Download link: The Adventures of Monkey King
Controls:
- Arrow Keys (UP to jump)
- Z to do a thrust attack
- X to do a strike attack
- C to interact with signboards
After working on this project for the past two weeks, I finally created a good alpha demo! The game has improved a lot since the pre-alpha stages, and I’m definitely proud of what I have accomplished so far. I have probably spent around 52-56 hours in total for this demo. To give you an idea of what I have worked on for the past few weeks, here are the changelogs.
Changelogs:
- New sprites (attack animation, training dummy, signboards, etc.)
- Birds now chase/attack the player
- Player can now attack (Z for thrust, X for strike attack)
- Player can now step on the birds
- Player has hp and can now take damage
- Player invincibility frames (3 seconds after getting hit)
- Designed and implemented new backgrounds (cave background for tutorial, land-to-sky transition for second level)
- NPC interaction and dialogue boxes (with the signboards)
- Player GUI (Monkey King health bar overlay)
- New platforms (mountain pillars, clouds)
- Menu screens (animated main menu, game over, and credits screen)
- Background music and sound effects
Currently, the game consists of 3 levels (6 rooms in total including main menu, game over, and credits). The first level is a tutorial level. It teaches the player basic mechanics such as jumping, attacking, NPC interaction, and taking damage. The second level is a level where the player faces their first enemy: the birds. This level also teaches the player how to traverse through the level by jumping on clouds. The third level, and the most difficult one by far, is a sky level filled with birds. If the player falls off the cloud platforms, the player dies and the level restarts. The main goal of the game right now is to get to the end level (like any other platformer).
Right now, there are still a few issues with the game. One issue is that the player can get stuck on the moving cloud platforms if the player jumps below it (need to fix the collision masks). Another issue is that sometimes, when the player gets hit, the sprite turns red and doesn’t change back until the player gets hit again. Now I have implemented this originally, but the “redness” is supposed to go away after a few seconds. I still have to look into it, but it’s not really a priority right now since it’s not a game-breaking bug.
After play-testing this demo a bit with a few friends and classmates, I received some pretty good feedback. One good feedback that I received was that the dialogue text of the signboards were too small (font size 10). The game was play-tested on my 14-inch laptop, and so the players had a hard time reading the text. I’ve developed the game in my computer, so naturally the screen was bigger. People playing on their laptop never occurred to me, and this feedback was definitely an eye-opener. Another issue that I noticed while people were play-testing this was that they seem to have a hard time interacting with the signboards. For some reason, it took them 6-8 tries before they were able to interact with it.
Bugs and Issues:
- Player gets stuck on moving platform (collision mask)
- Player “redness” doesn’t go away after gettig hit
- Users/players have difficulties interacting with the signboard
- Dialogue text is too small
Despite these small issues, it seems that the game is doing really really well at its current state. I have received a lot of positive feedback. Most play-testers mentioned how cute the artwork/sprites are, and the others mentioned how well-polished or refined the game is for just being created within three weeks. These comments really made me feel so happy as I’ve put a lot of time and effort into this.
Obviously there are still a lot of things that I need to work on for this game to be fully functional. The game right now isn’t difficult enough. But, I have so many ideas that I can’t wait to get started on them! To give you an idea of what I’ll implement in the future, here is my to-do list:
In the future(to-do list):
- More sprites and enemies (demons, bandits, bosses, etc.)
- New backgrounds levels!
- More NPC’s!
- Power-up System
- Save/load states
Credits and acknowledgments:
Background Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Sound Effects by qubodop (freesound.org)
Game Artwork Design and Programming by Me (Kyle Del Castillo)
Idea and Theme by Elton Vinh
I hope you can check out the game yourself. Thanks for stopping by and again, any feedback or recommendations will be greatly appreciated!
A New Player Has Arrived 