So alongside my current main projects, I've been preparing for another game that I really want to make. I've talked about it before and posted a few screenshots about, but I really want to go into a bit more detail on it. The game is called Enki Adventures, as I'm sure you've guessed, and it's an overhead 2D action-adventure. It takes a few idea from the first Zelda game, but the more that I thought about it and fleshed out the idea, the more it's spun-off into it's own thing.
I want it to have a lot of roguelike elements too which is what makes it a lot more ambitious than a standard action-adventure. The main roguelike features will be the mostly randomised overworld (maps will be somewhat pre-assembled and slotted together), the location and quality of treasure chests, the items in the treasure chests, monster formations on maps and which bosses appear in which location. The game will be very much open world in that you can wander around 80%+ of the map without having to venture into a single dungeon. The dungeons can also be tackled in any order except for the seventh which is always last.
This screenshot gives you the basic idea of how the overworld will look. The interface is kept very minimal, it shows you your health, kupons (currency) and the two items that you currently have equipped. These can be customised to your preference so you can keep a sword on Z, X or even not have a weapon equipped at all, maybe give yourself two different potions to heal yourself in case you're trying to speed through maps. It's all up to you.
The world has three biomes at the minute: forest, desert (doubles as a beach) and snow. I currently have 20 enemies designed and sprited so there's a decent variation of what you'll encounter in the world. Some enemies will appear more often in other biomes, others may be exclusive. For example, the zombie and various spirits that you see in the screen above will mostly appear in the snow and desert biomes.
See the devil-like dude standing on the stump who looks like he's up to no good? Yeah, he's one of the dozens of NPCs that you can randomly encounter in the world. In this screenshot, he's a pet egg salesman, but I've since changed his purpose to a gore magic vendor (I felt that fit more). The people will be of varying race and function. There are currently 8 NPC races across 21 NPCs. Their functions vary wildly from vendors, gamesman (for gambling minigames), item givers or simply people who'll give you information like the locations of the dungeons marked on your map. The information givers might sound useless, but bear in mind that the game is largely randomly generated so the chance of you ever having the same overworld twice is so close to zero it's not worth trying to remember map layouts.
Another big feature of the game is the ability to find, buy or win monster eggs and hatch them into pets which will follow you around. They'll all have functions from going up to enemies to attack them, shoot at them from a distance or maybe just have support abilities like finding you extra money. Shown here are 9 of the 10 planned pets. I have designed the 10th and after having gotten permission from Tom Fulp, I can now say that it's a Newgrounds themed pet. It's being kept as a surprise for now though. You'll be able to assemble a small army basically, but I'm likely going to limit how many pets you can have out at once. I'm currently thinking that 3 will be the maximum.
You can also probably see here that Kon isn't anywhere to be seen, that's because the armoured guy in the centre is another playable character. I currently have 3 playable characters designed and I'm considering maybe making another one or two. The character you play as will vary your starting stats and equipment. Kon will start with 4 hearts and a sword, Greybane will start with 3 hearts and a gore magic spell. The other character that you haven't seen, Tehrok, will start with a boomerang as his weapon. The other two characters will presumebly start with bombs and radiant magic, respectively.
Anyway, I've talked about the game for long enough now and given plenty of detail on what it'll look like. I haven't found a programmer for the game yet, but I have talked to a very good musician that I've worked with before about making tracks for the game. I don't know if the game will come to Newgrounds or not, my current thought is that it'll be downloadable through some services like Itch.io and Steam (if I'm lucky) so we'll see how that goes. At the very least, I'd like to have some version of it on Newgrounds, maybe a non-randomised one to give the player an idea of what to expect from the graphics and gameplay?
If anybody has any thoughts on this, please feel free to let me know whether that be suggestions, letting my know if it interests you or even pointing out some of the things that you don't like about it. Any advice will help out!
TheMajormel
a non randomised one for free is a fine idea, all of this is pretty good ideas!
TheEnkian
Thanks for the support! If I release a free one, I wouldn't want it to be a demo that cuts short before the end so having it be preset is probably the best option.