Huge Swords and Tentacle Monsters

[Cakeprediction]

Heya, I'm back again with another project I'm hoping to finish this time :p
Here it is:
Huge Swords and Tentacle Monsters
Battle varying degrees of huge tentacle monsters with a somewhat inefficient laser grappling hook sword thing, I guess...
In this game you're some random gal that goes into a neon-tokyo ish city overrun by weird tentacle monsters, to kill them all and make the city liveable again.
Enemies are modular, made out of different "genes" and modular parts and'll most likely spawn around certain proc-gened hunting grounds that appear in a premade city(that's the idea at least), which will all be specific to certain genes

Images
Keep in mind pretty much all art is placeholder
Spoiler: "Warning:lots of big gifs"

From most recent to least recent:

I'd love to hear your feedback about this project though, I've been working on it for quite some time in my spare time now 
Also, here's the tig thread if you want to see how it progressed before this topic(it has gone through quite some huge changes):beep

[ChrisN]

Wow, this is amazing! I think you really have solid base for a pc/console game. If I were not busy I would totally jump into this.

[Cakeprediction]

Wow, this is amazing! I think you really have solid base for a pc/console game. If I were not busy I would totally jump into this.

Thanks I luckily managed to find an artist(Matwek) which is doing an amazing job with the environments and monsters(environments aren't in yet).

Anyway, here are some more gifs, since I've done a lot since the last time I've posted(it's close to being feature-complete for the demo!):




Not even everything I've done is shown here

[PixelPiledriver]

Looks great man.
Really excited to see more.
 

[Probo]

awesome cake, good to see youre still making stuff. love the tech, and the art looks great, that matwek guy is good! Whats the structure of the game?  is it a series of boss fights against these tentacle bastards, connected by platforming sections?

[ChrisN]

Happy to see this thread is still alive! The monster looks great

I would lie if I say I am not envious working on such a cool project

I scrolled through Matwek's art, this is gonna be really nice. I will be following the project eagerly

[Cakeprediction]

Looks great man.
Really excited to see more.
 

Yay

awesome cake, good to see youre still making stuff. love the tech, and the art looks great, that matwek guy is good! Whats the structure of the game?  is it a series of boss fights against these tentacle bastards, connected by platforming sections?

Thank you probo <3. Yeah, matwek's a pretty amazing artist, glad I got to work with him.

The structure of the game is basically you, the player, having to hunt four giant bosses who roam about in an open-world city divided by districts, killing flocks of smaller enemies(like the ones in the gifs) on your way and exterminating breeding grounds which sometimes slowly start taking over maps.

This is probably the shortest way to explain it :p.
For the demo however, which is the current goal I'm working towards, I only plan to have one district(which is finished geometry-wise), one boss(no giant), no npc use, just introduction and continuous spawning of enemies and such.

Happy to see this thread is still alive! The monster looks great

I would lie if I say I am not envious working on such a cool project

I scrolled through Matwek's art, this is gonna be really nice. I will be following the project eagerly

hehe, thank you I'm really glad you like the project

(I'm too tired right now to write another devlog entry specifically for pixelation,so I'll just paste the tig one right here)
Update 19:
I've once again added a ton of stuff, so I'm just gonna go over everything quickly :p

To start off, I've added lots of details to combat to make it feel more satisfying. It's one of the most important parts of the game, after all. To summarize:
-Screenshake, obviously. Pretty much everything has slight screenshake now
-Small pause whenever you hit an enemy, which I've masterfully coded by running an empty for-loop 10^100000 times or something
-If you hit an enemy whilst being in close range, you get knocked back a bit
-The monster gets knocked back a bit
-A slash line kind of effect, inspired by katana zero

All of this added up actually makes the fights way more fun than they were before, you can see the combat in play in the gifs to come.


Second batch of changes is that I've added a bit more movement options.
Basically, it's now possible to go over your standard max running speed by grappling yourself forward with your sword. If you do so, you keep running a bit faster for a small period of time. Using slopes whilst going over the walking speed limit also allows you to jump off slopes, which makes for some very fun movement:


I've also added a bit of knockback to the sword throw and slash, which can now function as a jump boost or slight double jump(in one of the battle gifs, you actually see me using my sword to jump higher in the air so I could hit the enemy)


Then, the final changes:
Matwek's been busy and has created almost all modular parts for the behemoth, meaning the darn thing is almost ready for the demo .

Here are some combinations of head and body genes showcased:

Acid plus charge


Laser plus spiked


Calling+teleporting

Also, I forgot to mention that there's health, grappling energy and dying now.


This wasn't all though, because I've also added something entirely new. At least, I've started working on it. May I present to you, the return of the worm:

The AI is a lot simpler than the behemoth, but it's a ton of fun to fight because of its huge size and the fact that you can fly by hitting him with your sword repeatedly. These things are more dangerous than behemoths, so they have a low chance of showing up among with the behemoths. I'm not sure, but I might even add that the behemoths'll try to stay away from you whilst attacking you, if the worm is attacking you as well.


That's it for now, I'm not sure what I'll work on next, mayhaps some menus or the final enemy for the demo.

[Probo]

sounds fantastic! will there be other enemies aside from floating tentacle monsters between the boss fights then? I love the sword grapple, that could make the platforming really fun as well as the combat. If youre using Game Maker, could I suggest that changing the room speed temporarily might be a better way to get that pause when you hit an enemy, I do that in my game and it works pretty well.

[Cakeprediction]

sounds fantastic! will there be other enemies aside from floating tentacle monsters between the boss fights then? I love the sword grapple, that could make the platforming really fun as well as the combat. If youre using Game Maker, could I suggest that changing the room speed temporarily might be a better way to get that pause when you hit an enemy, I do that in my game and it works pretty well.

The enemies will all be tentacle monsters, but I'm working on adding different types
Changing the room speed would be another solution, yeah. This one works quite well though, so I probably won't change it. Thanks for the suggestion though ^^
Update 20
Welp, I guess I'm going with the update counter on tig.
Anyway, here's the demo boss I've been working on, "The prophet of blades".

She's still wip and I don't have enough attacks yet, so suggestions would be appreciated!

[MysteryMeat]

I got a bunch of ideas you could roll with.
For example, some kind of mid-air spin-reflect could add some neat depth to it. Lasers can't be reflected, perhaps, but smaller missiles can. I'd have it be a very sensitive thing though, like fighting-game-parries sensitive or close to it so it's not just a spam-this-to-win thing.
Elseways: Summons are always a fun time when you need just that little bit of extra help! Got a big robot friend? get him in there to shoot rockets and punch things. Got some homeless dude you know? He pops up and starts chucking molotovs and weaponized garbage. All kinds of good funtimes you can get with that!
Some kind of flying sword leap for quick dodge-to-airs, and a ground-pound for the inverse, too. Maybe some ground-dodges too? Movement abilities are always fun to play around with, and for a game that's as hectic and bullet-hellish as this seems to be I'd say they're a must so the player doesn't feel cheated by unavoidable attacks.


EDIT: OH YOU MEANT FOR THE BOSS CHARACTER, DOI. Brace for amazingly ambitious ideas!

Ok, so some stuff for her could be phases. Starting and ending on just her with a sword facing against you, with the blade flurry as the midpoint I think. Starting bit isn't terribly difficult, maybe some counters or stun-attacks but nothing too fancy to build up the surprise of the sudden blade vortex. Then we go on to what you got here, with maybe a couple other patterns like a tracking circle of blades you have to find a gap in to not get hit by, or some kind of absolutely massive meteor-smash sword hurtling down from the sky with a shockwave as it hits.
Then, once through that, she goes berzerker mode, drops the swordstorm, and starts just flurry-attacking you, and you gotta parry her more often than not since she's just ON YOU so much, doing short combos, parries, and launchers on you to keep the player on their toes.