Screenshot Saturday Sundays: Tropical travel, glowing gods, and sweet spirits

Screenshot Saturday! The best day of Twitter’s week, where developers share a look at their in-progress games. All parts of an unfinished whole, all subject to change, and all very pretty to look at. This week: wall-jumping and speed rolling through a tropical island, meeting a handful of deities, and some cute capybaras taking a relaxing dip.

Leilani's Island is an upcoming 2D platformer following the titular Leliani’s attempts to knock a robot army off her island through the power of rolling into everything and smashing it. Here she is bouncing around and collecting shells.

I like all the animations here but the walk cycle is my favourite; it feels like Leliani has a real purpose that she’s stomping towards. You can see more of the game in action on its Steam page, and so much of it has that same satisfying weight. Also, those video game keys to my heart: pretty colours and the implication of warmth.

It’s hard to make the announcement that a game's story is completed visually exciting, but future narrative exploration game Mythic Ocean is still eye-catching with their representation of various gods and/or constellations.

From its Steam page, most of the game seems to look quite different from this gif, which is why I’ve put it up there as the header image too, but it’s a game about befriending and influencing underwater deities to shape a new creation. Also, apparently, there’s “a breakdancing crab.” I’m definitely keeping my eyes peeled for that.

I really thought that I had posted about Aftertile in the last couple of weeks, but it apparently slipped through the cracks. Luckily, this week the developers behind this “floatvania” have shared a gif that encompasses so many of my favourite things to run into in video games: women with notebooks, dedicated background clutter, and capybara gently steeping in a hot tub. (This is why talking about what “kinds” of games I like is a curse.)

Aftertile is a story about a ghost trying to find post-life peace, and it’s also very cute. It’s based on a Ludum Dare jam game that was created in 72 hours, so you might be able to get a bit of a feel for how this expanded version will play by having a go on itch.io. You can also see more about the game on developers Lost Alloy’s website, including listening to some of the (very good) soundtrack.

As a bonus, here’s my favourite genre of gamedev Tweet: “simply a ludicrous number of spawned assets.”

This game is a personal project that the developer says doesn’t currently have a name but is hoping it’ll become “a randomly-generated fantasy wilderness with overgrown ruins and dungeons to explore, and a little town you can visit to talk to folks and sell your potions, produce, and treasures. …A sort of randomised Legend Of Zelda meets Stardew Valley. Not to, er, set expectations too high.”

I’ll keep my expectations firmly tempered, but I really, really hope it works out well.