20XX review - A worthy successor of Megaman X?

20XX (previously known as Echoes of Eridu) is an indie game developed by Batterystaple Games and Fire Hose Games published by Batterystaple Games. What is this game about? Well you have two playable characters, one with an energy sword the other has a chargeable N-buster cannon. They can jump on walls, dash, kill bad guys, fight some bosses at the end of the levels and get the bosses' abilities... Wait... it sounds familiar...

That's bullet hell for you!

Well yeah, it's obviously a Megaman X clone. Mighty No.9 was unfortunately disappointing after years of waiting and many delays. But here is an alternative. So what about 20XX? Well it's awesome!
It's not just a game that you complete once and never touch again. It's a rogue-like platformer with random level generation, lots of items, surprises and fun! Each runs are very different and that randomization gives the reason to play it again and again and again. And it really plays like Megaman X!

A cute looking boss! Loving this description!
Hint: you'll hate this guy!

When you start the game you don't have access to too much items on the levels. You can get soul chips from very tough glowing soul foes and when you die, you can use them to unlock items, making the progress easier. Items are great. You can get extra movement speed, jump height, more damage, armor parts that gives you more mobility or other special abilities and there are weapons too for both characters. You can buy items in shops spending your nuts... yeah, that's what they're called. Not rupees, not gold... nuts. Well I mean like a wheel nut! Before you think about something else.

Entrance to the laboratory that offers an item for free that may screw up your run. Choose wisely!

The game has a good variety of enemies and there are 8 bosses and 4 different type of levels. The boss fights are very enjoyable they get stronger on later levels. Don't except an easy fight against a boss you fought on level 1 on later levels! They get some extra tricks, lot more HP and some get faster! Killing things are very satisfying!

Sky temple. Maybe it looks like heaven, but it's actually platforming hell! Well, they can be completed without movement upgrades, but be careful! Also, this level can be super fun! And the music is awesome!

Obviously there is a limited amount of items to unlock and when you finished the normal game it could get boring. But there are the so called skulls, I call them modifiers or mutators which can make the enemies stronger, levels longer, or increase the game speed to 150%! Of course there are tons of these skulls and you can activate more than one so the number of possibilities are huge! In recent updates it became possible to use seeds to generate level which I really missed previously.

Arch enemies: spike. But don't worry, in this game they don't kill you instantly. In this game, most things reduces your HP by 1... except in some special cases...

Also what I love to come back for are the daily and weekly challenges. They are great competitive score based modes where you really need strategy, precision, fast decision making and of course, not to die. Both has normal and hardcore mode. Hardcore enables three skulls. They are extremely difficult!
On daily challenges, you have one try. If you die anywhere, it's over, no retry. Weekly challenges give you a whole week to try again and again and there is no daily limit. You can develop strategies, learn from mistakes to improve your score. In scoring time, killed enemies, and many other things count.
You can check the leaderboard for your place, also you can check out previous results too.
Thanks to these modes I have 85+ hours in this game. I can't stop playing it! Also there is local and online cooperative game too! Local is one screen and uses zooming to see both players. It works really fine most of the time. You can go far from each other without major problems. Online may have some sync issues (especially with moving platforms) but it is even mentioned in the menu it's in a very alpha state right now. But still very playable, and fun! You can do any of the game modes in multiplayer, including the challenges, they have separated co-op leaderboard.
Also I must note, the game's difficulty is just right... in casual and normal modes at least.

Getting all the same armor parts gives you extra abilities! Rare moment, but when it happens, it's fantastic! Can be a true game changer!

The controls of the game is fantastic. Very responsive, the boss power usage is cleverly done. You can have up to three powers unlike in a Megaman (X) game where the number was 8. But here all powers can be used with different buttons so you can immediately use what you need. The powers are very different and can be handy in different situations.
You can edit the controller settings, reassign buttons, set deadzones. I found the game well playable even on keyboard, but you'll need to find the right settings for yourself. On Xbox 360 controller it's truly great.

Sound effects are satisfying, and got better and better as the game was developed. The music is catchy and retro. Fits to the game really. Stucks in your head!

The graphics were my complaint at the beginning when I got the game on Steam. I kinda wished it was pixelart, but instead it uses high resolution 2D sprites. Kinda cartoonish with very smooth skeletal animations. The artwork wasn't that good, but it improved a lot and I think the game looks really pretty in its current state. It's detailed enough, runs well, it doesn't need a powerful machine to play with. Runs at 60 FPS even when there are tons on enemies on the screen. Loading times are short too.

It's time to go shopping!

This game is the real deal. We finally got a fantastic Megaman X game. While it lacks in story (it has one intro cutscene and that's all), the gameplay itself is almost perfect. And the replay value is strong with this one. Also don't forget, it's an early access game currently at version 0.961b. Changes, additions are expected as the game is updated biweekly!

In overall 20XX is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED for the fans of rogue-likes / platformers and especially for Megaman X fans. It's a fantastic game. For only €14.99 on Steam, it's a must buy! Don't miss it!

Feature list:

• Megaman X style gameplay
• 2 characters: Ace (Zero) and Nina (X)
• Random generated levels
• Lots of items
• 8 bosses
• 4 different areas
• Game modes: Casual (starting with a few items), Normal, Boss rush and seeded runs
• Cool retro style music
• Responsive controls
• Local (one screen with zooming) and online cooperative multiplayer (for 2 players)
• Daily and weekly challenges with leaderboards
• Frequently updated (biweekly)
• Hours of fun!

Links:

Steam Page

Developer's website

Developer's twitter

Wishes for the future...

I love the game as it is! But I would love to see some extra contents. (Am I greedy for wishing for more?)
I would like to see a final level for the game after defeating the 8 bosses. And of course a final boss. Something great, menacing and somewhat randomized on different runs. I can imagine something like Sigma's final form from MMX and that kind of boss could be randomized easily with different weapons.

The normal bosses are fun and well done, but I wish there was some subversions of them with some palette swap / hue shifting, size randomization, modified patterns and attacks. It would be even better for the endless game mode skull. I think it would be the cheapest solution rather than designing more different bosses.

Also maybe there could be additional items and locations. But even if it has only 4 different level designs, it is always different due to the randomization, so it's fine.

I also would love to see a trophy room kind of thing that shows your results of daily and weekly runs. Getting medals for ending in top 3 would be great. Now it's just... you can see your results in the leaderboard and that's it. Of course it's still satisfying to finish at high places.

Since it's a Steam game, I wish it has achievements. Don't know if they'll be added, I hope so!

More story elements would be nice. Nothing fancy actually.

I don't think the game needs much more of developement other than these. Netcode could be better but I'm sure it'll be improved. In overall, it's an almost complete so called Early Access game. It doesn't feel like it. It's mostly polished and great.

#LOWREZJAM 2016 - I rated all the games!!! (PART 2)

#LOWREZJAM 2016 - I rated all the games!!! (PART 1)

...and my long journey of playing and rating all the games just ended...

Yet Another Zombie Game for #LOWREZJAM!

Download, play and rate my #LOWREZJAM game Yet Another Zombie Game!

An idea I got from the amazing 3D NES...

3D NES is a really impressive experimental emulator that turns your NES games into 3D! It's not perfected yet, but the beta is public and it shows us, it's real and it works. Well, the performance is not perfect and while I'm not sure how it generates the 3D world, but it somehow uses the pixel colors maybe. Games that's heavily using dithering runs a lot slower since it generates more complex geometry. I wonder how it'll be improved in overall, it couldn't open all my ROMs, probably not all the mappers are implemented yet.
One of the thing which made me surprised about this project is that it was made in Unity! The accessible beta is WebGL only, but since it's Unity based it means it'll be easy to port to other platforms. Personally I am familiar with Unity and I never ever dreamed about not even a working average NES emulator in Unity. But a 3D one? Just wow!

Pixel art - Kylo Ren and Finn

I just started to learn some pixel art. Here is one of my work. A scene from Star Wars Episode VII - The Force Awakens. This is based on the scene where Kylo Ren fought against our heroes. He's facing with Finn here on the snowy, dark Starkiller Base.

A new old adventure!

Hey, howdy?

Memories... nostalgia... dilemma...

Well, it's an old stuff of me... Why am I posting this? Well, I worked a lot on this back then and I think it was pretty cool. Looked like Megaman X, worked like Megaman X... except it has some glitches and I've never finished it. I created all the background graphics in Photoshop. And while I didn't respect the SNES palette I think it looks acceptable for SNES aesthetics.

I am kinda nostalgic. Game Maker was my first game development tool! I got 4.3 from a computer magazine's CD. And I was kinda pissed as child that it was 2D only. Like kids like modern things. THREE DEE! YEAAAH! I learnt the lesson. All that glitters is not gold. And hyper-super mega good graphics doesn't make the game.

NES style game in Unity - Part 8 - Storing the levels!

Hello and welcome to the 8th part of my thoughts on creating an NES style game with Unity!
I'm still at the beginning of developing my game. Before going into it I want to do some preparations and also learn some new things. My newest  idiocy is about storing the levels. So originally I started to create my levels in Tiled which is an absolutely amazing editing tool for tilemap based levels. So sounds perfectly ideal for me. But there are a few things that it can't store. So after reading a lot about NES game development I was thinking about storing the levels the same way as NES did.

Opening scene of Castlevania with the tile indexes in hexadecimal.
Original image source: http://www.dustmop.io/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/castlevania-nt.png

NES style game in Unity - Part 7 - Fixing and upgrading some basic stuffs / reinventing the wheel

Hello everyone!

It was a long time ago I posted any updates on my NES style game. I have a post about the palette editor which was a good idea back then to create, but I made a mistake with it and I had to fix it. Let's see what's new about it and what are my plans with it!

Saaaaans!

I just started to work on this funny little guy in 3ds max. He's from Undertale, and he's a punny character. He kinda made me like one of the most hated font. Don't tell me I am the only one. The model is not finished, but I am working on it.

Játéktesztjeim link gyűjteménye

Néha-néha irkálok játékteszteket. Pár oldalra publikáltam őket, ide a tesztekhez vezető linkeket írom ki egyelőre.

• Amnesia - A Machine For Pigs (PC - Windows / Linux)
• rFactor (PC - Windows)
• Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures (PC / WII U / 3DS)
• Akumajou Densetsu / Castlevania III (Famicom / NES)
• Castlevania - Dracula X Chronicles (PSP)
• Flapping Online (Android / IOS
• Street Fighter 2010 (NES)

Jó olvasgatást!

NES style game in Unity - Part 6 - The Beginning...

Where the adventure begins...

NES style game in Unity - Part 5 - What a horrible night to have an alternative night colour schemed tileset

Another very small update. Making experiments with NES colours for different effects. This time, I gave a try to day and night colour schemes.

NES style game in Unity - Part 4 - Getting in shape!

Looks like an NES game, but it's made in Unity.
The character sprite is a modified sprite from Konami's Castlevania III - Dracula's Curse.

Progressing slowly but surely! I am getting more and more satisfied with the look of the game. It definitely looks like something from the NES era. Same resolution, same colour limitation. Same feel!

NES style game in Unity - Part 3 - It's gonna take you back to the past...

Welcome back! It's about progress!
In the last few days I wrote many things about my game. Mostly plans. Description of different areas, what items you can get, what items you're supposed to use, what enemies you'll have to encounter. An other document is about the gameplay mechanisms, how the player should make progress, etc.
I finally created an actual screenshot of the current game. It's far from the final one.

NES style game in Unity - Part 2 - Makes me vomit!

I made some progress with the NES style game. Nothing special... but it's enough to trigger the memories of NES... when games started to glitch, and looked like shit.

NES style game in Unity - Part 1: Limitations everywhere!

Hello there!

It was a long time ago I made anything useful on this blog. Well, because I started to make a game, I feel I should share a few thoughts about it for You!

I was thinking about a platformer game a long time ago. Something that represents the good old days, the age of Nintendo Entertainment System.

Straw hat pirates at Silverstone GP!

Sorry Luffy, but the One Piece is on another island!

I want my Formula 1 back!

Oh, FIA, what have you done!

I am a fan of F1 since 1995. I enjoyed it as a child so much! The cars were fast, the noise was powerful, the races were exciting and sometimes very chaotic. The were racing in heavy rain, there were many unexpected things. The cars looked beast! The tracks were full of gravel. If someone made a mistake, that was the end! And that's how it should be.

Jean Alesi - Britain (1995) -
Source: commons.wikimedia.org

Safety's first!

Well, FIA (Federation Internationale de l'Automobile), wants some kind of safe Formula One. And I kinda agree with them. We don't want serious injuries and deaths! The car's safety increased by a lot, and it's true about the tracks too. But the tracks are just way too safe. And I don't mind randomly appearing cranes and other things.
Well, a few words about Bianchi's accident. Yeah, he was faster than he should be, but I'm sure, if the crane is not there, he wouldn't have suffered such an accident like that. It wasn't the track's mistake, it was a really unlucky accident. Keep fighting, Jules!!!
Now, back to the topic, the tracks are full of tarmac run-off areas. And for me, they ruin the races. If someone make a mistake, it should be punished. Punished by the track, by the physics, not by FIA. FIA is inconsistent, the real world physics aren't. Sometimes great racers made mistakes and it ended their races giving opportunity to win to someone else! I miss that!
I'm glad, car safety is improving, since it can save life. But there are things that way too much. And still, there can be very unfortunate, serious accidents. The only way to avoid is that to not race at all. I don't think there is a 100% fail-safe way for prevent accidents like Jules'.

Rain, rain, more rain!

Rain is coming! Way too much rain! RED FLAG! Again safety is first, but stupid rules are the cause of unsafe rainy races. Back then, it was allowed to change the car setup between qualification and race. It also gave an opportunity for worse teams. With a risky wet setup, it was possible to them to get points. Or even win races... if the weather was really rainy next day. Nowadays, there is not way for tactics. No risk, no chance.

Of course, it's actually not that bad, there are still rainy races, but in heavy rain it's always the exciting part that, will the race suspended or not.
Do you remember Markus Winkelhock at Nürburgring? It was fun! It was one of the many memorable rainy races. Too bad, he didn't win.

Rules are rules! But stupid ones...

Oh, FIA... why, why WHY?! First, the engines sound like shit. But I got used to it. Does the engine sound have anything with good races? NO. They're important, I love loud engines, but I am OK with that.
The actual rules are bad!

DRS

Drag Reduction System a.k.a. easy overtake device. When I saw it first time in DTM, I realised, it's not that bad! But in F1 it's ridiculous! Why? Because the rules are bad for DRS! If you are close the  other car, he's usually an easy prey! Even if the car is the same, it makes it relatively easy to overtake it. The other car of course can't use if for defense. Except if he's lucky and there is an other car in front of him within 1 second distance. Even if it's a car out of the current lap! It's a joke. But there is an other problem. Dirty air make staying behind the other car too long bad, because it causes turbulence, and the down force efficiency becomes lower. Why? Because the current aerodynamic properties of the cars have this side effect. How to solve the problem? More grip to the tyres, more mechanical grip, reduce the importance of aerodynamics.
How to solve the DRS problem? Get rid of it or change the rules.
Ideas:

• A driver can use DRS in any of the straights in a race, but only 15 times in a race. He can use it for defense and attack too. No need to be close to the other driver. So it's possible to use it to achieve a better lap time to get closer to the others in case of a bigger disadvantage. DRS zones must be banned. Drivers should be able to use it anywhere.

Penalties and more penalties

Yo dawg! I heard you get penalty and even more penalties so you'll start from the previous Grand Prix location. Just look at poor Jenson and Fernando. Their car is a piece of crap and FIA just make it even worse. So it's not enough they are totally last because they had to change engine and other things, they get stop & go too! Why? Because FIA. That's why. One thing to note: current rules are to make weaker teams position even worse while teams with good car and engine have enough advantage already. It's like making poor people even poorer and make rich richer. Because that's how it works. And now, in F1 this is implemented for penalties! Yeaaaah!
It's not enough, that the V6T hybrid engines are still not perfected, but they can use only...FOUR! And if someone comes as a new engine manufacturer, they are fucked! There is no testing, there is nothing. If you ruined it, you are fucked even more than you deserved. Even Renault are in bad situation. Ridiculous! So what's F1 about? Competition? NO Racing? NO Drivers' skills? Errmmm Not really. So what? (cumulative) PENALTIES!

Don't cross the lines!

"Ooops, sorry, I just... I just crossed the line, my car just slided a little bit and... I couldn't..." PENALTY!!!

Yeah... leaving the track limits track can cause you some bad moment in the pit or somewhere else, because you get a penalty! Or your lap time will be invalidated. My idea: GRAVEL! Sounds familiar, isn't it! As I previously mentioned, track should penalise the drivers, not FIA, because FIA = Fuckin' Idiot's Association = Fuckin' Inconsistent Arbitraments

It's a joke. Because that can happen even accidentally. So why penalise the driver. Could the driver take the corner? Yes. So? I am OK with don't overtake outside the track limits, but sometimes it's even OK, if it's not on a totally safe tarmac, well he had the balls to overtake there, he didn't cause accident, it's fine! FIA, please, let them race! You too should have balls too! (or they don't have anymore).

 

Grosjean vs Massa.  I was so adrenaline pumped by this. It was beautiful! But the stewards thought it differently because rules are rules! But still, I think it was a nice move. And moves like these shouldn't be penalised. Grosjean made a risky move and it worked perfectly... until the stewards didn't penalise him. Shame on them. WE WANT REAL RACING!

My wheel just fell off, but it's not my mistake guys! I swear!

But it's your mistake, based on that you got the penalty! So... why penalise the driver when the team already ruined your race when you did... NOTHING? You lost a wheel, and the race. But it's not enough, your next race is already ruined, because you did nothing!
Well, if a team couldn't attach a wheel, that's coming with a penalty. A loose wheel nut and the driver get a 10 place grid penalty! It's outrageous! Why can't they penalise the team somehow? Because of the penalty, they won't make it slower to attach the wheel properly. They'll try to work as fast as possible. It can happen any time. Unfortunate, yeah. And that penalty won't help at all. Yes, it should be penalised, but don't penalise the driver because of that. Penalise the team.

There are so many things I could mention. Maybe later...

GET RID OF THE RADIO!

Just an idea: get rid of the radio communication and use it only in case of danger. F1 drivers are like puppets nowadays. They are on strings, engineers tell them what to do, where to do, how to do. Come on! Let them race! Leave them alone, they know what to do! If they have tyre problems, they need to feel it. If they feel it, they should tell the guys, "I want to change tyre now." It should be allowed, it's OK. But there are way too many informations the team tells the drivers.

GET RID OF THE BUTTON!

Not Jenson. He's a great guy and he deserves a better car. I want to see him on the podium again! So... remove all the buttons, leave the brake balance changer, a button to request pit and a few ones to change LCD mode to see other things than lap times. That's it. F1 is way too complicated and it's not about racing, but moaning, whining, pushing buttons (I respect them to do this at 300+km/h), but come on, it's not racing! It's unnecessary!

TO BE CONTINUED...

Who the f*ck is Simon in Frictional Games' new horror game?

No, I am not talking about one of the Belmonts... I am talking about SOMA. Frictional Games' new, amazing looking, exciting survival horror game. A lengthy, high quality, great gameplay trailer just came out in the recent days. It has many informations, and even more questions!