Extinction Island - Demo out Now!
Hi everyone!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Grab the demo here! (2021)
https://davidnight.itch.io/extinction-island
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DEVLOG START: (2020))
Busy working on a Run and Gun platformer with dinosaurs.. cause well dinosaurs, come on!
Devlog #01:
I've just uploaded my first dev-log. Feel free to check it out. :)
I'll update some progression here as development continues.
Discord:
I have a discord channel if you're interested in following the project more closely. :) - https://discord.gg/be47h594aQ
Comments
Controls do look pretty tight, though can't say without actually trying it myself. Placeholders look like placeholders and that's great, other bits look pretty.
I have some input on some of the things if you'd like to hear. Lemme know.
Or if you want, you can also drop it here.
Other than that, the game looks and moves like a Braid + Meatboy lovechild and that's not bad.
The next dev-log I do will be a combat update with the dinosaurs :) Raptors, Combis, Meganeura and a T-Rex.
One thing I'd pay some attention to is using values/colour to distinguish between foreground (or interactive) elements and those that aren't. You've already got some nice atmospheric perspective/fog in there, but if a tree is in the foreground and you can't interact with it then imo for gameplay clarity it should not have the same visual treatment as things that you can interact with, especially if it's action-packed.
The video with the boulders has nice tense moments!
- For me it's quicker to get a large amount of assets out.
- Haha yeah just noticed that. (The image was flipped)
- Further update to the forest scene with an update to the player character.
Velociraptor update:
I'm guessing you're going more for JP/JW canon than realism though so understandable :)
Yeah going for the more older JP style so no feathers. xD Might change, we'll see.
Thank you for all your help so far. You've been a great community! :smile:
Download:
Itch - https://davidnight.itch.io/extinction-island
GameJolt - https://gamejolt.com/games/ExtinctionIsland/537167
Up-vote the Announcement:
https://itch.io/t/1156142/extinction-island-run-and-gun-platformer-with-dinosaurs-demo-out-now
Rate the game:
https://davidnight.itch.io/extinction-island
Anything will help push this game up in the rankings!
Meanwhile, I'm really curious - how effective was posting that general announcement in drawing traffic to the game? (Downloading/playing traffic, particularly - I don't know why itch prioritises viewing traffic in the analytics because I don't really care about the number of people viewing a page, I want to know about the people who are actually playing.) I saw it got a lot of upvotes, which is great.
I believe that getting the rating up and having it high on the popular grid helped more than anything.
The higher your rating. The longer you stay up there.
Hey, wow this is excellent! I enjoyed the demo very much.
The platformer controls are buttery smooth and there's a lot of little mechanics that are a lot of fun (slope jumping, wall knife latch) and the exploration/collect aspects add a lot of fun gameplay. I liked how you use sound to indicate locations of secret areas, instead of say an offscreen indicator or some other means.
The atmosphere sucks you in and I jumped when the first dinosaur ran past in the foreground, haha.
I would like it more if the stalactites fell a little bit slower, but then the game difficulty would probably drop as well. :)
Great job, I can see a lot of work has gone into it and it's very polished already. I wish you good luck and success in your continued development of this great little platformer.
https://itch.io/
https://mandyjwatson.itch.io/
https://itch.io/games/duration-minutes/genre-adventure/html5/platform-web/tag-text-based
https://itch.io/games/free/html5/made-with-twine/tag-text-based
although I've never run a test with an announcement or an update post to see if that puts a unique URL into the analytics or if it just gets dumped under generic "itch.io".
Feedback time!
First of all, sorry, but I didn't have much time at all, just squeezed in a quick few minutes between lunch and getting back to work.
Everything seems polished and it's a great start... but not much point talking about the many good things here.
I will just drop some critical feedback, keeping in mind everything is still in development of course.
My left hand is incredibly dumb, so right off the bat I had to reconfigure my keys so the Arrows are bound to movement using Right hand, and left hand is pressing a few special keys like jump, roll, etc.. and just as it felt great to me, I suddenly got the Melee instruction, bound to mouse... and at that point my setup failed :) - I had no way to assign the Melee to a left-hand key instead.
So that is honestly my biggest issue - the default control scheme does not suit me, and the reconfiguration is not fully implemented (unless I missed something).
Also - full gamepad support would have instantly solved this.
(BTW - I have similar control drawbacks in my own game, and several people complain about it - no ability to re-assign keys right now. To me the default setup feels amazing, but to others it is not great. So this is also on my list to fix very soon).
Yeah looking at ways to make it a little easier actually so will look at the gravity of the falling spikes.
@watman the analytics are quite good but yeah it doesn't discern specifics.
Cool thing to note. I got the largest spike when I posted to a ton of different groups on reddit and facebook on the same day vs the release on itch.
@mgeorgedeveloper thanks for the feedback!
So for keyboard you need the mouse to aim your gun so it made sense to lock the attack keys to the mouse too.
Currently working on a new build with controller support. It's in but just bug fixing a few things. :D
Good luck with your game too!