Hey everyone. We want to submit Specter to the IGF and would really appreciate some feedback!
Specter is an action-platformer which borrows a lot of our favorite tried-yet-true mechanics from the genre and meshes them, all while adding some new concepts to the mix.
You play as king Harold who's castle has been overtaken by spirits. While otherwise reasonably pleasant neighbors, they decided to not longer tolerate the loud parties and drunken noblemen, puking on their sacred grounds.
Thus they raided the castle, possessing Harold's sweet skull decorations and stripping him of his abilities.
Now he must trudge through his haunted halls, feeling remorse, and reclaim his lost skills.
So much for the set up...
The game revolves around the king’s abilities. You’ll be receiving a new ability after the completion of just about every level (attacks/activations are inspired by the Kirby series), and you’ll be using your abilities during both battles and platforming sequences.
There you are going to encounter obstacles such as walkways that flip around when struck by your dashing attack, or platforms that only appear when struck by a charged projectile (a more literal approach to “action-platforming” if you will).
The theme of Specter’s gameplay is critical thinking. We want players to constantly be thinking about the most efficient attack to use on a group of enemies, or quickly assessing a simplistic puzzle, before leaping forward in narrow escape of rising lava.
This concept is encouraged in combat with elements like time limits during battle segments, and valuable rewards for speedy battle playthroughs (such as boosted max HP, secondary effects for your attacks, or even unlocking special attacks).
We want platforming in Specter to revolve a little less around precision, and more around thinking before you leap... ranging from quickly assessing a jump, to full-fledged puzzles.
We are three people working on this. I'm doing the programming and Blair the art/game design. The music is by Jonah Backfish
It might be interesting to mention that I live in Germany, while the other two guys are from the US. We do all of our communication via Skype, and share files via Dropbox (and git for the code). The 6 hour time difference was something to get used to, but it's working well now.
Currently I'm using XNA, but I really want to port it to MonoGame as a lot of my friends only run Linux and I want to support the Linux game dev community.
We are looking mainly for feedback on level design, but any criticism is welcome!
Cheers, Dario
