Echo - A platformer / metroidvania

[bumbleborn (Joseph Fletcher-Ward)]

Current Progress

Echo Playdate - Aug Progress

Echo is a metroidvania with no combat, set in a world that is slowly being turned into stone.

• 3 Major Areas each with their own mechanics, NPCs and simple quests
• Inventory / Items / Locks & Keys / etc
• Traversal abilities that can be used in multiple ways
• Lots of collectables and secrets

First Post

First time writing but I've been looking at everyone's awesome games on here for a while now, this console & community is great!

A little backstory, I've been working on a 3d platformer for a while and after getting the demo on steam I was ready to start the world-building and level design of the game properly but along with a new job it was so much to tackle I ended up pivoting to another game entirely for about 6 months.

Since I was waiting for my playdate to arrive after ordering early this year I wanted to make a game for it, I followed some of SquidGodDevs videos and before long had a nice little platformer.

So to refresh my mojo before making the big 3D one and to establish a better foundation of the world I decided to make a 2D prequel to it, just for the Playdate!

Without going to much into boring story stuff, it's set 200 years before and has no combat, it's just tricky platforming. There's classic abilities like dash and double jump, items and 3 major areas, each with it's own small quest and mechanics.

You rest at a campfire to set your respawn point in classic souls-like fashion and talk to few NPCs to figure out what you have to do.

Just started a map cause the game got a little too big to just explore without getting lost

All said and done, I'm hoping I can wrap it up over the coming weeks, it's likely gonna be about 250 levels which isn't too big but I haven't tested it on device yet so I'm just hoping it'll run okay.

Thanks for reading, if there's interest I'll write up some more about it.

[matt (gingerbeardman)]

Looks gorgeous and a lot of fun! The lack of combat really helps fuel my excitement for this.

[bumbleborn (Joseph Fletcher-Ward)]

Ahh thanks, that's good to hear, it'll still be pretty difficult but I really like no combat platformers that focus on the actual level design a lot more like celeste. Plus, even tho it'll be difficult in parts I'm gonna try to put a sort of pacifist route in the game that's a bit more forgiving.

[jimlefevre (Jim)]

Oooh, that looks absolutely wonderful. Right up my street and very inspiring.

[rpcm]

Looking forward to getting my Playdate and definitely planning to get this!

[d1rtb1ke (Nate)]

I'll be following this as closely as I can. Still no luck on that font, eh? Everything else looks incredible. A nice font will really tie the aesthetic together.

[grhmhome]

This looks fantastic.

[bumbleborn (Joseph Fletcher-Ward)]

Echo: Update 2

Thanks for all the kind comments and support, progress is going pretty well with some good stuff and bad stuff!

First of all, It's on device!!

Apologies for the gif quality, 4mb is a tough limit haha

The Good Stuff

I have a good chunk of the world made now, but I'm gonna focus on performance for the next week or 2.

Completely agree with ya @d1rtb1ke I've made a simple sans-serif font referencing one that someone posted on here for UI item descriptions,

I'm using a really nice font I found here GitHub - Knogobert/playdate-font-dillan: 🔠 A playdate font heavily inspired by Cooper Black & MadeType's Dillan, for menu titles and pop-up text (I might replace later but for now it works well) and I've started my first real attempt at making a serif font for dialogue, it's still early but it's getting there, I've never done it so it's been fun to learn, I'll probably post it for others to use when it's finished if people are interested.

So, Getting it working on device... It took about a day to figure everything out involved with building properly to the device, but I managed it, thank god the LDTK playdate library has the ability to export the level files to lua files and load them instead, without that it wouldn't even load on device.

The good stuff with playing it on device is that it does actually work and whilst it's a little small it feels really exactly as I imagined, I'll adjust fonts to make it more accessible and playtest a bunch to make things readable, but it does work.

The Bad Stuff

My fears about performance were confirmed.

On device there are some major fps dips in places, I really want to have it at a stable 30fps or it'll really damage the flow of the game, I've made some simple optimisations but loading a big level still causes a little stutter.

Some things like the area title cards and my timed jumping puzzle with blocks that alternate their collision are gonna need a lot of optimisation.

I'll keep working on it though, I think my aim to have it done within a few weeks might be a tad too ambitious, content production is fairly straightforward for me to estimate but this performance pass is ambiguous.

Thanks again for following along. If anyone is interested in seeing development more, I stream every now and then on Twitch, I don't have a schedule but there are a few recent videos you can skip through.

[Schyzophrenic]

This looks really good! I am excited to see how this will evolve!

[Kiwitime04]

This does look really amazing, hope you have success with the on-device struggles!

[DJ_irl (Av)]

Wow. Super impressive movement.

Can't wait to see this in the catalogue!

[pixelatedopus]

This is awesome! Can’t wait to grab this one

[bumbleborn (Joseph Fletcher-Ward)]

Echo: Update 3

This is gonna be another good news / bad news post as there is always a little bit of both

First I'll show the current progress, made a video cause there's a lot of SFX and music in now, just 1 music track in game atm, but I've got melodies for another 2 and the crossfading between areas working, it just fades into the same track atm.

Echo Playdate - Aug Progress

I don't know the best way to update these threads, would it be worth just editing the main post? or shall I just keep replying to it so it tracks chronologically, this seems to work for now haha.

The Good

After about 4 days of work focused entirely on optimising I got it running pretty smooth on device, I remade the area title cards 3 times before realising the lag spike was down to the music, I change the music in each new area and didn't think about it cause I test it muted most of the time. exported the music encoded how the docs say you should and the lag disappeared.

The rest was just object pooling complex things, I'll likely end pooling most of the entities in the game but I can relax now as I know 30 fps on device is very possible for this game.

So I set off to work on finalising the quality level I want to hit, the first area is now very close, some bits of polish are still needed but I'll just keep going until it's there.

I've got the intro thought out a bit and temp version of it in, I'll do the backstory with a long tapestry that you crank to move along, with a big run on sentence underneath, it's gonna be a lot to art but it already feels like a cool use of the crank, also players can choose to skip it all if they want with relative ease.

The Bad

After only having my friends playdate for a few days it developed some issues that make it unusable, we tried to figure out what happened but no real luck, he's got in contact with Panic and is gonna send it in for them to look at and they'll send out a replacement. I'm extremely grateful for the chance to test my game and play some of the incredible works people have already been putting out on the console, and I'm just glad it's gonna get replaced.

So playtesting the game will just be simulator focused for a while, but I'm happy to just chisel away at the rest of the game now so I can hopefully have it wrapped up sooonish...

That's the next thing to talk about... Scope.

I had a very tied down plan for the game but I've blown past it a little, I wanted it to be a 1 month project to learn how to dev on the Playdate, but we're at 2 and half months now and I easily still have another month and half to go with stuff in my list, I'm okay with it but I do want to finish because I have a very long habit of starting a project and getting very far before starting a new thing (as we all do haha).

So I'm gonna cut a little bit of what I have planned and then add it back in as an update if there is demand for more stuff. Based on how long people have spent playing it at work in the first area, I estimate that the game will be between 1 - 3 hours to complete the game, when I add some kine of fast travel that will likely cut out about 20 minutes of playtime that would just be tedious.

Overall it's going pretty good but will not be out for probably another 2 months, no matter what I'll have it out before Christmas though, I'm certain of that.

Thanks again for reading and again if there's any interest in how I've done anything, I'm happy to share my approach!

[JoeyCrown (brian jameson)]

Sooooo Good! I love the progress and can’t wait to play. Looks like its also going to be pretty deep and the artwork works so well! Getting to play incredibly well thought out and executed indie games/art is exactly why i pre-ordered 2 years ago. Finally got it last month and can’t wait to play This!

[bumbleborn (Joseph Fletcher-Ward)]

Heyoooo, just wanted to pop in to say the game isn't dead haha

I realised I haven't posted about it in ages, I've been a bit busy but I'm still making a bit of progress, I'm going part-time at work next year so I can finish it.

I'm gonna make dev logs as well to try and market it before release, for now the first few eps will cover stuff I've already gone over in this dev log (apologies for the dumb thumbnail haha)

Making My First Indie Game | Devlog 0

The game hasn't changed too much lately, just been adding a bunch of polish, I'm adding health as well cause after coming back to it after a few weeks I realised how hard I'd made it, so now taking damage doesn't reset to a bonfire, it resets the room. still need to work out a few flaws with the spawning system but it feels much more accessible now.

Anyway, I'm aiming for a Q2 release atm but I'll try to get something more concrete in the 2 months!

Thanks again for taking an interest in this little game!

[Guv_Bubbs (Donald Fraser)]

This project is looking great.
I'll be following along with the videos!