Pixeus - An Exploration Platformer/Metroidvania - v1.2 rc

[mwiedmann]

I finally got around to finishing Pixeus! Pixeus is an exploration platformer. Somewhat of a "Metroidvania". Pixeus has crash landed on a strange world. Find energy to recharge his ship and escape, but also grab some gold along the way. The more energy and gold you grab, the better your ending.

This is a release candidate so let me know about bugs and I'll get them patched up!

Try It Now!



Features:
- Over 70 levels to explore across 4 environments (forest, tundra, desert, underworld)
- Find scuba gear and explore underwater!
- 25 unique enemies
- Unique soundtrack by Crisps for each environment (menu includes a jukebox to listen to the tunes)
- Keyboard and joypad controls

v1.2rc updates:
- Swimming improved. You can now swim in all directions with the control pad. Previously to swim up you had to use the jump button.
- There are now some "SCUBA VITAL" signs to warn you about entering an area if you don't have the scuba gear. You could get stuck without it!
- Various level fixes to prevent getting stuck in unintended areas or being unable to reach energy/gold.
- Bug fixes.

v1.1rc updates:
- Jumping now gravity based. Feels more natural. Thanks to multiple people who complained about this (MooingLemur, Crisps)
- Fixed some level bugs where you could get stuck
- Switched jump/fire buttons to better match standard SNES games (MooingLemur suggestion)
- Minor graphic fixes where some black lines were supposed to be transparent

Updates since the "alpha":
- This was my first big CX16 project and I've learned so much since then. I want to rewrite this whole thing but it plays well so some refactoring was enough to get it across the finish line.
- Rewrote the sound code to use ZSMKit. This fixed all of my sound issues and is just much better
- New sounds
- Joypad support added
- Fixed a ton of bugs and memory issues.
- Difficulty changes: the game is much easier (and more fun) now. It was too hard before.
- Pixeus now has a shield that can take 1 hit from a projectile. When you find energy his shield is replenished.
- Enemies shoot a little less often giving you a fighting chance.
- Pixeus jumps a tad higher/farther so you don't miss jumps as often

[darvidanoar]

That's very cool and super playable.

[mwiedmann]

Release candidate 1.2. Hoping this will be the last RC! I updated the zip, Try it Now, and notes in the main comment.

[promptcritical]

Greetings and thanks for making this awesome game!

So I had a good long play-through of this last night and beat it. However, on an earlier run I encountered an issue where one mistake would cost me all of my lives. Essentially, if you accidentally enter into a screen in a way that causes you to be on top of an enemy, you will die instantly. However, you will then continue to respawn at that same location and all of your extra lives will also be lost to the same enemy. I'll mark the location that got me in my playthrough last night (check this screenshot):



The way I look at it, this issue could be resolved a few different ways. 1: you could give newly spawned players invulnerability for about 1 second, which might be enough time for them to flee. 2: you could wait to update your respawn point until after a player has survived on a screen for more than a couple of seconds, or 3: you could mark safe respawn locations on the various screens which guarantees that players never respawn on top of enemies... If it were me, I would probably go with either option 1 or option 2, as I think they would take less effort to implement.

So that's all I have regarding that particular bug. The only other area where I feel like things can be improved slightly is with the ending. Some of the things that showed up in the credits did crack me up, but it didn't have as much impact as I was expecting for a cool adventure story. I think it including a graphic/image to show for the various different endings (e.g., good, neutral, bad), would help a lot in this regard. Also, I know there are a lot of completionist nerds out there, who like to collect absolutely everything in adventure games. For those folks including something like a completion percentage is a huge boon. I'll include a screenshot of the one from super metroid here to give you an idea of what I'm thinking:

[mwiedmann]

Thanks for the feedback! I'll see if there is something I can do about that respawn bug (if I get a chance). Yeah, the ending screens could use some improvement. If I muster up some enthusiasm I could maybe add some additional stuff like what you suggested. There are a few hidden nuggets (try escaping without collecting any gold for instance!)