Shadow Reliving
About:
Shadow Reliving is a puzzle platformer game about an alchemist being reborn with an unusual power and going on a journey to remember their past life.
Credits:
Burush - Programming & Design
WhiteWJ - Art, Animations & Design
Game Design Document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18KH_P5mBJdWbbgc1oPhJi5QZSBtQieIYSYaT295cO5Q/...
Comments
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This is a pretty good proof of concept for a platforming game. The experience is quite short so I don't have too many notes, but here's a few.
- Depending on how the final game will look, I envision the shadow mechanic maybe having some issues. Right now it's a pure enhancement of the moveset, which will force the level design to become very obvious (you'll be forced to put crystals wherever the shadow form is needed, which will probably tell the player exactly what they need to do). This can work if you're envisioning a celeste type platformer, but might run out of legs, especially if the plan is a more metroidvania style game.
- A better approach might then be to instead give both forms their own abilities, and let the player figure out which form is required in a certain location, ditching the crystals entirely. Right now you just want to be in shadow mode whenever you can be.
- If you decide to keep the crystals, you can maybe do some interesting stuff by extending the form when you continue to pick up crystals. That can create some challenges where the player needs to keep up the pace to maintain their form.
Other than that, I like the visuals and the audio and music are a good fit. There's a lot of ways you can take the concept from here but the groundwork is pretty nice. Good job!
Nice concept, although I would prefer if the light-side form had its own abilities the shadow form doesn't have, and then have the shadow fulfill its own conditions for a transformation. I think in the long run, it could open up opportunities for some interesting gameplay choices - which heart-pieces to collect, when to perform the transformation and the like.
Other than that, there wasn't much content to the game, so I can't quite tell how good potential the intended mechanics had. I did like the audiovisuals; I especially adore the main character's design. ^^
The moment I saw the art for this game, I knew I would adore it. And I was right! From the gentle music of the main menu to the stylistic visuals of the character sprites and their movements, this was a very polished and charming little experience. And I can't stress enough how great the character looks!
The character movement is fun and fluid, although I will say I found the wall jump to be a bit tricky to do between walls. It just stopped sometimes. I eventually got it though. Also, the bottom right most corner where you need to wall jump, you can get stuck on an invisible wall.
Regarding the gameplay as a whole, I thought the idea of having the soul form given all the different platforming abilities was creative! And limiting it to a resource seemed like a good way to prevent sequence breaking by using the powers when you were not supposed to. I do think that the audio cue for when you were about to transform back was a nice touch, although it could sometimes be missed.
Overall, this is a game I really hope you continue work on, and I look forward to seeing where it goes!
In the last hour of development we completely changed the tilemaps and one of them had a slightly lower elevation, causing the bug, we caught one before publishing but overlooked all the other platforms, that will get fixed.
I was thinking about adding a duration bar that decreases as a part of visual UI to know when the shade form expires, but didn't get it done in time, it is a little unclear when you go back to the regular light form. (It's exactly 5 seconds fyi)
Wall-jumps are probably the least polished part of the moveset, there aren't wall cling or wall-jump animations either, there are a lot of values to fiddle with before it plays and looks exactly as we envision it.
Thank you for your kind words!
With the obvious exception of this being extremely short this is really cool! What a solid foundation for a game.
Firstly the art is great, I love the character, their animations and the transformation it's all really well done and fluid! The environment tilesets are really solid and well done too. A little more variety would have been nice.
The audio was fine and SFX matched really well.
The character movement is SUPER solid and well done, I like that there are different abilities between soul states. Could be a really cool metroidvania mechanic to have soul state specific abilities or something in the future.
The story being told is quite interesting, I'm looking forward to seeing how it explored in the future if you continue to develop the game.
This was really fun, I hope you do more :)
Cool game and backstory!
That was a fun pretty demo which I really enjoyed. The character design reminds me of a mix between toothless and hornet which is amazing. I am excited for more
Thank you! Hornet was definitely an inspiration, the toothless was more of a coincidence, but it's a compliment that our artist gladly takes!
Pretty cool! I like the idea of splitting game play between the two forms! I accidentally missed some dialogue/instruction my first go through by accident but figured it out.
Thank you! The tutorials were done in the last half an hour, so they're a little clunky, it will definitely be more polished in the future.
Hey cool graphic style! I love the music. It was a bit weird at the beginning to deal with controls but I got it. I would highly recommend to continue working on with next parts and some polish of the game. Nice concept with turning into shadow, maybe you could figure out some more interesting mechanincs? Bests!
Thank you for your nice feedback! The music was actually royalty-free, but I was scrolling for a while to find something fitting for the game.
Regarding the controls, there definitely will be an option to change key bindings, right now I kept it as I'm used to playing platformers, but honestly, the default should be WASD/arrow keys and zxc, not jkl.
The long-term goal is to make a more clear split between puzzling in light form and platforming in the shade form, and add a lot more story. There probably will be moving boxes, levers, mirrors reflecting rays of light (and preventing the shade from crossing?), there are a bunch of ideas we're eager to put out.