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Caverns of Khron release!

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Fri, 11/30/2012 - 01:25 — thesycophant
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My biggest game project to date has been released! I finally feel like I have something with an amount of polish and fairly large scale out there, and that's like the realization of a childhood dream.

I'm pretty proud of it. I've been working on it (sometimes with more dedication than others) for almost 11 months now. I'm about to embark on another project with a group of hobbyist developers at Waseda University (I think), so I'm eager to start on something new.

I have this website and a lot of its greater surrounding community to thank for getting me back into game making. Thanks for giving me a place to work out game ideas and exchange my little bursts of creativity.

If you're interested, please download it here.

John D. Moore

Comments

Mon, 12/03/2012 - 09:36 — thesycophant
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In case anyone is

In case anyone is interested, I uploaded an update to version 1.1. I think it's a bit better now.

Sat, 12/22/2012 - 20:50 — spiral
spiral's picture

completely missed this before!

great platformer! the music is great too. it's fun stuff! my only complaints being that stages don't save automatically (it feels weird having to do this myself every new screen), and it's kind of annoying how easy it is to get permanently stuck on a lot of screens. otherwise, it's good level design and pretty smooth gameplay!

Sun, 12/23/2012 - 06:39 — x

My fav part

I love how the directions are on the left, but you have to jump to get to them, so in theory you have to know in your heart how to jump. somehow I guessed since well, it's your ug, it's our ug, and default controls are ctrl / shift or z / x / c, but everyone else's in their hearts could be space and enter. I got a kick out of that.. Then when you got there it told you how to jump.

Alternately there IS the pdf file, but I read it in the prerelease and I didn't wanna spoil it any more..

The sprites are done wonderfully, you've added a female protagonist and she doesn't seem usual or objectifying, and as far as saying "hey snails get out of my way I'm busy here" she's a good role model for that for all of us courageous commoners and you can look towards for inspiration.

I read a review that the music is out of place elsewhere, I did some research on it to see how it's doing in other ... portals? I don't think it is.. Well, maybe a little. When I first played Drawn to Life and listened to the tracks in that game, one of them was chipper and bumpy and had some sweet bass and it's like damn where's this coming from? I got that feeling from this game and .. well, everything's more than I expected even jumping in without expectations, because I've been lurking here for a while, and you're not supposed to expect anything. You just play, and enjoy it if you can because it was made to be made.

I was gonna go ahead and finish then review but I'll stick around level 23 and stuff. I enjoy it so far. and level 23 I know what I'm doing, but it's tuff. It's tim ruff tuff. I still like even after all the levels there's still a couple simpler levels here and there. I'll probably finish it some time, but yeah, the sweet beats, the layout, controls, sound effects, and the classy jump to get to the directions that tell you how to jump, and of course i also agree we need more megaman style doors powered by robots. Maybe in your next adventure you can have an interview with the door opening robot.

Tue, 12/25/2012 - 10:32 — thesycophant
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Thanks for the very kind

Thanks for the very kind comments. Both to you and mno. I'm glad you've been able to enjoy it to some degree! I really enjoyed making it.

Mon, 01/14/2013 - 22:50 — spiral
spiral's picture

I've gotten up to the final

I've gotten up to the final boss. An hour and 30 minutes in total play time, now! Some great levels along the way, and I really liked the third wizard boss guy. The last boss is soo hard, but I like to keep starting up the game every bit and trying at it more!

Wed, 01/16/2013 - 19:56 — thesycophant
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Thanks for mentioning that!

Thanks for mentioning that! I'm really glad you've been enjoying it. It makes me feel really good to know people are enjoying what I've worked on. And it motivates me to make more!

Also, about the final boss, make sure you are playing with the current version (v1.12). I think the corrections that make the boss a little kinder were actually in 1.1, but I think I made a small tweak along the way to improve the players' bullet dodging. It may not actually be different for you, but if you're gonna beat the game, make sure you have the latest version!

Wed, 04/17/2013 - 13:10 — spiral
spiral's picture

Yeah, that's a lot better!

Yeah, that's a lot better! Geeze I got distracted from playing this... I just beat the boss though! It was a lot easier after I found out you can use your sword on fireballs!! I'm trying out the bonus levels, they're cool. I don't understand cloud level 6 though !

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