I read my post back like I was gruff a marine in halo saying that. Made my body shape a pyramid for extra effect.

Here's my effort at writing the same game a couple of year's back!



Oh for some artistic competence

Still - 2059FPS, fuckin yes.

My suggestion is get it on PC. It's the platform along with mac that LS was made for.

After Monday I will have a lot more detail on the Curve studio playstation port, but Steam has it right now and if you like survival horror this is one of the ones you'll enjoy the most, guaranteed.

Gah, this will mean that I'll finally have actually paid for a game on Steam. Someone doesn't want to gift it to me by any chance do they? Usual address.

Sessioned the latest build on Saturday with Jasper.

Firstly, this game is really fun. It has the cheekiness in tone of sounds of graphics of A Link to the Past, and it has the deep mechanical foucs of Demon's Souls combat brought into 2D.

There is going to be a huge amount of the development effort dedicated to local multiplayer, both co-op and vs.

We played a build with barbarian, knight and mage selectible and fought them off against each other, tweaking move properties and damage to balance it. (Knight for the muthafreaking win right now - if it's massively overpowered as a character you can blame me). The controls for now, which may be placeholder but are a good foundation, are as follows: you can roll and run with a dedicated button as in Demon's. You can only roll in four directions (u,d,l,r), and the roll is a set length unless you cancel it into an attack or another roll. Attack is the second button, which if timed properly will perform an inescapable combo if the first hit connects, or if you press towards+attack you get a Demon's R2 essentially - a big startup, high damage move.

Stamina is handled like Demon's also - rolling, attacking and running all use it up to degrees -  do an 'R2' and use a coressponding amount of stamina to the magnitude of the attack, mash roll and watch it disappear. Also, use it to block with a shield, which is the final button. It raises your shiled, and you can still rotate with your shield up - your stamina won't auto-refill while you're guarding, so you need to either create space or play chicken with defending their incoming blows. Because you can rotate, it means you can't strafe or back off the opponent with your shield up. Jasper has mitigated this by allowing you to block a blow to your back if your shield is up, even if you aren't facing the enemy. (note - This is my only gripe with the game so far, I would prefer the Zelda system of locking your facing direction whilst blocking, since there's no lock on - what do you guys think?). Blocking also performs one of the most awesome systems now in place - parrying. Time your shield-raise correctly and you will stagger your opponent, giving you enough time to do an R2 and decimate their life bar. Not everyone has a shield though, more on that later.

One other system I can talk about is stun. In Dark Souls there's something called poise. It's a number that determines how heavy a weapon you can be hit with before you lose your footing (ntohing to do with actual damage taken). Jasper is doing a new version of this that is a bit more curved as a scale than demons, I don't want to go into too much detail because I firstly don't understand it that well, and secondly everything will change I'm sure. Anyway, it works well. Things like punches do a lot of stun, being slashed with a sword doesn't.

Some detail about classes: only the knight's weapon, a shortsword, actually has combos at the moment (which could be why I feel he's so OP right now) - my bro is looking at whether there should be an opportuinity, if timed correctly, to be able to roll out of the 5 hit combo he has. I think there should be, otherwise the Knight tactics boil down to 'get as near as possible and mash attack to drain their stamina'. Other than that he is FUN. Slightly slower movement than the others in his armour, but the most well-rounded moveset. He's kind of the Ryu right now.

The Barbarian wields a greatclub OF COURSE, and has good movement speed and stamina in his loincloth (bless). An R2 from this guy will kill a Mage in one hit, or drain 80% of the Knight's life. He can roll all day. He also has a cheeky unique move-  a punch combo. One of the first balance changes I suggested and Jasper put in was to reduce the damage of this - it was broken haha! He just gives you five quick left hand jabs in his off hand to create distance, they will combo, and they do a huge amount of stun. He doesn't have a shield like the other classes, so he gets this treat instead. Expect plenny of this kind of fun asymetric balancing to be going on.

Lastly there's a mage, who has very little stamina, meaning he can only roll twice before he has to recharge. He also has the smallest life bar. What he excels at though is ranged attakcs, his default weapon is a staff that fires homing missles, and he has a third HUD bar on top of his life and stamina ones - magic. His gameplan is get some cover between him and you and harass you from afar, ready with his shield if you close the gap to try and parry you - he can't block a Barb R2 for example, for lack of stamina. Trying to balance this guy's run-away game (run-speed, amount of rolls) is pretty hard for now...too good and you can't get near him (Benny Hill music), too poor and the knight strolls up and tears him apart. We have made his parry game is pretty cool though, he stuns you for longer allowing him to wind up a full-damage Hadouken.

(so much I wish I could tell you about outside of this - can confirm there's at least one utterly game-changing thing about competitive multiplayer games that my bro is toying with, hopefully he announces it soon)

How's it all sounding?

Pretty much how I expected it via the stuff on twitter, but hard to visualise still.

Aww - yeah I might go to that thing too, in Angel right? Just waiting to hear back from him.

M0stly harm13ss wrote:

Prime burger Nick, a touch pink in the middle with shredded lettuce, cheese and pickles!

[10]

@fullspectrum - that's the one.  You been before?  I hope to go to the next one - try to come along too!

acemuzzy wrote:

@fullspectrum - that's the one.  You been before?  I hope to go to the next one - try to come along too!

I had not been before, but we went and it was pretty cool. Met the guy who made Proteus, which looks really interesting (Ed, very nice dude). I'd definitely go again if you're up for it.

We hooked up NG+ on the laptop and gave people a demo and explanation, it was quality! Nuff people came over and asked what it was all about, and showed excitment towards the game. We tried to set up 3-player, but were foiled by a wire so bust out some 2p vs.

The guy who ran this http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-01/31/wild-rumpus-preview

..came over and had a go, and said he wants to get NG+ at the next event, which rocks. 4-player on a projector? Yes please.

I have some video footage of Claymore Knight vs Mage, will upload later : )

Ok I'm allowed to talk about all the game mechanics, which is lucky since I have been.

The health system in this is next level. I'll explain a little about how the single player questing will work, and how this system will fit into it and vs play.

You don't carry any health items, and initially there aren't any health pick ups on the map. You respawn from a central location when you die, and near to this place there are a couple of holes that look fit for planting. You put seeds in them, and initially nothing happens other than a small sprout appearing. The next time you respawn the plants grow into health fruits which will heal you. So, as you progress through the level you find more holes and plant further and further to give you more chance of surviving the next skirmish.

When you factor in multiplayer this gets really interesting. Firstly, in co op you would need to share these fruits, hopefully conducive to encouraging co op play. Also you can destroy the grown plants, by mistake or deliberately. Obviously you wouldn't do it in co op, but if you damage your opponent in vs you should try to do it asap to grief them. Or, my personal favourite -let them heal and take advantage of the vulnerability they have afterwards (you're invincible during the heal animation).

So much potential. Maybe where you plant them has different effect? Planting near a shimering lake might grow a bigger plant with different properties. Or maybe you can augment them yourself by using different kinds of waters to make them grow. Maybe you could poison fruits in someone elses world..

Loving this part of the game, really hope he doesn't change it to carried items!

PVP is sounding glorious Nick but how is your bro approaching the SP aspect? Is he giving it a fair bit of loving as well? 50/50 split or his heart more in the multiplayer aspect?

I'll purchase first day either way i'm just trying to get a frame of mind on the end product.

It also needs friendship.

Tempy, expect plenty of that. Not the metrosexual trolling, the secret and optional stuff. Oh and bosses, expect lots of bosses.

Wait what you mean lift plants?

Temps is meming it up.