Journey of Darius: An HTML5 Platform Game Demo

[A-RoN]

So yeah, I'm an interactive media/game artist, and a web designer now (although audio is a sideline). Take a play at my new HTML5 platform action game demo! I'm deciding based on user feedback and reviews wether to continue with this project or scrap the whole thing and make it into an RPG. Here's the game:

http://www.interactive-media-arts.com/techdev/2010/parsonsa2228/html5_game/index.htm

Everything, including the fake-bit music, is produced by myself except for the dialogue and narrative which is written by my beautiful girlfriend. Adobe and Scirra Products were used in production.

The story is about a prarie state where a factory dumps toxins into the main river. Because of vegetation on the affected plant life, both humans and creatures develop mutations and super-powers. The government persecutes the creatures while others try to establish unity between the creatures and the regular humans. Within a government family, a boy who has super-powers is born and after discovering his powers, his mother goes into exile while his father takes him away to a small town outside the corrupt capital city. when his father goes to find his mother again, the boy follows him into a war between the creatures and the corrupt government of the city.

You get to play two levels in the demo. One where you play the boy following your dad, and the other where you help people in the military defend a small town around the city.

Let me know what you think. And yes, the introduction was meant to sound like the intro to Streets of Rage with a hint of novelty. Enjoy!

[Cinctulan]

I enjoyed the demo! I think you should stick with the whole fight-to-the-right feel, it could turn out to be a really fun little game . I enjoyed the music for the most part as well. A few bits of criticism which you may already know about:

-The music during the conversation with the boy and his father doesn't loop cleanly.

-After dying on the first level (I failed to float all the way across the first time around), my player was floating above the ground (as opposed to walking on it).

Keep doing what you're doing

[GravitySuitCollector]

I'd watch the HUD. It's jittery on mine as the screen moves. I'd suggest trying to do another static layer on top of everything with the HUD on it if possible. Just a suggestion.

[Dhsu]

Pretty neat! The cutscene music kept playing into stage 2 for me though, heh.

[A-RoN]

Update: HTML5 can be pretty finicky sometimes. I fixed some of the music loading issues as well as the floating sprite bugs. I can't guarantee everything will work smoothly as I've discovered issues with Chrome cutting some sounds off and certain animations freezing on me in Safari. I'll keep updating the project as time goes. Thanks for the feedback so far!

[Calpis]

Pretty cool. I personally wouldn't choose HTML5 to make a game (can't stand browser quirks), but I commend you for taking the challenge. I don't know if this was intentional or not, but I find it hard to get the character to face the same way that he's moving. That's the biggest bug that I found when playing it.

Are you building it from scratch, or using an existing framework? I've built a couple different sidescroller engines before and have had difficulty balancing performance and memory usage. This seems to run pretty smooth, so I'm just curious as to how you built it.

[GravitySuitCollector]

Pretty cool. I personally wouldn't choose HTML5 to make a game (can't stand browser quirks), but I commend you for taking the challenge. I don't know if this was intentional or not, but I find it hard to get the character to face the same way that he's moving. That's the biggest bug that I found when playing it.

I found it changed if you used a and d to move left/right versus the arrow keys. Also, does the mouse lock up when moving for anyone else? I was using a touchpad, so I'm not sure.

As the gameplay feels right now, I'm not sure about the game. Once you get a slightly newer version of this type, you should re-show it to us, please. I just feel I shouldn't make a total judgement yet until it's more fleshed out. I don't really feel the story as-is either with the game. The levels seem more of a reach the exit thing with nothing to do with the story

[A-RoN]

I found it changed if you used a and d to move left/right versus the arrow keys. Also, does the mouse lock up when moving for anyone else? I was using a touchpad, so I'm not sure.

As the gameplay feels right now, I'm not sure about the game. Once you get a slightly newer version of this type, you should re-show it to us, please. I just feel I shouldn't make a total judgement yet until it's more fleshed out. I don't really feel the story as-is either with the game. The levels seem more of a reach the exit thing with nothing to do with the story

I choose A and D because your arms make you have to lean to the right when using both the mouse and the keyboard's arrow keys. I will be showing this demo off at a conference in Toronto next week to illustrate to Canadians what you can do with HTML5. I still have my doubts about long-term goals for this game too, but I think that it should be ported to an executable RPG if the game itself doesn't get good reception by May. The story, as my girlfriend writes the dialogue, seems to be getting better and better, so I will definitely continue the project regardless of the outcome. Thanks everyone for the critique.