Hello!
My name is Servadac and I'm the developer of a new action adventure game called Prometheus - The Fire Thief. The game is made in a retro NES-style and stays completely true to the correct color limitations of the console. Development has now progressed to the point where I've been able to release a first demo. Also, I thought I'd take the opportunity in this news post to go a little more in depth about the development of the game and how I came up with the idea.
Origin of the game
As a kid I played a lot of NES games, and one of them was a game called Battle of Olympus. At the time I didn't know a word of english, since it's not my first language, so you can imagine I had trouble with getting clues from the NPC's. In any case I still liked the game and finished it as an adult many years later. A few years ago I had a dream about a game similar to BoO, where you played as Prometheus and fought against an Andross-type Zeus boss with moving hands, and a centaur boss. The graphics in the game also looked very "tiley" as in you could easily determine each tile in the structure of the landscape. After having the dream I wrote down what I could remember, but then nothing became of those few lines of comments, until now.
After having learned GameMaker for a number of months I started working on the game and the result can now be viewed here and played by downloading the demo. Greek mythology has for the longest time been an interest of mine and I have numerous books on the subject. I've dug deep to try to find good bosses and areas to use in this metroidvania-type game. Some of the mythological creatures are a bit cliché by now, such as Gorgons (Medusas), skeleton warriors and Minotaurs so I've tried really hard not to include those and instead go for more unknown creatures and monsters that fit the bill. It was a little harder than I thought but I got some really good ones that I've never seen in a game before, looking forward to animating and programming them to make them come to life.
Enemies
Here's a little bit of background on the enemies you can see in the demo, since it might not be 100 percent clear what they are supposed to represent at first sight.
Harpy
I tried to make the Harpy as little cliché as possible, and went for a reptilian Harryhausen-style Harpy from the movie Jason and the Argonauts. After drawing the idle sprite it reminded me of the Gargoyle (Red Arremer) enemy from the Ghosts n' Goblins franchise, so I made it swoop down and attack in a similar pattern.
Snake
These guys are omnipresent in Greek mythology, but they have no special appearance or attributes so this is just a snake, nothing more.
Clayman
The other myth about Prometheus, besides the one where he steals the fire, is that he actually created human kind out of clay. This enemy is a nod to that, although they are a bit like failed experiments more than humans. They seek out Prometheus and just want to give their maker a hug!
Spider
Not something I took from a myth, but spiders are pretty cool, right?
Hope you enjoy the demo, and now work begins on the next are and the rest of the game!
Looks awesome! And Battle of Olympus was confusing even for first-language English speakers :D
Thanks! Yes, even as an adult I had to go to gamefaqs to figure out what to do :P
I am quite impressed with how much fun I had just with this demo! Normally, I'm not a fan of NES-era platformers, but I like yours. I do have a few points for consideration:
- When you stop running, the character normally slides a bit. Running and then ducking does not slide and instantly cancels motion, which makes approaching Spiders tricky.
- Jumping feels very rough. I expect to float a bit more for a game of that era.
- Stairs are awkward to use with Up/Down, and cause the camera and player to snap unexpectedly to the start of the stairs while completely changing the direction you are moving. I would recommend revisiting that mechanic, and instead making stairs using one-way diagonal platforms you can jump onto and traverse using Left/Right.
- Sometimes, snakes falling off of ledges end up jumping back and forth graphically between their original height and the ground.
- Harpies are very easy to stunlock and kill (compared to other enemies), because they run into your sword.
- I was thrown off a bit by the first enemy you meet requiring a ducking attack - maybe start with a Clayman so that players have a chance to feel out their attack range?
Great work so far, keep it up!