Defeat your ennemies in a rock-paper-scissor styled puzzle game, and progress through 25 levels of ever-increasing complexity!
Elemental Shaft is a puzzle game in which you control a "Shifter", a character who takes on the powers and appearance of those they defeat. Following a set of patterns, you must defeat the enemies in your path, and make it to the "goal circle" at the end of each level. Your score increases depending on the time it took to complete a level and how many enemies were defeated (more is better).
New features are introduced every 5 levels or so. Two endings depending on final score, though the epilogue had to be shortened to only a few (somewhat random) text boxes due to time constraints.
The game is built on vanilla RPG Maker MV. I've been working on a custom engine for a while, yet hadn't really produced anything with the environment, so I thought of giving it a try and see how it felt. Lost a couple hours to a false fire emergency, with sound being the collateral, but overall I'm pretty satisfied.
===== ===== ===== >> Controls << ===== ===== ===== Arrow keys - Move around Shift - Move faster Escape/Backspace - Open game menu Enter/Space - Confirm (in menus)
===== ===== ===== >> Change Log << ===== ===== ===== 16-04-20 - Added full game description - No change to game files
16-04-18 1.1 - Fixed level skip leaving the player on a black screen, sometimes softlocking; - Fixed two characters in Level 14 being swapped, making the level unwinnable; - Fixed some characters still using placeholder sprites in some situations; - Fixed multiple one-way tiles in a row not behaving correctly; - Added an OS-X build.
Hm. I do remember this level not quite working in my last-minute check. Thought I had fixed it, but might still be some issues left. Will check first thing tonight (and hopefully fix level skip while I'm at it).
Nice puzzle game that progresses steadily. Good job! I did find the classes difficult to distinguish though - It would have been nice if their shapes were more different from each other. The moving backgrounds are a bit annoying, I think you could have just left that out. Sometimes I just found myself losing track of what was going on and gazing at it :P
Thanks for all the feedback, guys! (And gals. And nondescripts.) Much appreciated.
@backgrounds - But that's part of the charm! Though in hindsight their contrast is a bit too sharp; should have made their colors a bit more subdued.
@classes all looking the same - Yep. A bit of a byproduct of starting work on character art 3 hours before submission. Tried keeping their clothing color-coded, but they could have used a little more. Like, say, a bird's eye view instead of top-down. Or different poses. Everyone loves poses.
I liked the progression and the gameplay felt smooth and solid. Nice work!
Discussion: I'm not sure what I think about how the theme worked with this kind of puzzle game. It didn't really feel as the theme did anything to improve the game, other than added flavor, and in that case I think I would have liked another theme better for a game like this.
@hildegarbage - Fair enough. To me though, it's not so much a matter of improving the game as much as being a core component of the puzzle mechanics: no matter how one spins it, the element of "taking on the properties of the last removed piece" will remain. Now as for _how_ it's implemented, that's purely a matter of personal preferences, and I can't argue on that.
I proposed a rock-paper-scissors style game for our entry but was told it would be too complicated for an action game so I was curious to see your take on it. Congrats, your game turned out very well :) It's great you were able to make that many levels.
Comments19
Thanks for the feedback!
I did find the classes difficult to distinguish though - It would have been nice if their shapes were more different from each other.
The moving backgrounds are a bit annoying, I think you could have just left that out. Sometimes I just found myself losing track of what was going on and gazing at it :P
@backgrounds - But that's part of the charm! Though in hindsight their contrast is a bit too sharp; should have made their colors a bit more subdued.
@classes all looking the same - Yep. A bit of a byproduct of starting work on character art 3 hours before submission. Tried keeping their clothing color-coded, but they could have used a little more. Like, say, a bird's eye view instead of top-down. Or different poses. Everyone loves poses.
Discussion: I'm not sure what I think about how the theme worked with this kind of puzzle game. It didn't really feel as the theme did anything to improve the game, other than added flavor, and in that case I think I would have liked another theme better for a game like this.
Thanks for the feedback!