Where is cryinGames at now?

We started making this game at the beginning of 2024. Ethan and I felt like we had a few games under our belt and were hard at work trying to make our "Drone Game" project. Working on that game had been slow and we were a year in when we decided to take a break and look into a potential "Side Project." This side project was "The Keeper's Garden," a game that we had concepted for a bit, but more was an idea to flush out the lore of the cryinGames universe.

When I'm not working on implementing the next game feature, I'm usually brainstorming story ideas. This has historically been challenging to do because I didn't really understand the ways I needed to limit myself with the story. After making so many outlines for games that are just too big to accomplish with our two person team and games that lacked any story and relied solely on mechanics—like Dewdrop Daycare— I felt like I was finally beginning to understand how to write a story driven game that was achievable for us to create. Part of this discovery came from working on Ice Cream Social. The learning goals when making that game were; how to make compelling interactive cutscenes in the engine and designing a modular story that could be created and completed in single level segments. We ended up being able to work on this game two times because of this modular design. We originally made the first two levels for the 2022 Cozy Autumn Game Jam. We made the third level for the 2023 Cozy Autumn Game jam but I messed up and got the upload due date slightly wrong and we missed the upload deadline 🙃 Nonetheless, I feel like we learned a lot about modular game and story design over the past four years of making games. 

Our original ideas for this game were to create some kind of RTS mixed with a Metroidvania. Pulling from more casual games like Pikmin for the RTS influence and more refined platformers like Mario, Celeste and Hollow Knight for the Metroidvania aspects. Although in our initial game we made for the 2024 32 bit Jam, the player movement was notably too icy. We also ended up hitting less of an RTS feeling and more of a puzzle platformer. The "Little guy" that follows you around was originally going to be a bunch of little guys that you could direct and platform with. Without adding copious amounts of death into the game, this seemed like a difficult approach to make exciting. We took a step back and prioritized creating puzzle mechanics that the player can solve using two characters with slightly different move-sets. This makes for a slower game but I think more satisfying and strategy-inducing. I think we will revisit the Pikmin idea in a later game that isn't a platformer. 

New Progress

Modifying the Move-set

One of the biggest points of feedback we got from the two game jams we had submitted our platforming proof of concept was that the movement was too icy which made the game just a bit too hard. Jumps that were supposed to be easy proved to be much more difficult to new players. I think I learned that when you make a move-set, for some reason, it's always going to be more intuitive to the creator. When seeing how other people picked up and started playing it, they don't anticipate what I had learned to while designing and tweaking. It gave me a much clearer perspective on a generic learning curve for the move-set. 

I think a good platformer move-set should make the easy jumps feel easy and the more difficult jumps feel achievable and rewarding. In that sense, the player should feel like they're in control of what's happening so that when they do miss a jump, they feel like it was their fault, not the engine's. This is the feeling I get when playing games such as Celeste and Hollow Night. Especially in a Metroidvania where the player is constantly moving around, basic movements should be easy so that the player can master the basic set, and when it's expanded upon later in the game, it only makes things more exciting! The challenge of the game should come from its other aspects, the jumps shouldn't feel like they're always in the way of the player doing anything in the game. 

After giving the player more control of their movements on the ground and in the air, I added a ledge hang:

Changing the Little Guy

The next change had to do with the way the little guy works. Because we changed what the little guy was in the story, I needed to change how it acted in the game. Before, the little guy was a piece of The Keeper and they were able to break off from each other and morph together. Now, the little guy is the spirit of the planet you're on. So they stay by your side when not in use. Below is an early video of how I got them to follow the Player.

Adding a glider

The next addition was a glider mechanic. If the spirit of the planet is following the player, they are given a special ability. In this case, that ability is a glider ability. You may notice that I've also added some particles of "sand" that are flying around the scene. This is because I decided to add a wind mechanic to the level. I'll go more into that later, but it was a process getting the wind to work well with the glider mechanic.

Planet Spirit Movement

Next, I wanted to modify the movement mechanics of the little guy (now known as "the spirit"). I wanted them to always have the glider ability but to be a lot harder to control on their own. They're a lot more susceptible to wind currents when compared to The Keeper. You can also see how I'm testing the wind currents. I want the horizontal wind to be able to block paths and the vertical wind to give the player more lift when using the glider. At the end of the video you see me playing with an invisible ladder as well.

Moving Lights

I was replaying Uncharted 2 the past month and got to a part with a light puzzle. I thought it could translate well to an open world 2D game such as this. So I added that idea next:

Light Profiles

I also thought it could be cool, and accentuate how bright it is outside if the screen adjusted the overall brightness level when the player entered and exited sunny areas. This video shows off the subtle effect:

Sunlight Damages the Player

The last addition I want to talk about in this devlog is the system I have outlined for how sunlight will hurt the player over time. I did this by having a Raycast node as a child of the "Sun" Node that is constantly pointing at the player. It also collides with the world so they can use things as shade from the sunlight:

Thanks for reading,

Michael 

- cryingames