Looks very promising. I take it that it's still designed for Wii controll? If so, maybe you should do a scaled version. By the looks of the app. there is a zoom feature, but it's always better to maximise the potential of fullscreen IMO.
Looking at your consept, I immediately thought of a mix of Mario (the hat and pipes) and his stand-in in Donkey Kong 3: Stanley the Bugman. He used a similar design of using a pump for spraying insects with bugspray.
I like where this is going though. I'm a fan of stylistic approaches to gamedesign, so I don't feel like I need to point at anything just yet. The roots near the opening clashes with the rest though. Just make sure it's consistent and this should be great.
I'll have to take a closer look at that Wii app. Thanks.
Wow, I'm a little embarassed, this is the first I've heard of Stanley! I guess the game is a secret homage now...though there is a lot of nintendo in it already
the game is basically a mix of Kid Icarus and backwards Kirby! I'm going to try and get the rest of the tiles to be a little more detailed so that the roots and rocks fit in a little bit better. And yeah, the .swf will be scaled to 3x for proper Wii consumption - a 720x480 HTML object fits in the browser window almost perfectly, it's nice.
Panda - multiplayer probably won't happen, at least on the Wii, afaik the API can only hook input from a single controller, but i've always loved one-vs-many type MP games. I'll do a tile update sometime today that will hopefully sync things up a little bit better. And yeah, dino fossils are practically a must!
Squirrelsquid - yes I agree, I will be working on it tonight, thanks!
A few more things about the game:
64 Levels w/ Branching Paths
16 Secret Levels
Can Win After Just 40 Levels
6-letter Password System
Powerups (so far): Poison, Gasmask, Vacuum
Misc: Fire the fan gun downward while leaping to jump extra high
Finally, I am definitely open to edits/crazy ideas, this is my first real tiled environment (*gasp!* I know I know I'm such a noob
) so I'm still learning a lot as I go; if anyone has particular examples of sidescroller gfx they adore I'd be happy to check them out. My big influences are mainly Drill Dozer and Wario Land 4, but they're both pretty outline-dependent which is something I'd like to avoid if possible on this design. EDIT - Also I'm having a hell of a time getting my 'beam of daylight' to look right at all. Knytt and WADF use them but they use hideous gradients, but even then they work better than my sad attempt...
EDIT - Another environment update, tiling is friggin hard!
DOUBLE EDIT - Just to clarify, the rocks & roots & pipes are more the level of detail I'd like to have in the final product - the bulk of the dirt and grass tiles are still placeholders!
