Snailboy: Rise of Hermitron - Now Available on the iTunes Store World Wide

edited in Projects
Hi Guys,

We are very excited to announce the release of Snailboy: Rise of Hermitron. It's the second game in its franchise and we will be ready to soft launch in Ireland, Canada and South Africa in about 2 weeks time.

Once again we are eager to entertain gamers but with added features, enlarged environments, killer graphics and rewarding gameplay.

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Key Features
  • Sling, stick, swim and bounce through 25 levels.
  • Collect Slimeys to power up your Super Abilities.
  • Use awesome Power Ups.
  • Find secret caves with hidden treasures.
  • Earn Achievement badges for every level.
  • Get to the Boss Level and save the Kingdom.
  • Master Game Play.

Trailer



Thoopid Website
Thanked by 1SisandaAsante

Comments

  • This is so awesome. Very interesting direction you guys took with the new setting. Will give some feedback once I played the Prototype for a bit.
  • Played the prototype and I have to say it just even more fun than the first one.

    Really like the new features. I know it is still early in Development, but there sometimes seems to be a bug with the controls like the tap and hold with the swimming. Doesn't always work. But hey, it is still a prototype.

    I like the new setting of the game and the super jump is awesome.
  • So I played the first five (only five?) levels. Herewith are my stream of consciousness thoughts:

    Moving around long lateral distances is not very fun using slingshots. Better to use jump pads and slides. Ah, I see you introduce this in lvl 3. You could do this in many different ways. Instead of jump pads transporting you only up, how about three jump pads in row on the ground. This could lead to very rewarding slings were you bounce from pad to pad. Also the concept of an "ice" slide could be used to great effect here.

    I notice as I played the game this frustration became diminished the more I was jumping "up" and having to aim my landing on platforms. I.e. don't make me aware of the lack of run function

    Bubbles = secret. Cool! I love secrets! Tapping on the treasure chest wasn't very obvious (may be a pc convention failing vs touch) Collect the gems wasn't as fun as it should have been - because I had to jump multiple times to collect all of them. Would be better if they had an magnetic attractor to snail boy. Also, treasure seems to have no benefit?

    Different collectables in level is cool

    Swim mechanic is cool. But once i started to use it it was a bit finicky. Often would swim the other way to what I expected. Took me a while to figure out the tap left/ tap right convention. Dont' know if that would be more obvious on mobile. Also had a tough time getting useful swims out of him. Would often miss platforms.

    It occurs to me there could be a solution that might be a double win. I spent a lot of time doing a mini jumps to get to the edge of platforms for accuracy. That feels a bit meh. Maybe you could double up the swim mechanic with a very slow "walk/crawl" mechanic for the purpose of lining up jumps. This would replace the slap and would get players used to left/right convention

    Icons on level select screen can read better. When I only had a few highlighted it was hard to tell which one were which. Perhaps if there was a consistent metaphor like an outer glow

    Slime by the exit is lame. I have no use for it anymore, and if I hit the exit before the slime I lose my found all slime status

    Level 5 tap button on far right didn't do anything. Ah I see you need to push it to turn on bubbles later. Yeah, I trying to collect all the slime I went off the beaten track first. Learnt behaviour as a gamer. Even so people are bad at following directions so the tap button needs some contextualization.

    Enemies have no consequence The don't remove slime. You just respawn. You can't kill them. Right they are just annoying

    Running out of juice is a big problem. Okay I saved this one for last, because I think I summarises the biggest thing that puts me off about the game (the rest all being things that can be tweaked). On level three I was presented with a shop. Not knowing what this was I only brought the small potion (frugal spender). I then ran out of after missing a couple of jumps. There was no way for me to recover. Had to restart the level a couple of times. Not the greatest. Also there was no way to call up the shop. I think a better way to do it is have the shop pop up when you run out of slime, in this way it's a lot more relevant. And a way to call it up at will. But that's not really where my problem lies

    There is the concept of GENEROSITY in game design. Basically the premise is that whatever is most fun about the game, the player should be able to indulge to their hearts content. Snailboy is about jumping. By adding the resource management your movement you're substantially changing the flavour of the game. What's worse is that there is a very fine line between a normal jump and a "resource" using jump. This means that I'm constantly having to check I'm doing the "right" kind of jump. That's a fun killer right there. As contrapositive when I bought the aura it felt awesome! Being able to super jump to my hearts content. I would say that should be the default mode of snailboys movement (or maybe somewhere in between the two). He is underwater after all.

    I think slime is an interesting resource, but there are other ways to make it meaningful.

    Eg
    1. Sonic rings: Protects you from enemies (although you lose your slime) and gives you lives.
    2. There is also the unlock mechanic. Collect x slime to unlock new areas. Collect x slime to unlock new items in the shop
    3. Lvl up. Collect x slime to lvl up, and so get access to new upgrades/times.
    4. Powerbar mechanic: Once fully charged you can activate a "power up mode" that last until it runs out.
    5. Meta progress. Best reference I can think of is the Rayman series. The number of lums (aka slime) you collect gives you a rating at the end. The rating is one of the ways you can earn level points. Other ways to earn level points is by finding all hidden areas etc. Rating points becomes critical to unlock both later progress (you can finish the game by doing mediocre) and bonus levels (which require lots and lots of level points)
  • edited
    Thanks for the feedback guys. Super appreciated!

    We do plan to make more than 5 levels. Just want to make sure we get it right before we jam out more levels.

    SWIM Swim is a tricky one. People love it, but we need to make it more intuitive. The aim is to Jump! Press and hold on the Left or Right of Snailboy to make him swim in that direction. We'll keep on it.

    Give it Meaning I think when we're further in development the rewards and 'meaning' of items will be more apparent. But it is an essential point for us to keep in mind. We like the enemies ideas and keen to explore that further.

    Things to consider The Gauge. We do need to make the gauge more obvious when and how it is being used. We also need to balance gameplay to make sure it is not a mechanic that is capping the fun factor of the game. Will def consider your ideas suggestions to get it right. Great crit!

    Thanks for taking the time and sharing your thoughts!
  • Hey everyone.

    We updated our first post with brand new details. Please check it out :)
    Thanked by 1TheFuntastic
  • edited
    Hi game lovers,

    We are excited to announce our global launch of Snailboy: Rise of Hermitron.

    Press Kit: http://bit.ly/2grxkfo
    App Store: Snailboy: Rise of Hermitron

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  • @thoopid, the app store link is taking me to apple.com homepage?
    Thanked by 1thoopid
  • Congratulations! How is the launch going?
    Thanked by 1thoopid
  • Congratulations! How is the launch going?
    Thanks Evan,

    Yesterday was day 1, and Google Alerts have been busy busy busy. We'll have to wait and see what has happened when analytics have been refreshed. We have a really good feeling though. #fingerscrossed
    Thanked by 1EvanGreenwood
  • Hope this has been going really well!
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