Spike II - The Great Emu War (OUT NOW!)

Hi!

Spile II is a side-scroller shooter game where you shoot and reload using the crank. Equipped of your minigun, try to survive to the horde of emus who will do their best to catch you. Upgrade your gears, get better, get a higher score!

TestPlay

It's named Spike II - The Great Emu War, and it's kind of a spin-off of a small character from my other games.

You have an upgrade screen which makes the game easier with time.
upgradesMenu

The key is to use bullets wisely, and reload as soon as you aren't in danger (this isn't a good example but you get the idea :smiley: )
Reloading

I'm planning to add power-ups, combos, leaderboards and bosses later, but the game is already in a good shape.
Dying

I have no idea how I'm going to release it (Catalog, Itch...), how much it will be, but I plan to finish the whole game before the end of the year.

I'm using NobleEngine and AnimatedSprite.

Thanks for looking, take care everyone! :slight_smile:

11 Likes

I love the universe! Looks really fun to play too.

1 Like

2 Likes

Hi! I got some new GIFs to share :slight_smile:

I shared an alpha build to testers a couple of weeks ago, and one feedback I got the most was: the game deserves a tutorial. Not because it's hard to play (turn ccw to shoot, turn cw to reload), but because it has to be explained somehow. So here it is, the game has a small tutorial now :smiley:

tutorial

As you can imagine, difficulty is hard to define in this kind of game. Before starting the game, you can now select the difficulty. Some of them are unlocked at first :wink: My goal is to make a game for casual and hardcore gamers, a game that everyone can enjoyed during short sessions.

difficultySelect

And that's all for now. For the next devlog, I plan to add some cool features in-game, and maybe a small boss!

Thanks for reading, have a good day! :slight_smile:

1 Like

This looks great, installing right now!
EDIT. Nevermind, I saw the itch.io link and thought it was already available :smiling_face_with_tear:

Hi, thanks !
Sorry, the game isn't ready at the moment, it deserves some small modifications in the gameplay to be fully playable.
I'll share a version as soon as I think it's ready, and to be honest, it's almost done. Expect something before the end of the year :slight_smile:

Hi!

I have a couple of new stuffs to share with you :slight_smile:

First: Key art is there!
keyArt

It looks pretty cool on a real Playdate, I have to say :slight_smile:

Audio!
Philip, who used to make the music of my games, did a couple of tracks for Spike II. I can't share an audio in here, feel free to check my twitter to hear how great it sounds!

Menus new version
The previous menus were a bit empty, I added a better visibility for the difficulty selection.

newUI2

What's next?
Right now, I'm focusing on testing the game, making it fun and not too easy/hard to play.
I'll probably release an early access version of Spike II in November, keeping a couple of cool features for a nearby future. Stay tuned!

Thanks for reading, have a good day! :slight_smile:

3 Likes

Hi!

This is probably the last devlog before releasing, so here it is :slight_smile:

New enemy!

Pelicans join the fight! They hold bombs and need to be take down before coming to Spike. Not so easy to do!

pelicanTest2

Difficulty

Right now, I'm mostly trying to adjust the difficulty of the game, to make it fun for casual players, and more and more difficult for hardcore gamers. It will be separated in 3: easy, medium, hard.

It's hard to share a GIF about it, it's simply a matter of tweaking variables. Hope it will be ready soon!

Release date / Early access

I don't have an exact date for release, but it will be in November. There are few things left to do, like adding SFX to the game (Philip the sound designer already made them).

It will be an early access, there will have just 2 difficulties for a start (easy and medium), next levels will come later.

Thanks for reading, have a good day! :slight_smile:

2 Likes

I'm very proud to share that Spike II, our first playdate game, is finally out!

It's a side-scrolling shooter using the crank as a shoot/reload mechanic.

Available on itch.io:
Spike II: The Great Emu War (Playdate and PC!) by Goloso Games

Use upgrades to make the game easier!

Spike II is released in Early Access

At the moment, a couple of things like hard mode aren't available yet. New enemies will also be added later. Right now, the game is fully playable in easy and medium mode. Tutorial is also included.

And for the ones who were into my previous game, Inspector Waffles, Spike and Waffles are living in the same universe, so we can call this new game a spin-off of Inspector Waffles: maybe they'll meet somewhere in a future game, who knows :wink:

Hope you'll enjoy it, that was fun to make a small game on this little new console.

Music by Philip Aldous: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7Geol1BLEGosEzhZnETjjS?si=dtn8BnkyTlydShYdWOcPGA...

Thanks for reading, have a good day everyone! :slight_smile:

2 Likes

Hi everyone,

Spike II first big update is finally ready! And it's packed with a lot of things as you can see :slight_smile:

Hard mode

First, you can now unlock and play the game in hard mode: enemies are tougher, it's a bullet hell but you can get way better score. I did 5835, can you beat me? :wink:

Kangaroos

Kangaroos join the fight! They jump, they can protect themselves and they throw punches! Not so easy to hit, be careful!

New tier of updates

That's right, you can buy a new tier of updates, for all categories: you'll shoot even faster, even better... Now you are on a roll!

All known bugs fixed

Typos, main background which stays sometimes in game, bomb who still appear in very rare occasions... all of that fixed! Thanks to Hello Playdate Podcast and Not_A_Vampire for their feedback. Fingers crossed that they are all gone!

Easter Egg

Last but not least, I hid something somewhere that would be cool for players who don't want to grind. Good luck in finding it!

What's next?

Well, nothing changed since the previous post: the final boss will be done in the beginning of the year, that will be the last big update of the game. Hope to share another thing super cool at the same time. Stay tuned!

2 Likes

ANNOUNCEMENT(S)!

Spike II: The Great Emu War

  • is fully released, with an ending boss fight! :egg:

  • has a physical box! :scream_cat:

  • is now available on PC too! :heart_eyes_cat::desktop_computer:


1. The box!

Spike II is coming in a special physical edition with a manual and merch! It costs $20 + shipping.

There are 50 boxes, the 20 first buyers will get a free sticker of Inspector Waffles.
To get a box, you just need to fill this google form: https://forms.gle/JRd5t7D9rK6ie7PH8

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I put a lot of heart in it (check this manual pages!), trying to make a not too expensive box: with so few copies, it wasn't easy😅. Thanks to Demigiant for his wonderful keyart and BrokeStudio for the manufacturing, who both helped me tremendously to make this box possible.


2. PC Port!

I also ported the game to PC, meaning not only playdate owners can play it from now. It's fully compatible with gamepads. Both games are included in the same itch page, so for $5, you get both versions. I believe it's kind of a good deal :smiley_cat:

3. Final version

Last difficulty level is unlocked, and it's a huge egg looking for revenge. :egg:
Spike II isn't an infinite scroller anymore, and you can now beat the game. Are you bold enough to do it? :smirk_cat::gun:

HittingBoss

Finally, Spike II is officially done: Making a game for the playdate was a lot of fun, I learnt a lot and met a great indiedev community. The physical box is a nice way to end this great Spike II journey.
See you soon for my next projects! :cat::male_detective:

3 Likes

Great stuff!

I wonder how you did the windows port? Did you use Love2D and port all the input, draw and sound calls?

Thank you, I appreciate :slight_smile:

Well, I tried to use Playbit to ported it to Lua2D. GitHub - GamesRightMeow/playbit: Playbit is a framework for creating cross-platform Playdate games from a single Lua codebase.
It's super well made, but because I used NobleEngine, I had to also port it and it was way too much work. Also, my plan was to implement my game into Unity, not to Lua2D. Making 2 ports for the same game would have been a tedious solution.

So... I remade my game in Unity. I'm familiar with Unity and all the logics and sprites were already done, it was easier than trying to understand Noble inside logic then porting it. I spent around 3 weeks to do it. I'd have spent way more time with the previous solution.

Hope it will help! (Also I love your game, keep the great work!)

2 Likes

The boxes are all booked! :scream_cat:Thanks for your support everyone, I would have never thought it would have been so fast.

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The form will still be up, if by any chance I'll get 50 new reservations, I'll make more. I absolutely don't believe it but who knows? :grin: https://forms.gle/JRd5t7D9rK6ie7PH8

See you soon for my next projects! :cat::male_detective:

Yann

1 Like