[Prototype] Knife Fight
Hey.
So I spent the last 3 weeks making 3 prototypes and I wanted to share this one with you cause, well its the only one that's playable XD.
Knife Fight is a game about knives and boss fights. In the game you have an infinite amount of throwing knives that you use to kill enemies and climb on walls.
Here is a video of the gameplay :
Some screenshots (art is obviously final):
Download link : Linky
I dont have any spesific questions cause there isn't a lot of gameplay at the moment. Basically was this fun ? and would you want to see it fleshed out a bit ?
Thanks for your time.
So I spent the last 3 weeks making 3 prototypes and I wanted to share this one with you cause, well its the only one that's playable XD.
Knife Fight is a game about knives and boss fights. In the game you have an infinite amount of throwing knives that you use to kill enemies and climb on walls.
Here is a video of the gameplay :
Some screenshots (art is obviously final):
Download link : Linky
I dont have any spesific questions cause there isn't a lot of gameplay at the moment. Basically was this fun ? and would you want to see it fleshed out a bit ?
Thanks for your time.
Comments
Positives:
1. Climbing the walls with knifes in it can create very nice and interesting mazes or puzzles to solve imo.
2. Not having to start from Level1 when dieing after fighting smiley is good.
3. These feel like nice boss fights to me, when smiley pulls out a couple unexpected move I was surprised.
4. Being able to jump right back into the action after dieing (level being short before you get the the boss) makes it feel fun instead of frustrating.
Negatives:
1. You did not add that Enter button to go into doors and space for jump that's all.
Seriously though, this is a very interesting concept. I think you should pursue it. I'm personally more interested in it as a tactical platformer (like Spelunky) than a puzzle platformer. Though you'd have to figure out how you want the game to feel of course.
For it to be really fun I think you need to find a few more knife interactions. The current prototype already requires the player to think a little bit (like avoiding the boss lazer with knives on the wall, that was pretty clever). I think more knife interactions are needed to make this shine.
I think with a few more knife interactions available the levels would feel a bit more open ended (even if some levels have to be solved in specific ways, just giving the player lots of bad options let's them feel like they have more agency in finding a solution). Like I already said, I'm more interested in an tactical platformer (like Spelunky) than a straight up puzzle platformer (like Braid or Escape Goat). So my bias is for giving players a lot of tools and then giving them playgrounds (with loose goals) for them to play in.
Like for instance, if you clog up a wall with knives, maybe some things cannot move past the knife clog (like if there were rotating blades on paths that get stopped by embedded knives). Stopping enemies from moving with knives might be interesting.
Maybe some enemies (like the bouncing boss at the end) could scrape knives off of walls). This would force you to watch where those enemies move.
Maybe knives could pin certain enemies to walls, or maybe enemies with lots of knives in them grow heavy and can't move.
The enemies have a ton of health at the moment, assuming this is going to be an action game I'd definitely suggest lowering their health a lot. Also, I think it'd be rad if enemies didn't exactly have health, but instead could take a certain number of knives stuck in them (like a floating eyeball dies when three knives are stuck in it). That way you could have some enemies that shake knives off, and killing them always comes down to getting enough knives in them. Also, you would always be able to tell how much life an enemy has by counting the knives.
If knives couldn't be stuck on top of each other, if they pinged off of already stuck in knives, then you could make small enemies who you have to attack from both sides (because there isn't enough room on one side to stick enough knives in).
The walls that you cannot stick knives in are kind of a classic puzzle platformer trope. Another one is walls that reflect knives (bouncing knives into things is bad ass).
I think you need to find a way to make climbing on ceilings (or where knives enter walls at low angles) more reliable (in the video you fail a few times).
The knives that bounce off metal objects (like circular saw blades) are a nice little bit of juice. I also like the Super Meat Boy blood on the edges of the terrain.
In the demo you linked I couldn't figure out how to jump ("W" didn't jump but did climb up knife covered walls. Spacebar didn't jump, Right clicking did nothing etc).
Those are my thoughts! Sorry to dog pile you with suggestions. Making a game where the core interaction is throwing tons of knives into things is a novel idea. I think you could make this appeal to a lot of fans of action games, so to really make this work you need to get your action gameplay tight. I don't think a lot of the people who play puzzle platformers are going to be super excited about knife throwing, this is probably a better suited game for action platformer gamers. I only mention this because you seem to be treating the level design a bit like Montez, and I think that Knife Fight is a different sort of beast.
Though the first step (I think) is finding more fun things to do.
That's my opinion anyway. GOOD LUCK!!!
Very cool concept!
@LittleBear Seems like you enjoy it. Sorry about the enter thing. it seems the latest build did not sync up but thanks for playing.
@BlackShipsFilltheSky This is the sort of feedback that helps one grow as a designer, so a big thanks to you for this. I am also thinking of it more as a "action game", kind of like a thinking mans Brofroce or from what ive heard about it Megaman. Ive been designing more levels for Montez recently and I think that design style rubbed off a bit like you mentioned but yeah I feel this should be a faster paced game. Gotcha. I was thinking about adding more before I posted the prototype but I was also eager for feedback. Thanks for these ;)
Ive also been thinking about having some pickups available like a ballistic knife or knife shield or homing missile knife etc but you would only have one slot so you would need to decide what you like best. More enemies less health. That makes sense. The eye was a weird one cause its not supposed to be a boss but I felt that is was way too easy to beat him at first so I uped his health. I think if I just had 3 of them instead of one it would have worked better than giving him more health. Spacebar should have worked. Thats weird. Thanks again.
@garethf thanks.
So it seems I will give this at least a couple more updates, with the great in-house art of course. If there is any music folk that would like to do some music for the prototype just post it in the thread or PM me :)
Glad to hear you're going to do a few more updates! And glad to hear you'll be maintaining the high standard of in-house art that I've grown to expect from Knife Fight :)
Regarding Montez style levels: I don't think you have to steer away from Montez style level design for the moment. Puzzle platformer level design is good for testing differing mechanics, and having isolated problems that the player has to overcome is a good way of teaching. If Knife Fight turns out to be more fun as an tactical action platformer then you can respond by building levels more suitable for that, but you've got plenty of time.
If you get to the point where you want to construct levels more like a thinking-man's Broforce (or Megaman) I can give some tips and advice (if you need any). In any case, level design is a different problem to finding the fun in throwing tons of knives (of which I feel you're off to a good start).
I like the concept, and as the others said would add a lot of focus to the theme of knives, even if you want to keep it a action based game, ie:
1. What if you have different types of knives (I'm sure you thought of this)
2. Maybe knives disappear after timer alarm
3. Some enemies, or objects in the game can gain weight physically, like lifts, when knives are stuck to it...when knives disappear the lift goes up.
Cool, what are your plans for this if it works out, platform / market, etc? Or is it just for fun.
1- You might get sued using the mario character (I could be wrong)
2- Maybe have the knives only peg into the wall when it is at a certain angle. Some of the knives look dodgy when you can peg them into the wall at an almost vertical angle.
Nice game keep it up :)
Thanks for all the feedback.
As suggested by @BlackShipsFilltheSky finding new ways to make the knives effect the bosses and environments. You might also consider surfaces that are dangerous to hit like a ice wall holding back water. But perhaps sometimes you need to break them other times you don't. They can only take a certain amount of knives before they break.
Bosses with vulnerable spots or times when they vulnerable. Perhaps a boss that's a chain of objects if you destroy the center one it splits into two bosses or 3 and so on. (the same sort of frenzy you see in the old asteroids game, the more you win the harder it gets.)
Magnets :) I just love magnets if you can find a way to build them into the game. Redirect the flow of the knives around corners etc.
Of course all the old platforms things could come into play moving saws, timed jets of fire etc. But I would think for each one you add make sure it has an interaction with the knives that adds to the value of the key element and is not just extra noise.
I like the feeling of infinite knives. I definitely felt like being able to smash a few enemies before have to deal with a tricky boss fight would add more fun. LIke first time I got the eye I was sad I couldn't just annihilate this big thing with my furious torrent of knives. I mean it's an eyeball after all. You could make later bosses more interesting by having them being armoured and have to use your knives to trigger some sequence (eg hitting a button on the wall) where they become temporarily vulnerable.
Curious to see if you can find more fun.
Some reflection brought on by this game :
I don't know about you people but the way I think of a new prototype idea is by getting these "visions", little flashes of gameplay that I just NEED to try out. In this case it was just a shit ton of knifes on a wall and some character climbing it. I didn't think about it more before starting to prototype it I simply wanted that interaction.
This seems like a flawed approach. I feel like a more productive way would be if I have some design goals and try to build a game into that criteria.
I had the same sort of vision with Montez and Cluster but in those cases I liked what I built enough to continue working on it. So far ive had 2 hits and about 10 misses (a miss counts as something I liked enough in my head to prototype but didn't
like enough to complete).
As far as I can tell most of Free Lives' prototypes is worth pursuing (and probably will be pursued after Broforce) So I am wondering if that is because of the prototypes being a team effort or perhaps its the fact that the individuals working on the game has more experience both in games and in life.
I would like to make a smaller amount of throw away prototypes.
If anyone wants to share their prototyping process or their hit/miss rate that would be pretty cool.
We do do a lot of throw away prototypes. Check out this one for instance: http://www.freelives.net/AmericaVSCyborgs/AmericaVSCyborgz.zip (It's an example of a Free Lives prototype from October 2014 that just isn't worth pursuing)
The way I see it is that the more you practice something (like brawler gameplay in AmericaVSCyborgs) the better you get at it and the fewer miscalculations you make when trying the next prototype. So early prototypes in a style of game tend to hit snags and become uninteresting really quickly, while later prototypes in a style tend to benefit from all the experience gathered from previous failures and are more probably worth pursuing.
I think it is possible to choose to prototype things that you're more convinced will work. This tends to mean relying on conventions more (which is a bad thing if done to heavily). But I think trying out an interesting idea (like throwing tons of knives) is more likely to teach you things that give you an advantage in your future prototypes.
AmericaVSCyborgs is a dudd of ours. But I'm pretty certain I'll be able to improve on it the next time I try a brawler.
Having said that... Free Lives does tend to prototype towards an end goal. I made 5 different platformer prototypes before Broforce. We've made three FPS prototypes because we want to make a FPS in the future. I've made 6 brawler prototypes, with varying success, because I want to make a brawler in the future. (and obviously there have been many other prototypes that don't fit into these categories or never made it to the point where what was built is worth remembering).
The point I'm making is that Free Lives doesn't try avoid throwaway prototypes. But we do prototype towards an end goal (and in doing so more and more of our prototypes start to have potential).
Occasionally we have prototyped something where the end goal was to have a full game loop (like Ore Chasm or Super Smash Lander or Death Smashers) . Which might make it look like we're going for full games instead of small ideas, but that's only because part of the goal was to learn something about designing longer gameplay loops (because we hope to make games in the future with well designed long gameplay loops).