[Project] Rift Ninja

edited in Projects
I've been working on my first game for about a year and a half: it's a 2d rouge-lite action platformer with the working title Rift Ninja. The core gameplay involves free-flowing movement in combat and platforming on the one hand, and getting loot and powering up your character on the other hand. This is all wrapped up in a lot of (hopefully meaningful) variation through procedurally generated levels and randomized item spawns.

The project still has a long way to go in many ways and there are a lot of rough edges, so I want to throw it up here to get some of your thoughts and feedback. Any feedback or discussion is most welcome, but I feel somewhat lost at sea when it comes to things like the visuals, themes and character design, so any advice or suggestions on how to approach this stuff without having strong artistic abilities would be greatly appreciated. And if you think you might be interested in getting involved in that side of the project, please let me know!

Anyway, give the game a whirl if it looks interesting and let me know what you think!

Keyboard Controls:
arrow keys for left/right/up/down
v = jump
c = attack
x = spell
z = ranged attack
enter = use/interact
shift = look

Download links: (last updated 7 September 2017)
Windows (64-bit)
Mac (64-bit)

Gameplay gif:
(gifv link)
image

Sample generated levels:
image
image
Thanked by 1critic

Comments

  • Nice! I played for a fair bit. Here are some thoughts for now:

    Don't worry about graphics just yet. The graphics you have are more than functional enough for now. Work on the game design and get the feel just right, then you can come back and add better graphics. If it's fun with these placeholder graphics, it'll definitely be more fun with better graphics. Adding graphics early might push in a certain design direction that might not be best for the game. For example, right now I didn't really feel like a ninja, so if you had spent a lot of time coming up with the perfect ninja graphics then that time might have been wasted.

    At the moment it feels like the game is a bit hard. I think it might b a little "developer hard,' where as the developer you keep playing the game and getting good at it, so you adjust the difficulty upwards. I played fora fair bit, but I only once got an unlockable, and then I didn't know how to use it or what it would do, so I tried it once and used up most of my mana :/ I think you should consider being quite generous with the unlockables and have a bit more of a difficulty curve. Maybe the very basic enemies only need one hit to kill, but then on a later level you have a whole swarm of them, or enemies that need more hits?

    The choice to make the game procedural has some pros and cons. What is your thinking around this? My feeling is that it should if you include it, be a core part of the game somehow. Maybe there's a meta game where you can build up some character skill? Or maybe it's more like Spelunky and there's a main quest you need to overcome through many attempts?
  • I also had a quick play and the game is very "developer hard", some thoughts are below.

    [-]First off I think there is something wrong with the camera, playing at full screen 1080p I have a headache ATM (literally), it bounces very hard, made a video to show you what is happening.
    [-]There is no sense of direction or purpose, a mini-map would be nice, or just an arrow that points you somewhere.
    [-]Seems that your position is randomized after dying, it just makes things more confusing.
    [-]I haven't played Spelunker types of games since my C64 days, but I found that I was fighting with your control scheme, something that was unnoticeable in the original.
    [-]I suggest you map the action keys to WASD-QE, everyone plays FPS games and it's a lot less attention grabbing than the zxc-as scheme.
    [-]I actually liked the art and the little space helmet, it's decent, it wouldn't look out of place on Steam indie lineup.

    I would give more feedback if I wasn't fighting with the camera and the controls, game feels decent, looks decent and sound decent.


    Thanked by 1upside
  • critic said:
    I suggest you map the action keys to WASD-QE, everyone plays FPS games and it's a lot less attention grabbing than the zxc-as scheme.
    Personally I actually prefer arrow keys plus zxc (especially for platformers), and hate it when every game assumes I like WASD, but heh, each to their own :)
  • edited
    Maybe I phrased it wrong, arrow keys are fine for the right hand, while the left hand is used to FPS, it's muscle memory, as you say, it's down to personal preference.
  • Thanks for the feedback guys :)
    Don't worry about graphics just yet. The graphics you have are more than functional enough for now. Work on the game design and get the feel just right, then you can come back and add better graphics. If it's fun with these placeholder graphics, it'll definitely be more fun with better graphics.
    That's definitely been my attitude so far. I guess I'm just a bit worried because I feel like I don't have the skills to make it look good when the time comes. I think I might try to do something really simple and abstract and just throw character design and world building out the window.

    Regarding difficulty... yes, I think you are both right, it's too hard. I've obviously played the game a tonne and I've kind of gravitated towards making it interesting for myself. I do want the game to be challenging, because I expect the primary player motivation to be mastering the game, but I think if it's too difficult for a new player they'll just put the game down and never come back to it. So ja, I definitely need to work on the difficulty curve.

    I think the procedural generation is absolutely core to the gameplay I'm aiming for. The game is structured kind of similarly to Spelunky or The Binding of Isaac, in that there is a more-or-less linear progression from level to level and then eventually you beat the final level and win or you die trying. These games are really about a 'mastery loop', where on each run you make mistakes and learn more about the enemies and the game, and gradually your skill improves and you make fewer mistakes until eventually you reach a level of mastery where you can consistently win runs. Without procedural generation you generally won't get this effect in all but the most dedicated speed-run level players, because most players will learn how to deal with each specific challenge as it comes up, and then never have much reason to replay the game or to improve their skills. Procedural generation allows players to keep improving their skills by dealing with the same enemies and challenges in slightly different situations over and over again without becoming too stale (hopefully). Somehow it just feels really good to me to play through endless remixes of familiar elements in different variations and rhythms.
    critic said:
    [-]First off I think there is something wrong with the camera, playing at full screen 1080p I have a headache ATM (literally), it bounces very hard, made a video to show you what is happening.
    That's not supposed to happen, sorry! The camera is supposed to be centered on the player unless you use the look key to move the camera around. Something like this has happened before, but I don't remember quite what caused it. Are you playing on a Mac? Maybe try rebinding the look key in the launcher?
    critic said:
    [-]There is no sense of direction or purpose, a mini-map would be nice, or just an arrow that points you somewhere.
    [-]Seems that your position is randomized after dying, it just makes things more confusing.
    Ja, I've thought about maybe showing the player the position of the exit at the start of each level somehow but I haven't tried it out yet. I think a mini-map will definitely help and it's something I'm planning to do, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Spelunky didn't really have this problem because you knew you were always supposed to progress downwards, whereas in this game the level layouts are more free-form.

    Regarding the controls, I'm not really sure what the best layout is for keyboard. One of my friends who played it also thought the controls were weird, he wanted QWE + space. But I think zx is pretty standard for platformers, and I took the zxas setup straight from Spelunky. So I'm not sure, definitely something to play around with. Ideally though everyone should just use a controller :P
    Thanked by 2critic francoisvn
  • The camera issue happens just by tapping left/right arrow keys on default setup, I'm playing on windows.
  • edited
    Hmm, that's annoying. In the video you posted it's acting like the joystick look x-axis is stuck on. When you move, the camera jumps back to the character, which is how it would work if you had a controller with the look analog stick stuck to the right. So it seems like the game is picking up unintended joystick input from something. I think I used to get this kind of thing when I was flying drones and I had some radio input translation software installed. Maybe in the launcher try set the Look X and Look Y input to some random keys and see if that helps.
  • That must be it, I do have a joystick connected, it's idle though.
  • Looks fluid, fluid is nice. Especially intoxicating large quantities! xD
    Which engine are you using ?

    I like that part where you jump up towards the enemy, dodge it's throwy thingies, shoot and finally knife it haha
  • Thanks :)
    I'm using Unity and coding in C#. There's been a few issues here and there but overall I've found Unity to be pretty nice to work with.
  • So keen for more levels!
    Thanked by 1upside
  • edited
    @francoisvn already said it, but it doesn't feel like a ninja game at the moment, apart from wall jumping (which is standard in a lot of platformers), standing on enemy heads (which is cool), and the ducking under enemy attacks (which is quite ninja-like).

    I didn't figure out what getting the blue gem gave me. It seemed like mana-points, but I didn't know what to do with them.

    I don't know if you have to make this a ninja-like experience, but if you did want that I'd suggest reducing the health on both the enemies and the player. Ninjas are glass-cannons that evade enemy attacks (or outsmart enemies) and ninjas kill their enemies swiftly. I think you could make the bad-guys even more predictable in some cases, even if that's by outlining the path of their projectiles or ramming direction.

    If you're going the ninja route, I think it makes sense to make the player very powerful when they take on an enemy alone, but make the enemies do a bit of teamwork. Like having an enemy that grabs the ninja and holds the ninja for a bit, which is dangerous when coupled with another enemy but not at all dangerous on its own (a little like what happens in that old arcade game "Spartan X").



    I like that there's upgrades in the game. Though the flame boots aren't the kind of upgrade I'd expect (and it sort of encourages running away, which isn't incentivising fun really). I'd expect more ninja-like gadgets and more mobility and more stealth options.

    Have you played "Rogue Legacy"? It's a procedurally generated platformer with upgrades. It's a bit old now, but I think it's still the best of it's type. I think it has a really good meta-game, and I think a ninja-themed version of it could be quite rad. Like a "Mark of The Ninja" meets "Rogue Legacy" hybrid.

    Thanked by 1upside
  • Thanks for taking the time to play my game and give feedback!

    I think I'm actually going to be moving away from the ninja theme, since I haven't invested much energy into it yet, and as you and Francois pointed out it doesn't really fit the gameplay. My current idea for the setting is that the universe is made up of many different planes, sort of like the magic the gathering universe, and the player somehow gets trapped in a kind of prison or purgatory plane. The unique thing about this particular plane is that whenever any living thing in it dies, it reincarnates in a parallel version of the same thing, so that everything is stuck there forever. In order to escape you need to do a thing and beat the game. This would explain the whole rougelike system, and it might also speak to the player experience in a sort of meta way in that they are (hopefully) replaying the same game over and over, like how NorthernLion sometimes jokes about being 'stuck' making Isaac content forever.

    I like the idea of an enemy that disables the player but is only really dangerous when coupled with other enemies! I'll add that to my list of enemy ideas.

    The blue crystal does indeed increase your mana, but you need a ranged weapon to be able to spend the mana. It's annoying to have mana upgrades but no way to use the mana. I'm not sure if that's a game design problem I need to address or if it's just part of the negative variance that players will have to deal with. In the latest build of the game (which I'll be uploading this week) there are more ways of getting ranged weapons, so the likelihood of this situation happening is somewhat reduced.

    The flame boots are a bit weird (and a bit weak), but my thinking is that it is an item that needs synergies to make it worthwhile. For example if you have the shadow walk spell you can run through enemies and the flame trail you leave behind will give you some extra damage. I'm also planning to have effects that proc whenever you deal damage, and the boots could be a way to get lots of procs.

    I have played Rouge Legacy, and it was one of the inspirations for this game. However, I do feel that Rouge Legacy is quite shallow in a number of ways, particularly in that the variation between runs is quite superficial and there is very little decision-making to be done during the runs themselves. I'm aiming for more of an Isaac-like experience where on each run you choose items and invest resources based on synergies with other items and the unique situation you find yourself in.
  • Hi guys, here's an update with all the stuff I've been working on since I first posted the game! I've updated the download links in the OP but I'll also put them here:
    Windows
    Mac

    Here's a screenshot showing off some of the new stuff:
    image

    List of changes:
    * Fleshed out the loot and economy with two new resource types and ways to spend them
    * Added a minimap and also a larger map in the pause menu
    * Levels now tend to be laid out left to right
    * Added a few new items
    * Added a new early-game enemy and tweaked behaviors of existing enemies
    * Lots of tweaks and balance changes
    * Changed keyboard controls to z,x,c,v

    There's a couple things in particular that I would really appreciate feedback on. One thing is the difficulty level - how do you guys feel about it now? I have some thoughts but I don't want to influence any feedback. Something to be aware of is that this build definitely has much more variation in difficulty from one run to the next.

    The other question that I have is about the text that pops up when you pick stuff up. I think the current implementation works okay when there's only one or two things, but it can easily become an unreadable mess when you pick up a bunch of things at once (like when a golden chest pays out well). How would you guys handle this? Do you think the text is necessary in the first place?

    I made a quick mockup of the ideas I had. Idea A is to have all the resources 'accumulate' above the player's head like gold does. Idea B is to have no text above the player or in the world but instead put it next to the resource counters in the UI. I don't really love either of these solutions, so I'm curious to hear what you guys think.

    As always, all feedback and questions are most welcome!

    image

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