March 29th!



That's when the public demo for Josh's Adventure will go up, a day after the end of the Magcon, which works out nicely since I'll have that day off work.

So, what are you looking at for the demo? Let's chat about it.

The game only needs one memory card to play, and can hold one save. The full game will require two cards at minimum, and four at maximum.

Here's a copy and paste for the readme that comes with the demo. Magcon attendees would be wise to read over this.

Josh's Adventure Demo Readme

File: PP1.6D
Made by 1ce/Gitaroo at Quixotic Productions 2010
Completed: 2/22/10

--

There's 2 worlds, 2 bosses and 8 levels.
(I can't remember the level names off the top of my head. May be subject to change.)

World 1: Monster Beach
1-1: Dive
1-2: Sandy Beach
1-3: Sunset Bridge
1-4: BB Gun
Boss: Captain Calcium

World 2: Kentucky Bluegrasslands
2-1: March
2-2: Wild Green
2-3: Risk
2-4: Trial
Boss: Thunderhoof

In the game is a machine that you can trade tokens for special items. In the demo you can unlock special features by collecting more than 60 tokens. You can reset a special Josh's Adventure graphic display, you can get a special item, or unlock the normally locked tutorial level. In the final version you spend tokens on items.

There are some items you can collect that have no real value; points can be earned for bragging rights, and death counts add up so you can track how many times you've died in the game.

There will also be a man in a tux that meows; he'll give you the item that allows you to access World 2, without having to finish World 1 first.

After beating the second world, some people will say different things, such as the meowing tux guy.

One of the coolest features of this demo (and a hidden one), can be found by checking the bottom-left of the hubworld after completing the second world. You can view unused levels! I still have levels that I made but aren't being used in the game's memory, and I figured I might as well let the player view them, and see what Josh's Adventure looked like in beta form. This will only be viewable in the demo game.

There's also some stats I've near-finalized as well:

-Features 4 worlds and one boss per world. So the level count will sit around 20 levels.

-There will be four difficulty levels. Normal, Hard, Difficult, and Insane. In previous posts in the official topic I mentioned including an Easy mode; that idea has been cut.

-No hidden levels. I had originally planned to have different paths on higher difficulties that would let you access hidden levels (think Super Mario World), but I'm cutting that idea out.



Hopefully the Magcon will give me some feedback on my game, and I hope you'll try out the demo and tell me what you think of it yourself. It's not far off anymore! Post any questions if you have them. Good day!

I still think it's strange to have the tutorial level unlockable. By the time you figure out how to unlock it, you won't need it anymore.

There's a couple of reasons for that. The biggest one being that it's incomplete. I never got around to finishing the whole thing. And secondly, none of the tutorial stuff I've ever made ever felt right, so I'm thinking of re-designing the whole thing. I want players to be able to see what some of the previous ideas I had looked like before I changed them.