since it's now so powerful, these things will be in short supply.

Thirdly, there's a new item called the WEEBINIZER. This is a magical glowing orb that's found in one place in the mine and it's sort of hard to get to but not impossible. Touching it with any character will unlock their hidden WEEBISH POWERS. These powers are all unique and aren't found anywhere else in the game or granted by using any of the game's gem items.

Fourthly, these things are now in the game:

Nobody here finds this game interesting at all? You WOUND me!

Here's some more shots, the biggest changes are now that Ness dresses up like a wizard and there's some new areas like the Neon Garden and Dragon's Lair. There's also now a hospital to recover health and a secondary shop hidden somewhere in the mines.

The function of the XP item has changed significantly though, and this is to try and help the player out since this is shaping up to be a pretty hard game. Instead of giving you flat out experience points they now give you a permanent +1-5% XP bonus for all points earned through killing stuff. This bonus is reflected on your pause menu alongside the day / night timer. There's no cap for this XP bonus as of right now and will probably stay that way.

Otherwise, most enemies now have a champion type too. For instance, the new rats have exploding white lab rats and of course there's always Winnie The Mech the robotic laser shooting bear of doom.

Thank you Andy!
It's just going to be Windows PC, Kisguri, I don't know how to do it for anything else yet lol.

The game's looking much better even after this short while since the new trailer. There's some new but not particularly hard spider enemies which mix it up a little bit and there's going to be another type of dragon that's all about pestilence and crap

AND only one small area left of the mine / dungeon to go and the map will be completed. Then I can focus more on game balance and all that. My daugther's been my main playtester lately and so far she's not getting too far into it without a total statue wipeout. So I'm using her feedback a lot to improve on the early points of the game (some extra "gimme" items and gem bags, added another shortcut through the cellar, that sort of thing).

Well GREAT news! I was able to fix not one, but two longstanding bugs / glitches / whathaveyou to the game and also make a great new addition

PROBLEM #1: Slowwwwwwwwdowwwwwwnnnnn.....

THE FIX: Believe it or not, by switching the 'Inactive when out of frame' (or whatever it's called) from all my monsters and stuff this freed up a ton of memory / processing and now it runs at normal speed all the time. Because the main frame was so large, it was doing a kabillion things for everything all the time but not anymore. It was of course a stupid oversight but I've never worked with a frame of this size before and so never noticed / needed to do this before now.

PROBLEM #2: Wait, I thought I had a bomb sent to storage? Oh wait, there it is!

THE FIX: Oh man, this was a doozy to figure out. What is supposed to happen is if you pick up a special item in the mines while your hands are full it instead gets instantly sent back to your cabin's storage to swap out later if you wish. Anyhow, what was happening is you'd go back to your cabin and MOST of what you've collected would show, but not everything. But if you went back outside the house and came back inside it'd all be there like normal. After much trial and error I found out that it was always the very bottom line of the storage item list that was getting skipped somehow (I use listbox objects a lot) so by simply adding a "# of listbox object lines +1" to the fastloop it solved everything. A small fix solves a huge problem!

THE ADDITION(s): Mini Map!

Though it flies in the face of a true "Dammit, I'm lost and don't know where to go!" game, I have added a new mini map feature at the behest of my #1 playtester and daughter- but to a degree. I went and looked at the entire bazillion x bazillion square map and using MS paint made a pixel by pixel accurate mini map at a scale of 1:16. Yes, this sucked and took about 4-5 hours total but the good news is that it's 100% completely accurate and shows your location with a flashing dot.

The catch- and oh yes, there is one- Is that though I've made the new item "Fragile Map" available right near the mine's entrance it's FRAGILE and will rip / break after only 9 views. It's to be used more as a last resort type of thing than a total crutch. Otherwise, people would constantly be checking their map while they play and that's not the type of gameplay I was going for with this. In addition to it being limited, it's also completely done in monochrome browns and stuff so it's not terribly useful.

BUT for you map guys out there, there's also an Improved Map to be found that's not only unlimited uses but full color as well. This will allow for easy pinpointing of where you are located with ease. But this map's not easy to get to, so I feel it's pretty balanced overall.

Both maps can be accessed through the game's main Pause menu by pressing the ESC key.

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All the pets have been placed, every boss enemy and treasure is set..
Soon enough guys, soon enough!!

Hi everybody, well the game is essentially done I just have 4 more people who are playtesting it through now to give some more feedback on it and how it may be improved if necessary.

When I get the demo ready I'll post the link here, thanks and have a good day!

It's done, guys! There's a free 10 minute demo and the full version which are both available at my website here: Please login to see this link.

Any gameplay questions and stuff, please ask away here and I'll help you out.

Bump to say that an improved version of the game (with a save system now) is up on Greenlight!

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Take a look and if you like what you see please upvote it!

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Thanks!

Well, it's not greenlit yet but it's getting there!

In the meantime I've been working more on making some much-needed improvements and it's really coming along great. I was able to do a proper opening title screen with moving bits and a better menu, as well as a much better options menu which allows the player to switch from windowed / fullscreen. Before my fullscreen method was getting screwed up with the Steam overlay but after some tweaking and testing through the Steam client that doesn't happen anymore

Some more graphical improvements were done as well. For example I've replaced the overworld's background from a couple of sandy dunes to a vast lake with some mountains. And underground, I've changed some of the dirt sections so that the walls are much darker and provide better contrast. It's amazing how much better you can make something with some minor changes!

Thanks so much you guys!!
It's coming along so good and getting more streamlined I just know it'll do well with Joe Q. Public.

It was Greenlit on Friday, thanks everybody who voted here!
I have to get the storefront crapola set and then make some achievements but it shouldn't be too hard.