Knight'n'Grail 2 Preview

Just released a small preview of the follow up to KnG.
http://csdb.dk/release/?id=103306

Got a sudden urge to continue on this one.

The Story so Far, Part III

Cards

Is a large part of the gameplay in Birth Order.
During a stage some of the enemies will drop cards for you to pick up. These cards can be "played" during the map mode.

 
Examples:

• Tip, gives you hints to the game play and guides to what to do.
• Experience Boost, same as collecting a certain number of stars
• Shield, you get to take 3 or 5 hits depending on what shiled you got
• Smart Bomb, gets activated when you get hit, once
• Berzerk, you get hyper active and more poweful
• Map, reveals a bit of the map so you can plan your journey
• Key, opens one of the locks around the antagonist.

Most of the cards played will last during the next stage, like the Shield and Smart Bomb, while the Map and Key is fired off instantly.


There're los of more cards to discover. There's a special type of card that is crucial for the (true) completion of the game as well...

The Story so Far, Part II

January 2011
The birth of Birth Order, started out as Balls to the Wall. The game really had loads of balls and a wall, so it was only natural.
The first thing to get implemented was the game mechanics, hold a button on the gamepad to shoot at the enemy with the same button-graphics attached to it. It works and I quite like it. The main bullets are homing as well, even better for us lazy-shmuppers.

Then the randomly generated maps went in. Got into a discussion regarding the Dungeon Quest board game (called Drakborgen in swedish) with a collegue at work, some time ago. Ever since then I wanted that kind of map in a game. I wanted hexagons from the start, just to be different.

Coming up with the different kind of board-tiles was a lot harder than I thought. It's a shmup, after all. So many of my original ideas actually went out of the window. Even a simple board-tile as a bonus-round didn't cut it.

In the picture you can see some stage-tiles as well as the locked tiles around the final antagonist. Also there's a life-up tile (the one with the plus sign in it) and a boss-tile, which is more of a single-enemy-tile than a boss-tile. I won't offend any real bosses by calling these bosses.

Coming up: Cards.

The Story so Far, Part I

Late 2008
Started work on the C64 game that was released in June 2009, Knight'n'Grail.
Music was made by Hans Axelsson and some complimentary graphics as well as the cover art was made by Håkon Repstad.
Wide Pixels is a reference to the160x200 resolution used by the C64 and other computers at the time.



I think it's fun, if I may say so myself.

Mid 2009
Started work on the follow up to KnG. Was supposed to be in a different genre, but the sprite-routine ended up taking too much raster time that I put the game on hold.
Music by Hans again, all gfx by me.

Whole of 2010
A blur. Started on KnG3, the follow up that should have been in the same genre as the original.
Graphics by Håkon Repstad.

Due to tons of other stuff, like every day life, this was put on hold as well.

First Entry!

This will be a good place to be posting mockups and screen shots and other things I work on.

Stay tuned!