Daytonite Demo

everythingstaken's picture

So, I've been working on this sorta action adventure arcade game for a while. There are 5 sort of games inside of it as it is and I want to playtest them before I continue making it. If you have joy to key and a guitar hero/rock band controller, you can use that to make left and right the strum bar and A-G the color buttons to play this.






Don't be afraid to be critical.

AttachmentSize
DemoForJustin.exe_.zip33.01 MB
daytoniteDEMOSC.png82.24 KB
Screen Shot 2017-08-06 at 12.36.24 PM.png818.3 KB

Comments

spiral's picture

Oh MAN I love this!! The

Oh MAN I love this!! The controls are so bizarre that even just playing it is an intriguingly difficult battle. It does kind of seem funny to me that mashing left/right is the fastest way to move, although you lose a lot of control in doing so! It took me a while to understand the way the guitar blasts work, but I think I chose poorly for my initial minigame, since I played in reverse order. However, I'll review them in chronological order.

Telephone minigame: probably my favourite! It's such a hilariously antagonistic way of doing a task that normally, even in video games, is relatively straightforward. I think the finesse the game asks for shines here, as you can subtly(?) use the guitar blasts to move buttons you don't want to press out of the way.

Dishwashing: a fantastic collision of visual and aural noise. I think I lost at it b/c too many dishes got dirty, and it seems impossible to be 'perfect' at, but I think that's part of the charm that sets it apart. It feels like a way to just take it easy with something that you're not going to be good at, but is fun to see.

Mini-Golf: this is where I learned how to use guitar blasts effectively! Although, funnily enough, I found that roughly half the time the golf ball would decided to bounce backwards. Once it bounced for like, at least 10 seconds, and went all the way from near the end to the very beginning of the course. I think I'd be annoyed about that if the game wasn't so funny to play.

Lawn Mowing: This one tonally make me think of the mini games in No More Heroes (which I haven't played myself), in that it's a combination of hyper mundane tasks done 'realistically' with the novel, bizarre controls of the game. When I later learned that I could mash the left/right keys to move quickly, it became easy to do, but with the endless plains of grass, it's not exactly something you want to excel at?

Cop Mistake: I was unable to die in less than one second. That is my review of it...

All in all, I really look forward to what you to do to make some kind of cohesive world out of this! I like the scattered but consistent word arrangement on the menu. Probably, maybe, you don't want that for the final game, but I think it's ok for a demo to be a radical departure in such respects (such as my own, for Spiko!).

Also, I love the sound effects you use for guitar playing!!

everythingstaken's picture

Thanks for playing!!

Wow, a lot of detail in this! Credit of the guitar sounds goes to my friends Lillyan (who did the music to my game 100) and Connor Walsh.

Hahaha, also, I hope this is different enough from No More Heroes. Killer 7, NMH, and NMH2 are some of my favorite games. This game is kinda based on how much I hated that there was kinda nothing to do in the over world in the first NMH. I was pretty upset that they took it out in the second one even though the mini-games were way better. Sadly, I've had a hard time trying to populate the overworld and make it feel really interactive. Most of it at the moment is just grass that you can mow.

I hope you give the Cop Mistake thing another try whenever I upload a version that's further along.

Thank you again for playing! All the feedback really helps. :-)

clyde's picture

Mini-golf is currently my

Mini-golf is currently my favorite mode probably because I have some time to try to master the controls. By the time I finished the last hole, I couldn't help but feel that the choice of notes were a missed opportunity. I don't know how they would sound, but I'd be interested in playing minigolf when instead of
[e1 b2 e2 g#2 b#3]
you somehow assigned
[e1 g#1 a2 b2 e2 f#2 g#2] though I realize that that's two extra notes. Perhaps the two extras could be left/right dependent or something. It might sound messier (possibly to the game's detriment), but I kept wanting those notes and not having them especially when the mini-golf themes became more patriotic. I also enjoyed the variegated background-texture on the minigolf courses a lot. I'd like originals for ever section personally because I like that one so much, but I don't know what that might take to do or how it might affect your vision for this.

I like how this enjoyable movement/navigation mechanic is put into various scenarios. If a movement mechanic implies a class of person (such as skateboarder), then their existence becomes so much deeper by putting them in scenarios with a variety of themes and objectives with the same tools. It certainly gives the sense that this is the same character.
I like how "Cop Mistake" gives me the impression that the leisurely (and athletic) existence on the skateboard (and my experience learning it as a player) comes into particular use in a moment of severity. It's kinda like how in Karate Kid (1984) the main character uses the muscle-memory from the chores of sanding floors, waxing cars and painting houses as an involuntary defense.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bg21M2zwG9Q

everythingstaken's picture

Thanks for the feedback!

Cool, I'm glad the connectivity comes across. I feel like that is all pretty inspired by Mischief Makers. Have you played it?

Like two more directional notes? So, I guess I didn't say this, but one of my design limitations was that I wanted to design this for a Guitar Hero/Rock Band controller. So, that means that I have like 5 colored keys, a left and right switch, shake (but this only works with joy to key with some controllers), and a couple other like start/select buttons. I chose 5 notes because there just are 5 buttons. I once had it that each key was a string and the directionality affected the frets, but I don't think people really understood why the sound effects that were happening were happening. Do you have a different idea to how it would work?

Also, I'm glad you get that from "Cop Mistake". I want to make it the clear hardest thing to be good at but also if you beat it, it's like one of the very few ways you really "win" the game when it is in the "adventure" sort of format, and maybe the "best ending".

Blueberry Soft's picture

I love this too D:

As soon as a got a handle on moving with the left and right arrows I was super into this. Feels really good. (maybe lawnmower bit should be first as a nice teaching thing?)

Really love making music in the golf bit and the killallcops20xx.exe bit. Well in cops I just held all the keys I could manage on my keyboard.

(sorry it took me so long to write something, but posting the game here reminded me :) )

Blueberry Soft's picture

My cat didn't like the

My cat didn't like the dishwashing level, but that's okay :3

everythingstaken's picture

thank you thank you!

lol I hope your cat is ok! Thanks for the feedback and for playing. I think I may try to like organize the cops level a bit more so shooting feels maybe a bit more purposeful, but idk, maybe mashing isn't bad!

pensive-mosquitoes