I'm Hooked: Grapple Knight
Retro platforming with a hook
GRAPPLING HOOKS! It's pretty simple, every developer out there. If your game doesn't include a grappling hook, then you are making a bad game. This isn't complicated, and it's about time everyone started taking some notice. Like Red Knight Games have with their forthcoming Grapple Knight. (Cheers, Indiegames.) Forthcoming, that is, if people will chuck them another $4k AUD or so. There's a demo to incentivise such investiments.
Australian dollars are basically the money out of Game Of Life, and you've likely got some of that spare. Just, slide and combo-slash your way through the pitch video:
The demo (on PC, Mac and Linux) reveals a very tiny little window for the game - changing resolution or going fullscreen just increases the black border around it for some reason - that needs some polish. But hey, that's why they're after the cash. Right now movement feels too sluggish, and the choice to be retro about the controls, as well as the presentation, doesn't seem a good one to me. Games didn't have only eight directions because they wanted that - it was because it was all that was on offer. More is on offer now, and the grapple feels needlessly stilted and cumbersome for only firing off in three practical directions. Oh, and it'd be good if I didn't have to squint. Still, there's potential here for a classic NES-style platformer for ten Aussie bucks (about £5.50), aiming to be out by as soon as February (which from their own progress chart sounds extremely unlikely to me).
So, one where it's worth checking out the demo first, I think. But still, grappling hook.