Looking At Other Developers Games

Looking at…Gun☆Cat by Team gun cat

Hi folks, this’ll be another one of them there looking at games posts.

GUN CAT

A top down 3D shooter by some indie developers…that was cancelled years ago. But I might as well share it because there is a demo…somewhere.

It’s kind of like Nameless but artius turns into a cat.

 

(I don’t think that music was done by them)

Project Gun Cat has some pretty good modelling work, art and animation.

I mean, look at that…alligator clip enemy!

 

 

The story apparently involves you getting stuck in some shady game show of some sort? I’m not really sure to be honest, but really I would assume most people were intrigued by this project mainly for the characters, art, animation and gameplay. Apparently the main cat can’t actually use magic so they use guns as a substitute for that.

 

 

There’s some charming visual effects they create, I think in this example the flame blobs are hand animated, then spawned in as a plane, what a way to go. From what I’ve glanced on the project, it seems to be inspired by several games like Klonoa (artistically?), Spiral Knights, and ….call of duty…

 

I mean Pikopik was even nice enough to post their top secret complex nuclear launch code math formula to make that sun object squash and stretch…just like my life…it squashes and stretches…(wat)

I went to nostalgia town, cringed a bit. But then found this old pixel art I did of an anime slime waifu character. kawaii no desu?

I went to nostalgia town, cringed a bit. But then found this old pixel art I did of an anime slime waifu character. kawaii no desu?

Notice how that formula can even be used for other games…like a 2d game! imagine…a slime bouncing around and adjusting it so that it’s weight x height = volume. so then…uh….

if i wanted to stretch my spooky slime sideways, id uh…um…

width = 2 (instead of 1)

height = 1/width?

…I’m not even sure that is correct, you can see that even I am not 100% sure how to do maths and yet I still make games. how lame.

…or is it width = 2/height?…wait how do i make this flexible and easy to code so i can adjust these on the fly…wait then i think that’s not right…um….im not sure, maybe i gotta test it out…eh but seems possibly correct…but yeah not sure…because how do i make the maths adjustable…especially when i use different scaling variables for things like facing direction and even damage flinch…uhhhhhh….????

The game oozes charm with a really interesting UI, I’ve always pondered on how to code a rounded circle bar for UI (though honestly I prefer a straight bar for readability).

 

 

 

Oh yeah, this is game development after all…so there probably are posts on bugs they’ve encountered…

 

 

Bugs are a what you will spend 95% of your time fixing when making games, have fun!

…

unfortunately, I’m not really even sure what exactly stopped Gun Cat Kun’s development. It’s clear that the developers have split, I’ve read that something happened to one of them and then they couldn’t continue without them…but it’s extremely ambiguous to know for sure, that’s the internet for ya.

Anyways, perhaps one day you too can fight forest fires like gun cat. Gun Star Heroes Cat is a great anime. highly recommend.

-Brandon

Looking at…Item Haver by Videochess

Hi gang, while I’m still chipping away at Ato, I’m gonna go ahead and do a post on another game that I thought would be cool to talk about.

Item Haver by VideoChess

 

It’s a lighthearted exploration platformer set in a world populated by cute humanoid animals and powerful elementals. In this world, the wishes of animals are granted in the form of treasures and creatures called “wishborn.”

That precious (penguin?) boy is Item Haver and is a wishborn. And they gotta collect all the loot and equip cool toys.

It gives me vibes of kirby, paper mario, super mario, …uh…cavestory?…uh……call of duty?-…

 

 

Basically you would find treasures in the form of equipables and there would be two types, Gear and Arms. Gear are passive and Arms are active tools. Mix n’ Match and have a ball.

I love the sound of this, in fact it reminds me of a more in-depth version of Frog Hop’s charm system.

Frog Hop's Shop

Frog Hop’s Shop

In Frog Hop you could only equip one active charm and then almost as many cosmetic ones as you’d like. (Though as I look back on them, I would have done something similar to Item Haver with having passive slots and an active one (Though I probably shouldn’t say that or else I’ll get sued just like how Cuphead sued me and used my charm idea TM))

 

…Anyways, the code animation is very appparent with this game, it really reminds me of Yoshi’s Island with how the enemies will squash and stretch even though it’s a single frame of animation.

 

The dialogue system itself has some really great motion tween work too. The character portrait aesthetic is very Paper Mario esq. which is pretty awesome. Even the UI has that Kirby 64 look to it.

Just want to point out too that animating things through code can be a huge pain vs animating with an actual animation program. (At least for me coding animation through Game Maker is pretty tedious since there’s no visual real-time feedback)

 

 

The twitter feed itself is just fantastic because you really get to see all the little moments of compiled gameplay development progress. And yeah, 95% of the time you’re fixing stuff and 5% of it is actual content.

From my own experience every time you work on adding new stuff like a weapon, ability, feature or enemy, most of the time is spent trying to fine tune and fix any issues (Think of it like, you’re building a tower out of playdoh and then you decide you want to add a new section to it, well you got to make sure the new part is stable and doesn’t fall off or cause the whole thing to fall over).

Anyways, Item haver has another neat feature, a dialogue system. It’s got some really nice flavor text like shaking and sparkles.

Some great dialogue…

 

 

I enjoy the game’s twitter posts because of how you see some moments are created simply to just be fun for online viewers.

Oh yeah I did find the music for the game, but I probably shouldn’t disclose that…(don’t ask me how I got them, top secret C.I.A. classified stuff)

What I love about Item Haver:

  • Art style
  • Quirky Dialogue system
  • It makes me think of Kirbeh
  • It makes me think of Mahrio
  • It makes me think of call of duty video games.

I’m assuming it’s put on hiatus as Chess is helping out with Deltarune (it’s that unpopular game that very few people know about).

Anyways, I thought it’d be cool to talk about another random game I’ve glanced at in my spare time (which is 20 hours everyday of only looking at item haver GIFs and then 4 hours for the rest of the day contemplating my life decisions)

Thanks for reading,

-Brandon

Looking at…The Island by Marty Fun

Hey guys, today’s blog post is a little different this time, I’ll be doing a bit of commentary on a random indie game I’ve been glancing at.

A few years ago…

I was browsing social media and I found myself sucked into that twitter wormhole where you just look at other people’s profile timelines. There I’d look at random Indie developer retweets followed by another. Eventually I found myself looking at this one guy’s post…

https://www.tumblr.com/martyfun/129572207602/bounce-bounce-bounce

I didn’t think much of it at the time, but it did remember how squash and stretchy it was and the peculiar characters in it. The developer went by the username “Marty_Fun“. They were making this pixel art platforming game with charming character designs for a project called The Island.

Once in a while though, I’d look at the developer’s posts, the game he was making looked really nice.

https://www.tumblr.com/martyfun/114859385904

In fact, one day I had so much free time that I went through most of their tumblr posts to see how the game had changed…and…WELL…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXeyuAzdJ0U

…this game had started ~10 years ago!

It’s kind of amazing how many times this game has been refactored and reiterated. I don’t even have complete knowledge on all the versions and different avenues Marty went through.

As I was browsing through their tumblr, I saw an old download link for one of the old versions of the game. I played it and liked what I experienced even if it was incomplete and still in alpha. I’m not going to go through all the revisions because I feel there’s just so much stuff to cover.

I felt it would be fun to talk about some of the things I really like about how The Island does it’s visuals and game feel.

First off, Marty is a really good at pixel art, way better than I am (or maybe I’m just more impatient and overly focused on getting content done). They way they do their line-art and shading is very reminiscent of Game Boy Advance pixel art from games like mario and luigi superstar saga and mother 3.

https://www.tumblr.com/martyfun/130124663454

They have a really good sense of designing particle effects in their game. I love the “8 spiked orange translucent flicker” that happens on impact, It really adds an elastic feel to the impacts (It’s not even that complicated of an effect to pull off either). Even the tiny yellow stars and twinkles add that charming level of polish that in some ways reminds me of cavestory.

https://www.tumblr.com/martyfun/100015152449

Just look at how much the boss’ head squashes on impact, that in combination with the motion blur from the attack and stars really sell the hit.

It honestly doesn’t surprise me why this guy is more popular than I am.

I could go on and on, but the game has really good art and effects. I don’t know what Marty Fun has been working on now but I just thought I’d share a game that has been on my eye. Perhaps in the future I’ll do a blog post again someday on other random games I’ve looked at in the past (or maybe even ones I’ve already played!)

-Brandon