Dungeon Buster Windows game

1 comment by LightUpWarrior on Mar 17th, 2013

It's been a tough few weeks since my last update. I'm still unemployed, and trying to make some sort of living doing freelance 2d art, so I've had precious little time to dedicate to Dungeon Buster. It's not all boohoos and weh weh weh though, the first section of the demo level is almost complete, and there's a working shop amongst other things.

Demo Level

The first demo level has been reworked a number of times to try and introduce a flow; introducing the different aspects of the game to the player in a neat little package. You can view the full demo primer level layout if you click on the thumbnail below:

 
If you take a peek at the layout you'll notice a few skeletons standing around; they are little helper skeletons (think along the lines of Toad from Super Mario 64) that give you helpful hints and suggestions to get you familiarised with the features of the game.

 Throughout this primer level the player will be introduced to:

• Item Chests
• Inventory 
• Hidden path puzzles
• Combination lock puzzles
• Trading
• Ninja Master mini-boss

Which brings me onto the next point...

Ninja Master Mini-boss
The Ninja Master mini-boss will be a recurring character throughout the course of the demo; he delivers not-so-wise words masked in traditional kung-fu mumblings, and is a tough opponent too.

This is him in his first iteration; he teleports between the yin-yang symbols, firing a barrage of ninja stars and is immune to sword attacks. He'll get tougher with each fight, until you battle him in his final form, but that's a surprise!

Artwork

Artwork take up a lot of my time in this project; it isn't quite pixel art, so I don't limit myself to the base colours of the palette I'm using. I blend the colours to bring more depth and detail into the art so it looks as visually interesting as possible, and as a result the art takes a little longer to churn out.

I'm in the process of redesigning Buster so that he looks a little less like a hobo voodoo doll, and more like a spritified human:

I would appreciate feedback on Buster's new look.

The HUD is undergoing a visual makeover/simplification too; previous versions felt overly chunky and delivered too much information in a poor layout. 

That's it for this update, don't forget to comment if you have suggestions or questions!

-Wrangler