Project Zi (name will change later, it's just a project name).
Story summary
The games goal is to save the species of the forest from the Skrekkan and Olekk threat (the wolves and owls in this universe) who has been joining forces and enslaved most of the other lesser races in their quest for complete domination.
These antagonists have been getting their hands on a new element called Voxerite which allows for some magic like features. For example extending their lifespan and being able to mind control the lesser species at the cost of those creatures life essence.
Zi, the protagonist of this story, will have to team up with the other species of the forest and try to rid the world of the rulers tyrrany.
Gameplay summary
Project Zi is a game that's heavily inspired by a wide range of different games, but most notably, Super Mario, Metroid and Ocarina of Time.
Your main characters are the fox Zi, the hedgehog Bim and the bear cub Ai.
Zi is the games main protagonist and also the initial character. Zi is all about movement and speed. She has the highest movement speed of the three characters and she has plenty of movement related abilities at her disposal.
Ai is a fighter who uses his claws as weapons to attack enemies and utilizes tribal spells to make his attacks stronger. He is also more resistant to certain types of attacks and harsh environments.
Bim is a bit of a specialist who can traverse smaller pathways which may lead to new or secret areas. He also have both defensive and offensive attacks of his own. He can also eat food such as mushrooms and berries to restore health.
As the companions are traveling the different levels, they will meet many different animals who are struggling with their daily lives due to story related circumstances.
Some animals will be of great help by teaching new skills or lending their powers. Some of these skills will also enable the player to progress to new places in the world.
The player 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 the main characters abilities.
The player 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 a map. In the early stages of the game, the player will have to travel from area to area, but as the player explores and grows, so will the ways of fast traveling.
Images
Engine
The engine is pretty solid. I've been expanding and doing many updates to my older "Super Mario Bros. Fusion"-engine.
There will be plenty of additional updates to my engine, but most of the major things are already done.
Graphics
This area is where I will be spending most of my time.
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
Prior to this project, I created around 373 enemies (around 100 of these were reskins). This means that I will be able to add and tweak many of those enemies to suit the needs of this game.
As such, most of the enemy behaviors for this game are already done, they only need original graphics.
Sound
I'm using Fruity Loops with the NES VST to create the sound effects.
Creating sound effect doesn't take long as they are rather short, so creating the remaining sound effects won't take very long at all.
Music
I will look into hiring another person for this area.
To get the right feeling, the music will be added when the levels are done.
Story
The main story is presented from cutscenes and text at the beginning of the game. Although, the games story will also be told from dialogue and in-game cutscenes.
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Project Zi (name will change later, it's just a project name).
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