[Project] Montez - Now on Greenlight [Now GREENLIT]

edited in Projects
A while back some of you might recall a thread by @Kobusvdwalt9 on a platform puzzle game called. Montez.

Steam GREENLIGHT
Please vote for us on steam greenlight.
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=264911647

We at Celestial have teamed up with Kobus to help bring the project to life.
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Teaser


Old Game play video


Playable versions
Web
Windows
Linux
Mac

Screen Shots
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Web feedback required for the web too if you in the mind to be extra awesome
http://montezgame.com/
http://www.cevianlabs.com/

Comments
Some of the technical stuff is still very much under construction. Need much much more juice audio and fx are not yet realized. However we looking for as much early feedback as we can get. Thanks in advance for your time and thoughts. There are 50 levels planned in 5 different zones. Some animation tweaking is also still needed.

Comments

  • edited
    Yep, this is happening. It explains why I have been so quiet the last 3 months.

    We are trying to do a darker game with this one, exploring different emotions etc . We will see how that works out. We are also still messing around with the art a bit. Anyway now that I can talk freely about it all you can expect to see a lot more posts just about everywhere really.

    Stay tuned...
    Thanked by 3tbulford Fengol hanli
  • Wow! Looks super cool guys! Like really!

    The *only* thing I would say... And I have to say this because it was the first thing that hit me - is that it feels very similar to Braid. Not the mechanics, but everything about its look and even the sound design. The key looks like a direct dupe too (could just be placeholder art?).

    Not to take away from the game as I know it's not similar at all, but if you're continuing with this route I think you may run into other people with similar sort of first impression, which may hamper the reception of the title.

    Is it just me?
    Thanked by 2ridhwaan08 Bracula
  • edited
    @Tuism I know what your talking about. Personally I have been extremely influenced by braid. But I think if we work hard enough on the emotional side we can deliver a unique experience. (hallucinations, amnesia, anxiety) Of course a lot of this is dependent on sound design but we will try our best.

    Just a note on the sound. That is a super early sound track, like before we had art. I will try and find a newer sample to post. Oh and the sound effects are borrowed from mine craft. ;)

    Thanks for the support and your time.
  • The artwork is awesome. I like the parallax as well.
    The mechanic is also clever.
    Good luck!
    Thanked by 1tbulford
  • @bischonator Thanks for the kind words, any crit?
    In the near future I will do a post about how the art evolved from that early pixel art.

    PS : The art was made by Paul Loubser @weaponlogic (twitter) http://weaponlogic.wix.com/dreamrunning
  • I like what I see :D
    Colorful,puzzles,sweet tunes :)
    Thanked by 1tbulford
  • @MrNexy the "sweet tunes" will be a lot more atmospheric and inline with the theme. But yeah hold on.
  • Just a small comment from my side - I didn't know what the buttons were when I started playing. I understood what I needed to do, but had to fiddle around to find the right buttons.

    Also, going into the doors I didn't know what to press...
    Thanked by 1tbulford
  • edited
    @duncanbellsa Good point. There will be little sings at the beginning showing the controls but we havnt got that in. I will have text in for the next build. You can press E or the up arrow to interact with anything atm its only the doors.

    Controls :
    Arrow keys to walk around.
    Space to jump.
    E or up arrow to interact.

    Known bugs are :
    When you hit the spikes nothing happens.
    Character velocity is still iffy.
  • Ah, on second play test I see the controls are in the options menu.

    Alright so now I get a better understanding. I was not aware that jumping affects both of them at the same time. It's pretty interesting, and could lead to really interesting puzzles.

    So far I like it! More levels please :)
  • @duncanbellsa Yeah it should be in the starting level (the controls).

    With each new demo we will release 1 or 2 extra levels as well as update the older one with better art and stuff.

    I am still actively searching for a way to inform the player that when the one jumps the other one also jumps. I tried to use level 4 as an antipiece but that did not work out. The players still take to long to make that mental leap.

    Later in the game there are areas were certain items are only usable by a certain character. The whole first chapter is supposed to be a tutorial / peek of interest.

    PS Thanks for playing. If you think of something please dont hesitate to post about it.
  • @duncanbellsa thanks for giving it a spin and the feedback on whats not exactly clear in terms of interactions, that's something we always worried about.
    Tuism said:
    The *only* thing I would say... And I have to say this because it was the first thing that hit me - is that it feels very similar to Braid. Not the mechanics, but everything about its look and even the sound design. The key looks like a direct dupe too (could just be placeholder art?).
    Thanks for the feedback Tuism, we certainly need to break further away from the association with Braid, I know first hand how that sort of impression can break peoples perception. Key will be changing and I am going to investigate a complete rework of the character animations. I am not really pleased with the way they have worked out. We also will be reworking the visuals a fair bit from my perspective the game needs a lot more juice.

  • We have put up a new website and it came to our attention the web and Linux builds were uploaded incorrectly. They been re-uploaded.
  • edited
    Also you can now subscribe for updates via email. www.montezgame.com
  • Well done Kobus on your partnership. Kudos to Travis, Celestial Games and Make Games SA for fostering new talent! I am very proud of this community.
    Thanked by 1Bensonance
  • I see Nitrome has released a kinda similar game - called Ditto:
    http://www.nitrome.com/games/ditto/#.UzRoXvmSzis

    The 3rd level of the game shows the player that the physics system applies to both characters at one, maybe there's something similar you could do to teach the player?
  • @dubcanbellsa That Ditto game is very cool indeed.
    I think the main difference is that in MONTEZ the characters you control are physically there. As for introducing the laws of the game level 3 works quite well. But in MONTEZ I dont want to flip them until later in the game. I dont know. For now though I have put some ghostly images of the characters where they are supposed to go. Its sort of teasing the answer.

    http://s28.postimg.org/iw72bzszh/331_43_22401260123222222222222222222.jpg

    Oh and @Tuism we have now replaced that key with a lantern. Thanks for the feedback.
  • *edit* Game play links have been repaired they didn't survive a change to the website :)
  • Looks beautiful!

    The texture resolution looks quite inconsistent. It looks as if the characters are meant to be quite detailed, but that when they're scaled down the details become hard to read. In contrast, bits of the background look scaled up, with much lower resolution.

    When I work on painting icons or 2D assets, I work with multiple windows of the same document open. (In PS it's Window > Arrange > New Window for [your document name].) This way, I can have windows at half, quarter, etc. resolution for checking that whatever I paint in my main window is actually showing up elsewhere the way I intend, and that I don't spend too much time painting stuff that doesn't matter. I also have multiple windows open for if I have to check resolutions against one another. Dunno if that helps you at all.

    Those yellow particles in the latest screen jar quite a bit with the rest of the art style, but I imagine they're still placeholder.
  • edited
    @Elyaradine Thanks for a response.

    The yellow particles are place-holder but @tbulford wants to go with butterflies as the gates/doors.

    So yeah the texture resolution IS inconsistent. Part of the reason is I am a complete artist noob and just started pulling and stretching stuff (the hue slider is worn out by now). The other reason is that I want it to be visually clear what can and can not be interacted with. So the further something is into the background or foreground the lower resolution it has. So the player knows where he can or can not walk/jump.

    I am still working hard on the art and its style along with Paul but I am in the situation of not knowing if I am chasing perfection or if it just looks shit to me. Like the universal response we have had is : "The art looks great" but I dont know.
    I dont know if people are just saying that, cause to me its not there yet.
    I am so uncertain about it all. Its like I cant see whats good or bad about the game, its just there.

    Anyway we should have a new demo with some new levels out this week (around Wednesday)

    PS
    After I post the new demo I am going to start harassing each of you individually to give it a spin cause not all of the usual's have criticized. So beware...
  • I don't think "lower resolution" should be a part of visual communication - more blurry, lighter in colour, more/less saturated, etc, could and do all communicate that - resolution shouldn't be part of that. So you could get the drawings in the background at the same resolution, and blur it, to give the bokeh effect and get that communication across. Really :)

    In that same line of thought, the middle background is perhaps a tad over dark, and foreground could be a bit lighter.

    As for the art style itself, I guess it comes down to what you want to communicate with it. They're certainly not bad, but I guess your playing with the saturation sliders and things have blown them out a bit. Maybe look back to the originals a bit more.

    Thanked by 1tbulford
  • @Tuism I was trying to achieve all of those myself so that our artist doesnt have to redraw everything the whole time.
    I just tried to steer the art In a direction I was happy with by playing with it a bit. But I do think we should get that fixed somewhere in the future. Also we dont have much art variety so the less identifiable I made the art the less repetitive it seemed.

    As always, thanks for the comments. It really helps with sanity checking myself.
  • edited
    @Tuism @Elyaradine I added a shader to blur the furthest back layer.

    image

    I think this is a bit better. We are working on the foreground resolution next.
    Thanked by 1duncanbellsa
  • edited
    I thought I would share some of our WIP music for the MONTEZ OST

    https://soundcloud.com/kobus-vdwalt/montezz-music-test-9000

    What do you guys think ?
  • We have added a teaser for Montez to the top of the page. ENJOY.
  • Very cool guys, looks great
  • Just a friendly reminder that WE ARE ON GREENLIGHT. Go vote, go tweet ?
    http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=264911647

    So that this is not a totaly usless bump here is an image :)
    image
  • Nice art style. Voted :)
  • Heyyyyy, saw this in NAG, thanks to our own DD mastermind from CT :) Congrats congrats :)
  • Thanks @Tuism

    I will post photos tomorrow so the guys that couldn't find the NAG can still read what @nandrew had to say.
  • edited
    So here is the NAG article

    image
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    I also posted it on my tumblr here :
    http://kobusvdwalt.tumblr.com/post/92230793635/montez-got-picked-up-in-the-july-edition-of-the
  • Hey there,
    You forgot about this thread right ? Yeah I know you did cause we've been doing a crappy job at collecting feedback from you guys.

    So to rectify this I present to you the MONTEZ : AMAZE build. The game was on show at the Amaze festival and we have had some great feedback from a lot of great people but some of you did not make it to Amaze and I still want your feedback.

    https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8L1lapR2kOGR0JzS3JWaHhBcFU/edit?usp=sharing

    Anyway yeah so there it is.
    Have a nice day/night...
    Thanked by 2francoisvn dislekcia
  • edited
    Hello again. So we will be at rAge with Montez and I thought I would throw some incentive out to come check out the next 3 levels in the new chapter. Here is a screenshot :

    image
  • MONTEZ Has been greenlit. There go all our holiday plans :/

    No seriously this is great news and could not come at a better time. We going to be openly managing the completion of the project the Trello board is up here. https://trello.com/b/JuJo5lDC/montez
  • Yay !!! I am really happy about this.

    Also a web build/demo should follow soon.
    I was just waiting for unity 4.6 to be released.
  • Congrats guys, and good luck!
    Thanked by 1Kobusvdwalt9
  • And there was much rejoicing!
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