I’ve been a big fan and user of Phaser for a long time now but have stepped away from development for a while, but in coming back to everything, I was surprised to see Phaser had changed so much but I’ve been getting my feet wet and I still absolutely love it…
I am currently limited in terms of hardware, time and a few other ways right now, but I do hope to get into creating some examples, samples and tutorials when I can find the means and the time, which is a little hard as of late because I am developing my project on-the-go right now, as I am homeless and spend most nights outside, which is what lead me to getting back into development… I don’t want to waste so much time walking around or sitting around at night just trying to sleep (which rarely happens) or kill time, so I set out to grind for cash via extremely underpaid labour work that paid via cash in hand to get a small laptop which I am using for this project until I can get support to fix my situation. The laptop is an 11.6" Lenovo 100e 81cy.
The above is also why I am greatly considering taking an episodic release approach to this project. I also mention that so that people are aware that there may be fairly large gaps in my activity, days to a week at a time, which is why I am not wanting to commit to any tutorial efforts at this time, but this project once complete will be broken down into a series or articles, in hopes to help others.
Here is a simple WIP screenshot of the current state, including a couple of things such as:
- Main character
- Two enemies: Goblin & Skeleton
- Two Item pickups: coin & life potion
- A variety of tiles (that need work)
- An NPC that currently uses the main character’s sprite, the player can interact with this
- Basic HUD elements that have been redesigned several times to get to this simplifies state (I like the minimal approach for it)
- A sign post that can be read by the player
I look forward to getting this project into a more playable demo state, I have had a friend interested by the progress and has offered to help me out with the programming portion of the project as he has been wanting to get into Phaser development for some time… I will link his forum username here once I find out what he signed up with.
I will add much more information, links and screenshots soon… Until then, I hope you all have a great time developing with Phaser!!
General Summary / Intro
Karzak is a game centered around platforming and smashing the s**t out of things, both inanimate and animate. Episode one is set around a simple scenario where in Karzak had prepared a feast for his triumphant victory against a neighboring barbarian and in doing so won the hand of a partner (Mally), who is due to return any moment but when Karzak turns to get the boar from the fire, a sound of goblin feet pattering away echo in the distance, Karzak turns yelling in anger as he witnesses his glorious feast being stolen away by pesky little goblins! Karzak has to ensue, in hope to save his feast to impress his new lady, however… It is not as easy as he had first thought. What will Mally think when she arrives at an empty camp with no Karzak and no feast!
The game is a side section of the Karzak universe and franchise, created out of the limitations of housing and hardware alike, as an attempt to utilize the game world and characters of the initial game project to create a fun, simplified and humorous game that simply allows the users to have fun experiencing Karzak, the friendly but clumsy oaf that he is, while he attempts to do things that just never quite seem to work out.
A little more about the game!
Karzak is something that fuses old school challenging gameplay of platformers with visuals that are also not too dissimilar to induce nostalgia and modern gameplay and design philosophies tied in to create emotional attachment to the characters and scenarios without distracting from the fact that you’re playing an arcade like game not a story driven novel.
There is a focus on a no inventory approach to the games items and pickups, you pick up what you need as you need it, most items are disposable, consumable or throw-able. This coupled with timing for combat allows for a simple system to become vastly complex based on the environment and enemies around the character, which also alters based on how the player plays the game, which also allows the player to define their own play style based on the knowledge gained throughout the experience.
A little snippet regarding the story:
This particular episodic release which is a sidetrack of the initial story behind Karzak The Slayer revolves around Karzak’s victory feast being stolen away by Goblins, you set out in a rage to recover your meal but before long, Karzak is lost in the Goblin Caves of Grindill and must escape!
Why an alternate scenario for the game’s story?
I needed the project scope to be trimmed back and instead of changing some of the wonderful elements behind the game I decided to use all of the characters and universe or as much of is as possible to get something small but great going, then build upon that as I go, due to the situation at the time this was the best way to go about it in my opinion.
Here is a visual progression of the character throughout the course of the game:
Character Animation Previews:
Other Images:
rescue-able NPC
Various (unfinished) Enemies:
Goblin king > Mini-Boss > Goblin soldier > Goblin guard > Goblin mage
Boss Concept Improvements (Goblin KIng)
The bottom is the initial rough concept sprite for the ‘Goblin King’ the one above that, in the center is the next variation that I was playing with, but it felt a little less “king” like, it simply felt a little more humanized than anything else, so I went a step above and made a beast like goblin which would be king and the main boss of the game now has a more intimidating visual. Clearly needing polish, this is the visual progress on the design for the end-game boss.
To Be Continued…
- I’ll add more information on the actual game.
- Update Demo & Share it.
- Recreate level one
Project Updates:
- Reworked Notes and GDD (with intent to share at some point during development)
Personal & Situational Updates:
- I now have a stable place to stay
- I now have enough mobile data to be consistently online
- I now have a computer that is quite substantially better than the little 11.6" Lenovo notebook.
- CPU: Intel i3-6100 @3.7ghz
- RAM: 8gb DDR4
- Motherboard: Asus B150m
- Graphics: Sky Lake integrated graphics
- 256gb Samsung SSD
- I have a graphics tablet on order to speed up my animation process!
I hope you all have as much fun developing in Phaser as I have!!
