New Job

I've been a bit busy recently. I've quit my former job as a developer and got a new job as a teaching assistant at my old university. This has little to do with Excalistia and more with my inability to properly balance fulltime professional work and school (I'm doing a Master's degree in Computer Science). I guess this means I will have extra time to work on Excalistia.

There hasn't been any real progress recently. I've been thinking more about this new game, particularly about some technical aspects and the scope of the game. I think I want to release it in small mostly-self-contained chapters or episodes; it's more manageable and makes it easier to produce deliverables. Even if I don't end up making the full game, the first chapter will have some sort of closure and will be at least 2 hours long.

The thing that might require a lot of work is producing all the sprites and animations needed for the platforming elements. I'm thinking of commissioning a pixel artist to help me with these sprites, but it's still too early to think about this. I'd rather not work on any additional resources until I get the basic engine ready, because you never know what happens until then.

Speaking of sprites, I've been modifying the mutant's sprite for a while. The initial concepts were too small on screen, so I tried making it bigger, but that only produced bulkier muscled sprites. With some guidance from TFT (the concept artist) I was able to improve the character and make it more comical. TFT still doesn't like it but I can't think of ways to make it any better. Feel free to leave any suggestions for improvement as comments. Here's the progress of the sprite:




Since you're still here, I thought I'd point you to some really good artists who are currently doing commissions. I've worked with all of them and they are heavily recommended and their work is definitely worth the price:

• Ocean's Dream's pixel commissions


• Nessiah concept art and sprites


• TFT's concept art and sprites

Yeah, I know I just listed the three people who read this blog! But someday Excalistia will be very famous and fans will be digging through old blog posts looking for links to click. You just wait...

In other news this blog's host has changed from avalanchestudios.net to avalanchehosting.com, the transition was very smooth thanks to ramirez, the guy who pays for these hosts (he also pays for the domain name, excalistia.com). He's a great guy, so if you ever end up in finland and run into a guy reading a C++ book next to the same guy but listening to porcupine tree instead, offer the nerdier one a $5 donation.

That's all for today, I guess.

Core Gameplay

Excalistia is a 2D game combining elements from several game genres. The player controls one of two characters, but not at the same time. The two characters work together to advance in the game. What sets this apart from most other games where you control different characters to solve puzzles is that in Excalistia, the two characters work independently; they don't meet eachother, and they go through contrasting environments. You have a conman who can only work in cities and humanly populated areas, while the mutant is limited to exploring dungeons across the wasteland.

Gameplay-wise, the mutant segments emphasize platforming, exploration, puzzle-solving and minimal interaction with others. The conman's segments on the other hand focus on role-playing, he has to use his charisma and wits to inquire, convince, threaten, and scam others. The game's premise is that the dying mutant is trying to find a cure to his condition, but since he can't freely enter human cities (he can't even speak), he needs inside assistant. That's where the conman comes in. The conman's task is to learn more about the mutant's disease, and to find a cure; while the mutant is tasked with finding ways to get the conman between cities (the wasteland is off-limits for humans), and to find certain items that will aid the conman. You can easily switch between the two characters most of the time.

I want the experience to be seamless. Just because the conman and the mutant operate in different modes, doesn't mean that it will feel that way. In fact, the conman can still do things like climbing or jumping, but it isn't very beneficial in the city environment. Likewise, the mutant can't talk, and there aren't many people to interact with in the wasteland. Both gameplay modes are actually the same mode, but it's just more natural and useful for the mutant to climb, jump, and fight bosses, and for the conman to talk to people.

Speaking of bosses, the game has no battles in the traditional sense. The conman sometimes gets into duels using a simplified battle system. Duels are story-oriented and aren't about stats. The mutant also gets into some boss battles, but each of them is actually a puzzle where you have to figure out how to beat the boss. The game is very minimal and has no stats. You can still get money and key items, but those are story-related and don't have a real impact on the actual gameplay mechanics. One exception is the body parts the mutant could equip as his limbs fall off (e.g. equip fins to be able to swim), but I'll talk about that in a future post.

There's more to the gameplay, but I hope you now have a good idea of the core system, everything else is built on top of the basic elements I discussed here. It's a game where you control two characters to solve puzzles, but here the puzzles aren't as simple as "one character operates a switch, while the other goes through a door", it works on a larger scale to provide what I hope to be a fresh and entertaining experience.