Little Four-eyes (working title)

Hectate

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I've discovered that with the larger the project I design the less likely I am to want to actually continue working on it.
So I gave up on large projects for now. Instead, here is a small project, with very tight restrictions on myself during the creation. Specifically, all tiles and actors are sized at 8x8 pixels - and in monochrome (black and white specifically) with minimal animation.

Little Four-eyes is the name of our main character, a young monster that is attending Dungeon Monster School. This is his first class, Navigating Dungeons and Mazes (as all good monsters should know how), so it is a simple platform-ish game of working out the structure of the level and locating the exit.

A sample image of the visual style is attached to this post. This is actually a level I'd made (and named, noticeably) for testing the various "enemies" for the game.

The arches are doorways that interconnect and the rectangular doorway is the level exit. Our educationally challenged monster is the one in the middle... with four eyes.

Not shown is a more recent update that adds a key to each level (if desired) which must be found before you will be able to exit.
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Patience is a Virtue,
But Haste is my Life.
Proud member of the League of Idiotic Stencylers; doing things in Stencyl that probably shouldn't be done.

Strasteo

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As stated in your previous topic, I very much like this idea, and wish you all the best in completing it. :]

irock

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I look forward to playing this. :)

knhirt

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This looks neat - I hope you finish it.

Chris

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It looks like a platformer maze game. I like the graphics, the simplicity is a very nice change of pace. Keep it up!

Hectate

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  • Posts: 4643
I appreciate everyone's kind words!
As it turns out, the most difficult part of making a maze/puzzle-based platformer is (surprise!) making entertaining, interesting, and challenging levels! It's easy to fall into the cycle of making levels like they're intended for linear, precision, or twitch platformers. There's nothing wrong with those types of platformers, but I need to keep focused on the core concept for MY game which is education through exploration.
By "education through exploration" I mean not just the game's paper-thin plot of a monster school. I'm refering to using the player's exploration and interaction with the level to educate them toward a solution.
So, i'm going to be spending some time working on level designs WITHOUT using StencylWorks. I've wasted enough time doing things in an ad-hoc manner - it's time to plan this out!
That said, I do already have more than a half-dozen levels ready, so there'll definitely be a demo soon for everyone.

and TLDR; Thanks. Still working. Demo soon.
:
:
Patience is a Virtue,
But Haste is my Life.
Proud member of the League of Idiotic Stencylers; doing things in Stencyl that probably shouldn't be done.

Ceric

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  • Posts: 610
I've found that once you get to the stage where you can do level design and have the basics down, graph paper and pencil (and a good gum eraser) is often the way to go.