Xenogunner (Official Demo)
A downloadable game for Windows
Full game is out on Steam!: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1267870/Xenogunner/
Also available on itch.io: https://clickteam.itch.io/xenogunner
The story:
In the future year of 2011, Zeta Reak, kind, gentle king of the Xenolians, is overthrown by a powerful tyrant named the "Xenogunner".
The Xenogunner is a mysterious being capable of many frightening feats, using a power known as "Xenonature", a powerful energy that grants one trained in the use of it many elemental and non-elemental powers.
Zeta, too, is capable of using Xenonature, as with most Xenolians. It's up to Zeta to overthrow the Xenogunner and reclaim the throne...
...but is the Xenogunner actually the one pulling the strings...?
The game:
Xenogunner is an intense boss-focused run-and-gun platformer based on games from the days of 16-bit consoles, with the addition of conveniences like mouse aiming and heavily customizable difficulty settings to slightly modernize things as well.
The stages are short, the bosses are tough, and you get as many tries as you need to win... but that doesn't exactly make it easy. Don't take our word for it, you can try the demo to find out for yourself!
The demo:
The demo includes 4 stages from part-way through the game (a bit less than half-way through), provided without story context. It is focused entirely on showing off the gameplay, using content not featured in the GameJam release to avoid redundancy.
It should have something in store both for players who did play the GameJam version already and for people who only learned about the game afterwards.
We really do hope you enjoy it!
Credits:
I didn't develop this game on my own! These people helped out with the project a ton, more than just through what they did directly for the project. That being said, here's the other people with which this game would have been impossible without them:
ColonelSandwich: https://twitter.com/SandwichColonel (Did the music for the game)
Pedrovin: https://twitter.com/Pedrovinm (Did the graphics for the game)
Clickteam LLC: https://twitter.com/clickteam (Publisher)
Note that I do not have control over the content of their Twitter pages and there could be content less appropriate for younger audiences than what you will find in this game.
What's changed?
(Feel free to skip this if you didn't play the GameJam version):
I bet that any of you who played the GameJam version are wondering just what's changed this time around. Well, aside from generally polishing things up a bit and adding some more content, a lot of changes have been made:
-Controller support!
NOTE: We strongly recommend trying keyboard+mouse first if possible.
-The weapons were completely rebalanced: Now the game has 3 weapons instead of 6, with each of those weapons doing certain things a bit better than the weapons can.
-Graphics and soundtrack upgraded/overhauled significantly.
-Longer invulnerability frames! We set the default setting higher for the demo, since these levels are from about half-way through the game and are rather tough otherwise... but "mid" is what they're like in the full game by default, if you're curious.
-A greatly expanded story with longer cutscenes, this time with pictures!
NOTE: Demo does not include cutscenes or story.
-More hidden secrets than the GameJam version!
-...and much, much more.
Download
Install instructions
Extract the contents of the ZIP. Make sure all the files are in the same folder!
Development log
- Game now out on itch.io!Apr 13, 2020
- Game is out on Steam!Apr 10, 2020
Comments
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*In Scott the Woz's voice* This game blows. *Throws game into toilet*
Please note: My previous comment was satirical.
Just beat the demo! A few thoughts, although I wouldn't put too much on them since I used default settings which are apparently higher than normal.
The first boss was easily the hardest for me. In fact it almost feels like an odd difficulty spike since their bossfight requires movement atypical from most games, while the other 3 are pretty standard. It also has to do with the dash, and how it forces you to do slight dashes which are very hard to do with the keyboard/mouse. If it was slightly less sensitive/that boss was a little more lenient on the space, I think it wouldn't be as bad. In comparison, all the other bosses were pretty easy.
Oh, and the game lacks impactful sfx for enemy queues. The lightning from the electricity boss doesn't have a startup for example, or the scythes. Speaking of which, I couldn't tell if there was any difference from the scythes that fall from the ceiling: the ones that drop or follow you. Maybe make them a different color? The final boss lasted a little too long just as well. Not enough variety it felt like.
And as for weapon balance, I currently see little reason to not use the purple orbs other than accuracy. For most of the bosses it makes them a lot quicker.
On the bright side, I loved how tight the controls were. I liked how paced the boss fights vs levels were (like when you replay the reaper boss fight you don't have to fight shield again). Graphics are great. Despite my criticisms I thought the game was fun! I look forward to the final product.
Thanks for the feedback!
First boss has already been nerfed for the final product thanks to some feedback I've already received, I won't be updating the demo but just rest easy knowing that it won't be quite as ridiculous there, the lasers are a lot farther apart now.
Sound effects are something I always seem to forget to work on adding, I can't promise that the sound design will be easy to fix but I might see about it at some point.
The small scythes actually all have the exact same behavior, they just aim based on when they first spawned instead of aiming at where you are now, which makes their behavior somewhat bizarre.
As for the weapon balance, it's... complicated to explain, so bear with me for a bit if you don't mind (I've saved it for last for a reason).
First off, notably, some players have mentioned that they instead opted to exclusively use the boomerang weapon, so I guess some players will opt for one for bosses and some will opt for the other.
Second off, the purple weapon, at a glance, seems to be the best option for every boss. In practice, the boomerang is capable of slightly higher damage output than the purple weapon... as long as it's in constant contact with the boss in question. So against larger bosses, the boomerang is slightly better (at least in theory, been a while since I tested exact numbers on that). Otherwise the purple weapon is. But there's only one large boss in the demo.
The boomerang also has the niche use of collecting health pickups from a distance, which can be very useful in stages sometimes if you're unfortunate enough for an enemy to drop a health pickup out of reach. Which doesn't really happen much in the stages in the demo.
Suffice to say I didn't fully think through the stage choices when it came to showing off the boomerang's capabilities against bosses. To that end I don't really feel like it's a good idea to make adjustments to it yet. If people still have gripes with it in the full game, that's when I'll see about trying re-balancing it.
...as for the ice, yeah, that one is pretty weak against bosses. It's mostly intended as the absolute best option for defeating enemies in the stages, which, well, with how short the stages are... yeah, it's perhaps a bit under-powered, but I'm really not too sure what to do about that without making it too powerful against enemies and/or making it the ideal weapon for bosses instead of the purple weapon by going too far (it's the easiest to use weapon after all).
...the shorter version is, each weapon technically has a niche, but the purple weapon's niche is "does high damage to all bosses", so it's understandable that it's the most immediately obviously useful one. While I'm still not 100% sure on the balance of the weapons, it probably won't change for now to keep another weapon from becoming a legitimately blatantly OP weapon which outright removes the niches of the other two... but I'll think about it.
Sorry about the wall of text to respond to all that... uh, thanks again for the feedback, glad to hear you enjoyed the game overall!
Thanks for the response, I appreciate the write-up and the thought/development currently being put behind it!
Also fascinating, I can see boomerang being pretty strong.
Thanks, glad to hear you enjoyed it!
As for the health thing, to solve that, hm... so I'd add a health bar, but the health cap of 999 is, well, quite a lot higher than most people will get their health on average, but I can't just make one that caps at 100...
...hrm, well, maybe I'll think of a good solution to keeping track of health at some point... kind of focused on other things though, but hey, we'll see, if I can think of a solution to that I might add in something to try to help. If not, hopefully it doesn't end up as too big of a deal for most players...?
Hey it's fine, I actually realized you were talking about player health and not boss health. The bosses already have health bars, which I'm pretty sure are easier to track in the heat of battle, so I (apparently correctly) assumed the problem was player health.