[Devlog] Gorky

Hello everybody,

I'm here to present my next little project : Gorky. For those who don't know, Maxim Gorky was one of the first people to assist to one of the Lumiere's brothers projections. He witnessed the birth of cinema.

Maxim Gorky (1868–1936) saw a program of Lumière films at a Russian fair and published this article in a local paper a few days later, on July 4, 1896.

The game is basically a short and simple metroidvania, in which instead of finding powerups and gaining abilities, you lose them. As you advance, the game becomes more difficult and the levels must be approached in new ways, as you won't be able to use your old abilities anymore.

This is what Maxim Gorky had to say about his first experience :

Last night I was in the Kingdom of Shadows.

If you only knew how strange it is to be there. It is a world without sound, without colour. Every thing there—the earth, the trees, the people, the water and the air—is dipped in monotonous grey. Grey rays of the sun across the grey sky, grey eyes in grey faces, and the leaves of the trees are ashen grey. It is not life but its shadow, It is not motion but its soundless spectre.

His text will be used as inspiration for the game's atmosphere and cinema as a whole will be a background theme. I will not approach the theme directly, but I'll make some nods here and there and construct a mysterious story around it.

All graphics will be made in pixel-art and I will try to keep a modern-retro look. I will use mostly cold colours all around the game with some very saturated uses of warm colours here and there, to contrast some of it (or highlight things). I'm really unsure about the character's look (looks to plain) so that might change. For now, he's a good placeholder.

I hope you'll follow the development of this little game and that you'll enjoy playing it when it comes out!

Altar

This may be where you give up your powers as you go.

Project's on hiatus for now

I'm already EXTREMELY excited about this game having read this post. As I already said in the group chat in Skype, you have gained my interest. The concept of LOSING powers to increase difficulty is PROFOUNDLY original...to my mind, anyway. I know that games typically get harder when you lose the powers you've collected earlier, but to start off the game "powered up" and you cannot gain more is truly a spin I've never heard of nor seen.

This game is going to make waves!

NotionGames - Dude! You've got to check this out!

alvarop I am too excited for you friend .

The game looks too nice and too good , I will say i never played such game in my life where you just lose your powerups , lol who want to be like that, haha,

Best of luck and All the Best for the game, we all looking forward for your game.

I can see this game will be intense and deep. Do not many people is dare with games like yours. I hope you can release frequently new progress updates.

Never you leave it!

cheers!

working on them silly tiles

I think the ground sprites in the first picture are too small for the player.. Anyways keep it up, i'd really love to see a demo

I like it a lot! I'm curious how you're going to design things with abilities being stripped. Mostly, I'm curious about player reward and bringing fresh things to the table. I look forward to how you're going to handle that!

I like it a lot! I'm curious how you're going to design things with abilities being stripped. Mostly, I'm curious about player reward and bringing fresh things to the table. I look forward to how you're going to handle that!

This is my curiosity too. Stripping abilities are going to have to some how be framed as a reward. You could do something like setting jump to half power making jumps across chasms with spikes above it possible or something, but that's hard to scale in a progressive manner IMO.

I think the ground sprites in the first picture are too small for the player.. Anyways keep it up, i'd really love to see a demo

Yeah. I upscaled them in the game now.

And the idea of gaining power-downs (lol) will be rewarding in a way that fits with the story of the character. And also, it will bring a fresh point of view on backtracking, allowing you to engage into challenges from levels in different ways.

You'll see

I really like the shading you did on those tiles!, somehow it all reminds me a bit of Fez.

Maybe you can take something from Maxim Gorky's appearance, and use it on your game character to really make him stand out. (quick google search) I see he has a really big moustache and a hat on some photos, so maybe you can do something with that.

I'm looking forward to see some ingame footage!

Yeah, I'm not completely happy with the character's design. He's charming, but could use some (a lot) of work. I'm still learning pixel art so we'll see how this goes.

Very interesting concept, and quite a design challenge. I'm very excited to see what direction you take this in!

I got a Fez vibe looking at it too. That's definitely a good thing.

Thanks — Icarus, I'm currently working on level design and the overall world as much as I can

All of this seems weel made and clever. It's really exciting.

What do you plan to do with your game? will it be a free internet game? Do you plan to greenlight it or something (I'm pretty sure you could if you work a bit and comunicate on it, and if you're lucky of course)?

It looks great anyway!