Drip Feed: Rain World
Doing my duty finding you brilliant and beautiful things has never been more pleasurable than when I found news of Rain World on the TIGForums today. It is a little sneak-action platformer with physics-based creatures, and I am in deeply in love with the art style.
Mysterious art-backgrounded developer JLJac has been posting his/her progress with Rain World's adorable platforming and fast paced sneaking. Confessing that "a lot of focus in the development has been on enemy AI", the developer outlines his/her pathfinding mechanics and work on a level editor. "I like 2D, single screen multiplayer games as they according to me have all the feats of a board game as well as those of a computer game. The players have complete overview of the play area, and can shout stuff at each other while interacting in the game world." Eventually, JLJac wants to enable players to make their own levels in the level editor. Says the developer, his/her characters are "not animated by traditional means but with simple physics. This is an attempt to make a character that appears a little softer, as well as an experiment with a different control scheme."
JLJac goes on to talk a little bit about the creature eco-system the game will have:
The game will have three types of creatures in it. I won't go in to detail on how I plan to design them visually, that's not entirely worked out yet and will hopefully be an exciting surprise. Together the creatures will form a little eco system, where creature B eats creature A and creature C eats creature B. B, the player, is in the middle of this food chain, and the gameplay will consist of trying to hunt while at the same time avoiding to be eaten.
A is a flying creature, that can move quickly and reach every part of the map.
B, let's call it "the Bear" because of its ears, is a running and jumping creature, with medium mobility and probably also access to most of the map, as maps will be designed mainly from this creature's perspective. This is the player avatar in the game world.
C, let's call it "the Croc" is a crawling, climbing creature that can't jump, and is somewhat less mobile than the bear. This one will come in a few sub-species, some of which will be capable of wall climbing, increasing access the different areas of the map. They will have different stats and abilities and be threatening in different ways.
Currently the game is 'under construction' though the developer states "I post updates more or less every day, and am making slow but steady progress", but I emphasise: if you or anyone you know is JLJac, get in touch! I want to email them! This looks great! Great! Okay, I'll stop now.