"Castle Keeper. What a mess. Now bring them back" - Technical preview

Box text:

Castle Keeper
What a mess! Bring them back.

You're the last surviving sorcerer's apprentice of Sorth, the dark lord of castle CantSayTheNameOrIHaveToDie. Whilst cleaning the library, you dropped the "Dark Grimoires of Sorth" to the ground and all banished creatures could escape. Now it's on you to clean up the mess.

Look for all escaped creatures and push them to the their pentagram to ban them back into the Dark Grimoires of Sorth.

How to play:

• Use the cursor keys to move cursor over a creature
• Use space bar to select creature, then cursor key to "push" creature in that direction
• Move all creatures to the pentagram of their color. Push spacebar to release.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________  ____  __   _ 
Hi all.

After my first attempt to create a puzzler ("Mayaz"), I started to develop "Castle Keeper".
Literally it's a clone of the 80s and 90s title "Brainies" (published on SNES) or "Tinies" (Macintosh, Amiga) with a slightly changed game play.

I upped a technical preview of the game mechanics and the first 15 rooms of the castle and would like to ask for feedback on overall gameplay (learning curve) and speed (how does the game feel).

-> Castle Keeper Technical Preview <-

Not implemented yet:

• Scoring
• Timer
• Some obstacles and bonuses aren't implemented yet
• Game ending (lost lives, out of time, game won)
• Game assets
• different creature types
• Sounds
• only the first 30 20 15 of 100about 90 to 110 rooms (Tutorial only)
• progressing  on the map
• game state saving
• global highscoring

While the game looks great in a flash player (clear and crisp pixels), it looks like that it is aliased if embedded in a web browser. Can someone confirm this or is this an issue with the Retina display of my MacBook?

/thankful.dripple

(And yes, the physics engine drives me nuts when it comes to old school puzzlers and platformers)
Graphics: Oryx Design Lab, Marco Sordi, Heiko Kanzler
Sound: Kevin MacLeod

To me the biggest problem would be the difficulty. I managed to finish those levels without even thinking how things should be done. There were only 2 levels where I actually had to think about how to finish them (and the timer only ran out on me once because I got distracted).
If your target audience fits in the kids category then you'll have to test with them to see how the difficulty scales up.
As for the speed...a slight increase wouldn't do no harm, but that's just personal preference.

Do try to end the game when the timer runs out...that way the difficulty gets a slight increase (for other testers).
And when you get the last dragon in his "square", there's no need to hit the Space button

Thanks for your feedback, SadiQ.

To me the biggest problem would be the difficulty. I managed to finish those levels without even thinking how things should be done. There were only 2 levels where I actually had to think about how to finish them (and the timer only ran out on me once because I got distracted).

Well, the first 12 rooms are only ment to be a tutorial (I am working on the screen elements at the moment) and to introduce most of the on-screen elements and different techniques to solve the rooms.

The rooms 13 - 15 are the first "real rooms" and thus the easiest ones in the overall game play.
The next 70 to 90 Rooms will be more challenging, promised.

Can't wait to try the rest of those rooms as I do enjoy playing puzzles

“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!”

― Benjamin Franklin

Well, game design is not only about cool development and graphic design stuff.

A lot of paperwork is there also...

(And yes, the physics engine drives me nuts when it comes to old school puzzlers and platformers)

The upcoming image API is about to make puzzlers a pleasure to make in Stencyl.

I can't wait to see it, Jon

BTW?: Could a mod please move this thread to Game Ideas? It was posted by mistake here.

It's actually been in the nightlies for a few days now under the "Sounds & Images" block category. I'm holding off on an announcement until we have a few nice tech demos ready to show what it can do, but it's all there for using already.

Thanks for letting me know. I'll give a try then.

Well, the fortune of long week ends: four days of time I can spend on my games. Okay, I have to explain my wife that this is important work, of course. 

I changed my main GameController completely as I came up during the design of the stages and rooms with some ideas I want to implement. At the end, everything is up and  working again.

- Added the final tile sets.
- Reworked the first 20 rooms.
- Added more creatures to the game play, they appear while progressing through the stages.
- Added a stage selector screen and some unlock functionality.
- Saving / loading should work automatically. Haven't it tested at the moment.

(Play the updated version here)
And back to work...

Progressing...

(Well, I think I can finish the game in the next two weeks and will participate in the Stencyl Jam 2014)

Amazing graphics, the mechanics are simple and comfortable to use. I think an idea would be to lower the amount of time given in certain levels. For example in level 2 there is 120 something seconds. It's simply to long to make this game challenging.

Besides that, fantastic job!

I think an idea would be to lower the amount of time given in certain levels. For example in level 2 there is 120 something seconds. It's simply to long to make this game challenging.

The first stage "The Vilage" and it's 12 rooms are easy in terms of time an complexity of the puzzle. The second room you refer to, was set up at 45 seconds  first and 60 seconds later. Finally, after having some ppl playing the game the first time, I changed it to 120 seconds, as it took them some time to understand that the creatures (dragons only in the first stage) stop on walls and other creatures and that the order of moving is important.

Besides that, fantastic job!

Thank you very much.

Well, it's always a good idea to completely rework all of your behaviors (I call them "Controller")  a couple of days before deadline.
NOT