By: Chris "Sledge" Douglas
I was given the privilege of getting to konw Michael Stango, the creator of this new flash retro-styled game, Until Dawn. He gave me the info to break the story of it's release! Unfortunately I became ultra busy and kind of dropped the ball on it by not releasing this in time. However, it is here, and it's actually quite good!
Here, the author, Mike Stango, has graciously given me an awesome writeup on his inspirations, why he created the game the way he did, and even some behind-the-scenes on the process of creating such a game:
I love 2D, there is a unique charm only pixels can provide and the complete omission of the Z plane gives the feeling that everything on screen is being seen the way the author intended. Not just in terms of classic games, but modern 2D Castlevanias Odin Sphere, Grim Grimoire and, well everything Vanillaware has ever put out. To me 2D is a choice like black and white in a film and like black and white, 2D seems sadly underused. A brief windows like the portable systems of the mid 2000s and early indie games showed what can be done with 2D games using modern conventions, but with the rise of 3D in portable markets even that seems to be dieing off.
I wanted to create old school games with some modern sensibilities, classic games did have there problems, but that's no reason for everything to be 3D now. My hope is that Until Dawn my most resent title; brings that home. It starts with the escape the dungeon concept present in several early platformers, but it includes the art of parkour seen in countless modern games, as far as I know this is not been done in a 2D game yet, or at least no to this degree. The game can also be completed in about fifteen minuets making it short form media, perfect for establishing a punchy story and even some time for laying down atmosphere not unlike a music video.
I start by writing out a design document with some basic lines of code to remind me later of how things will work. This included the script and voice acting cues. Then I drew the graphical assets using Flash. I use Flash 8 since it's one of the versions still made by Macromedia and thus more stable. It's great for detailed Sprites, I draw as if on paper and then export them into PNG bitmaps so it has that classic look. During the production I will alter the design document as better/more practical ideas crop up or the art takes me in a new direction. Before starting up on the incidental sprites (background characters, villagers, etc) I build the tilesets. For said tiles I prefer to use simple bitmap editors like MS Paint or Idraw.
Some part of me does this because I like the single pixel control of these programs, but mostly it reminds me of when I was a freshman in high school designing RPG Maker games. Over the course of my life I've made a fairly large number of games, but most have never felt complete or I was not proud of them. As if they were a retroactive practice exercises that no one would actually want to play.
Some where back on topic: It's at this point that I lay out a test map in Stencyl and begin programming the movement controls for the player. I try to improve on the scheme I used last time for smoother play and less frame rate slow down. I will go back and adjust things several times over the course of production, but I lay out the basic frame work and move on.
In the case of “Until Dawn” I need the player to auto interact with climbable surfaces, this was accomplished with trigger sprites. When the player is running or jumping and hits one of these invisible sprites the player sprite becomes transparent and the trigger sprite becomes visible. The trigger sprite then plays out a climbing animation in place while the player moves to the spot where the animation ends and upon completion reappears. This gives the illusion of fluid climbing, while removing any chance of the player clipping into a wall or getting sent flying into the sky box (early glitches in the design of this title).
Once that was done I began building the levels. Being that parkour is the main mechanic of the game, most of the levels at least feature the runny, jumpy, climby, but each level is a puzzle and barreling straight through is rarely a viable solution. I will often make new art as I go to add new things when the concept hits me, in “Until Dawn” this lead to a few secrets. At the time of writing my rather leisurely test run is still the top Completion Time on Kongregate’s score board, so it seems some of said secrets are yet to be discovered.
The final step of any of my games is the sound design, after running the game through to see what needs a sound effect, I write everything down in order of progression. Sound effects usually involves going to my sound library/royalty free websites, grabbing what works and then running it through Audacity to combine/edit the effects. The music gets a similar run through, mostly for compression’s sake. The last step here was the voice acting. A project like this(i.e: one with no budget) one has to take the voice actors they can get, but I am quite proud of the work they did, I didn’t expected to get such high quality performances.
That’s not to say there weren’t problems. This game had several betas and many tweaks were necessary through out testing. Even after a fairly long beta cycle there is always the worry that you can miss something especially when there are so few beta testers. Primarily because of the massive difference between playing online and off. Problems can exist do to lag or connection speed that just don’t show up on an offline test, but I thought I had the problems hammered out.
In the end Launch could have gone better. The need for a day one patch to fix problems that didn’t show up in testing is unfortunate, but with the game now working as it’s suppose to; the score is on the uptick and if the game hits fours stars I’ll post an update with hidden items and secrets for Kongregate badge collectors.
In the meantime I’m working on a 2D Hack and Slash RPG call Un’a. The demo was released last August on Newgrounds and it has undergone many. many changes since then. Until then I hope you all enjoy “Until Dawn” on Kongregate and don‘t forget to rate and share.
http://www.kongregate.com/games/mstango/until-dawn
-Michel Stango
As for my first impressions of the game itself, I haven't completed it yet, but I like it very much so far. I still feel I need to go through more of it before I can really give it a proper review. But I will indeed do so!
Go ahead! It's definitely well worth your time! Check it out HERE!
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