Project Zi (name will change later, it's just a project name).
Brief description
Project Zi is a game that's heavily inspired by a wide range of different games, but most notably, Super Mario, Metroid and Hollow Knight.
Your main character is the fox Zi.
Zi has three main ways to hurt enemies. Zi can either jump on the enemies, use different ranged attacks on them or attack them with her claws in four different directions.
As Zi is traveling the different levels, She will meet many different animals who are struggling with their daily lives due to story related circumstances.
Some animals will help Zi by teaching her new skills or lending her their powers. Some of these skills will also enable Zi to progress to new places in the world.
Zi can find many upgrades in her quest. Some upgrades will be necessary to proceed, but most will be optional and they're only there to improve Zi's overall abilities.
Zi will be able to unlock new areas and levels by finding the entrance to these places. After this is done, these areas will be added to her worldmap. In the beginning, Zi will have to travel from area to area, but as her skills grow, so will her ways of fast traveling.
The game will focus on three different level types:
Normal levels
Levels similar in style as those of Super Mario Bros and similar games on the NES. These levels will normally have a time limit and be somewhat sparse on secrets.
Branching/Open levels
These levels will be similar in size as an area in Super Metroid. These levels will not have a time limit and there may be multiple secrets and exits in these levels.
Challenge levels
These levels will be pretty varied and there will not be any definitive rules that applies to all of them. Some levels might be similar to the "Murder Wall"-levels from Kid Chameleon while some will have a focus on haste. But there will also be levels that are challenging in some other ways as well.
Images
Engine
The engine is mostly done. I'm using an updated version of my "Super Mario Bros. Fusion"-engine.
There will be updates to this engine, but most of the major things are very solid already.
Graphics
This is where I will be spending most of my time, and it might take a while.
I'm not trying to fully emulate NES graphics. Instead, I'm trying to aim for graphics that I think could have worked on a slightly more powerful console.
There's graphical stuff that would never work on a NES. For example, multiple parallaxing backgrounds, no restriction to the maximum amount of objects on the screen and an extended color palette.
In most cases, I will limit myself to 4 colors (or 3 colors + transparency) per 16x16 sprite. Although, certain sprites will have a couple more colors as this was doable on the NES thanks to multiple overlapping sprites.
The native resolution of the game is 426x240.
Enemies
I have created over 373 enemies in my other game (minus ~100 enemies that are very similar to other enemies). This means that I will be able to easily add and tweak these enemies to suit the needs of this game.
As such, most of the enemies for this game are already done, they only need original graphics.
Sound
I'm using Fruity Loops with the 3x Oscillator and the NES VST to create the sound effects.
Creating sound effect doesn't take very long as they are rather short. Creating the remaining sound effects won't take very long at all.
Music
I might look into hiring another person for this area.
To get the right feeling, the music will be added when the rest of the levels are done.
Story
The main story is presented from cutscenes and text at the beginning of the game. Although, some story will also be told from dialogue and short cutscenes in-game.
Added a new idle animation and transfer power animation for the hedgehog and a new "door transfer" effect as well. Earlier, the transfer between doors were just instant teleportations.
I also created a heat/cold system which is present only in cold levels like the snowy mountains. If Zi is out in the cold for too long she will start losing HP until she finds some heat source.
I also added a counter/indicator showing how many stacks of poison is left when poisoned.
Added information signs to the game. These will probably only be used when introducing the player to something completely new, like dying by falling down into a dangerous pit.
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Project Zi (name will change later, it's just a project name).
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