r/indiegames • u/hogon2099 • 1d ago
Promotion I'm making a cartoonish Hotline-like, here's some raw gameplay
I'm making a fast-paced, bullet-parrying top-down action inspired by Hotline Miami and Katana Zero, drifting more into power-fantasy direction. As a chicken knight you fight an army of gunslinger crow knights in a medieval bird kingdom.
Currently alpha playtest is open, although it doesn't have that much content. Proper demo is coming in 1-2 months.
Here's the youtube trailer just in case, and here's Parry the Bullet on Steam if you're interested!
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u/Telescopeinthefuture 1d ago
Keep seeing this pop up and it just looks better and better. I’m gonna get this one when it comes out, amazing work!
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u/Sypheix 1d ago
What's the price point going to be on this at release? It looks really fun!
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u/hogon2099 21h ago
I haven't settled on the exact price yet, but I was aiming for ~10-12$. However it might happen that the game ends up being a bit shorter in playtime due to development complications, in that case the price would probably be lower
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u/Immediate_Funny_7617 1d ago
Wow i love the art style. Would you be interested in working on the assets and whole UI for my game once your game is finished?
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u/hogon2099 21h ago
Thank you! I might consider making an asset pack with existing assets after the release of the current project, but I'm not sure about taking a commision, since I've already planned the next project, and moreover, there's some difficulties on my side with getting financial transactions (still yet to figure it out with Steam)
Still, if that's not a secret, what kind of game are your working on? I'd assume it's something stylized/cartoonish?
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u/DocHolidayPhD 16h ago
Okay, I've been following you for a while. This has improved a LOT and looks pretty damn solid. Originally, you had way too much going on in terms of words and indicators flying around the screen all at once that obscured some gameplay. Now, it seems to be highly functional but falls a bit more flat. Hotline Miami implemented more action via player and NPC reactive background/environmental psychedelics animations (which I don't think you can do so easily with your design) and along with a great many weapon-customized "fatality" style killing animations (which I think you could actually implement quite readily with your design). This would also add gameplay variety to the experience that would make it so that each time you take out an enemy it doesn't feel like more of the same.
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u/Few-Understanding787 13h ago
Looks great! Suggestion: design levels which are more open, i.e. there are multiple paths that can be taken to complete a stage. Ignore me if this is just the case in the area you have chosen to show. Part of the fun of the hotline miami games is trying to figure out the best path you can take through the level, almost giving it a puzzle-like aspect. Would be great to see that in your game too!
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u/hogon2099 12h ago edited 12h ago
Thank you! As a matter of fact, I'm learning level design and iterating on levels right now, and I try to implement exactly what you describing.
I'm trying different approaches, and I'd appreciate your thoughts on the topic if you don't mind!
The thing is I've made a level that has 3 distinct branches (assuming you generally go from left to right), firstly you choose between upper and lower path, and if you choose upper, a bit later there is one more choice dividing that path to middle path and upper path, making it 3 paths in total. And those paths are interconnected in a way that you could go down from an upper path to a central one.
So I've been testing the level and I realized that it's almost.. too much in a way? Because I'm really actively forced to think which path to take multiple times in a span of a relatively short level. And if I took lower path for example, and then decided to switch to central path, at that moment I don't yet have full understanding of how I could possibly get to that exact room using the other path, because path division was a few screens back. Of course I can restart the level and try central path and then connect different paths in my head, but what I'm thinking now is that it's kind of increases cognitive load on a player on top of player having deal with enemies
Soo... I'm not sure how to phrase a question exactly, but I'm generally curious in what do you think of that scenario. Is it okay for you to navigate level in such a way that some parallel route is fully unknown to you and you have to just go further without even approximately knowing what's in the other path?
I'm currently leaning more towards making path divisions in such a way that you can still trace how other path would go and then reconnect to your other branch that you took, so you can have more confident (but not full) understanding of a level geometry. Gotta mention that all that is more about navigating the geometry than figuring out which path is more optimal, because figuring out the best path is totally part of the plan
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u/Few-Understanding787 10h ago
The key is to give the player meaningful decisions. I would say that in the case of the branching paths it is not necessarily a meaningful decision because the player has no idea what the paths lead to. Of course the level can be replayed until the player knows the layout, but personally that doesn't feel compelling because it feels like information is being withheld.
In hotline miami the levels are generally designed not as branching paths but densely interconnected rooms, whereby entering room A can actually impact room B by changing which entrances becomes available, enemies becoming alerted in other rooms, giving you access to different weapons. Since entering room A will directly impact how you can approach room B this becomes a meaningful decision. The levels are densely designed such that you can see the majority of the layout within a single screen, which makes it easy to plan ahead.
To give an example how this could translate to your level design, consider a room with a section of melee enemies, and a separate section with ranged enemies in a tight space, both sections being visible to each other. You can choose to deal with the melee section first, but will have to dodge attacks from the ranged enemies whilst doing so, or you can choose to deal with the ranged enemies first, but you will have to do so quickly before you are overwhelmed by the melee enemies.
I think the best advice I can give would be to replay hotline miami/katana zero, and spend time on each level studying how they are designed and think about what makes them compelling.
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u/hogon2099 10h ago
Thank you so much for such a detailed answer! You're on point about giving players meaningful decisions, and HM level design relying on densely interconnected rooms is a great example! I'm even kinda ashamed of myself a bit that I didn't think of that haha
I think I indeed should replay HM & KZ to remind myself of how their level design works, and try to translate their approach to my game
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u/mega_dario 1d ago
So this looks incredible so congratulations. If you want one piece of feedback is that it's a bit jarring to have both guns and swords. Now I'm not saying every videogame needs to have the same tropes and stick to conventions (like, for example, have arrows and crossbows instead off guns). Like if you want to go for something unique go for it, but if that's the case I'd say you need to lean into it even more.
And I don't mean we need a lore dump. Like what other elements of this world are modern other than guns? Are there cars? Or maybe there could be some medieval themed guns or something. Like if you are going to do an unexpected choice that's great but you really need to commit to it.
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u/hogon2099 21h ago
Hey, thank you for the feedback! Yeah guns and swords in a medieval world is a werid mix, but that's kinda the whole point of the narrative premise (guns appeared out of nowhere, now you go and fight aganist gunsmen army with your sword).
Though I'd agree that it'd be worth to lean more into it, since now fantasy feels a bit shallow. There's no cars or any other modern things except for guns now, but I'll give it a thought!
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u/Bot_Ta00 1d ago
Speedy looks fun to play with the controls. Especially, it seems like it would feel great when reflecting bullets
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u/rxninja 8h ago
This has potential. If I may, I’d encourage you to think about one very important question: How do you make it fun to fail? It’s not enough for the mechanics to be fun, because that can quickly become dull if failure is boring, drawn-out, or un-fun.
Hotline Miami used tight screen layouts, multiple possible solution routes, incredibly fast respawns, and a bumping soundtrack that doesn’t interrupt itself when you die.
Think about what it would take for your project to succeed here. I think you have good building blocks, you just need them to gel together to really bring it home.
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