It’s been brought to my attention that I haven’t been posting to the site enough in recent months. I have a good excuse though. I was working 80-100 hours a week to prepare a massive update to Afterdeath in order to enter the 2014 Independent Games Festival (while keeping a day job). The IGF is a big deal for videogames and whether Afterdeath gets much exposure from landing on page 1 of the festival’s entrants or not, the hard deadline was extremely valuable for pushing the game forward toward completion.
For perspective, this is some of what was added to Afterdeath in the 8 weeks leading up to the IGF deadline:
- three new game worlds, each with new art styles, hazards, and different gameplay themes
- three times as many levels as before
- directional sound effects that provide cues for the location of traps and hazards
- support for older DirectInput controllers (after many demands)
- tutorial elements in the first levels for new players and How To menu screens
- improved menus and scoreboards and a fullscreen/windowed toggle
- lots of new gameplay elements: rising lakes of lava, motion-triggered spike traps, swinging pendulum blades, minotaurs, robots
- now you can ride on the backs of flying eagles! (more on this in a later post)
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These were some big strides toward realizing the final vision of the game. The polished end result was this trailer for IGF:
You can get a taste of how fluid the platforming controls are in this video of a speed run through seven levels of the Greek afterlife. Each level can be completed in under 30 seconds through the application of the proper jump angles.
And finally, one more video that never found its way onto the blog. Some prototype footage of the Sucrose Sovereignty levels during their pre-IGF testing phase. The Sucrose Sovereignty is an afterlife for dearly departed candy and the levels are designed to be just as sweet and easily digestible. The candies live in an absolute monarchy ruled by a king-size chocolate bar. They’ve built their homes on the slopes of a dormant sugar volcano, which they appease every season by sacrificing large numbers of candy serfs. Unfortunately, the passing of Captain Buzzkill and Death disrupt this ritual and now there’s sugar lava everywhere! If every world of Afterdeath is a different game genre, this is the endless runner.