Is it an electric boogaloo? I dunno. Either way I'm making a sequel to one of my hacks, Cool Zone!
For those that don't know, Cool Zone is a fun, short little kaizo hack I made a while back, and, people seemed to enjoy it!
For the sequel, I decided to up the ante. By introducing:
- CUSTOM POWERUPS BY LX-5 (I love this patch)
- CO-OPERATIVE GAMEPLAY
- ALL THE ASM! THROW IT ALL IN THERE!
- AND MORE!!!
For real, this is supposed to be my ultimate hack. I want to throw in as much as I can into this, and likewise it's going to take forever. I have a personal discord server where I jot down ideas, for mini-projects to work on for this hack specifically.
This game is going to have two parts. One, a kaizo side, and secondly, a non-kaizo side! Like the A side and B side of a vinyl, you can pick which part of the game you want to play. For the kaizo side, you play as Shy Guy, the main protagonist of Cool Zone! For the non-kaizo side, everyones favorite feline hero Mallow from Super Mallow World returns, and is here to search for all the salmon! And possibly save the day too.
Later on in the game, I plan on having both sides of the game have to co-operate with one another. Or if one is not able to play the kaizo side of the game, no need to worry! There will be playthroughs made available, or you can ask a friend to help out too! It remains to be seen how exactly I'm going to pull this off, but I'm going to try and make it fun and engaging for both players.
So far, I've come up with about half of the levels for the game. Then I started changing my design philosophy. Then I started going back and forth, not knowing what philosophy to go with. I then looked back at two hacks I made.
1: Super Mallow World - a mostly vanilla SMW difficulty level.
2: Mario & Luigi: Power Blast (demo) - More puzzly / powerup mechanic abuse.
I still am unsure what blend of both games I want to use for my non-kaizo side of the game. However since I've implemented custom power-ups, I'm leaning more towards puzzly powerup mechanics. These might not be mandatory for every level, but they will become a large part of the gameplay.
For the kaizo side, thats easy, of course I'm going to use all the powerups (that make sense!) Some powerups might not work in the kaizo scene as easily and as fun as others, such as the superball or the electric flower. I've yet to decide whether I'm able to use them all or not. I do have one kaizo level made so far, using the bubble flower!
Below are some screenshots, some featuring Mallow, some featuring Shy Guy. The last screenshot is the first part of the kaizo level I've worked on, the others featuring Shy Guy are just non-kaizo levels. Some of the screenshots feature from the recent Steampunk-themed EXGFX contest. I've reached out to the authors individually to ask if I could use them in this hack, to which they all agreed! I'm thankful to MM102, Flagpole1up, and Pokerface for all their amazing tilesets.
Screenshots:
For those that don't know, Cool Zone is a fun, short little kaizo hack I made a while back, and, people seemed to enjoy it!
For the sequel, I decided to up the ante. By introducing:
- CUSTOM POWERUPS BY LX-5 (I love this patch)
- CO-OPERATIVE GAMEPLAY
- ALL THE ASM! THROW IT ALL IN THERE!
- AND MORE!!!
For real, this is supposed to be my ultimate hack. I want to throw in as much as I can into this, and likewise it's going to take forever. I have a personal discord server where I jot down ideas, for mini-projects to work on for this hack specifically.
This game is going to have two parts. One, a kaizo side, and secondly, a non-kaizo side! Like the A side and B side of a vinyl, you can pick which part of the game you want to play. For the kaizo side, you play as Shy Guy, the main protagonist of Cool Zone! For the non-kaizo side, everyones favorite feline hero Mallow from Super Mallow World returns, and is here to search for all the salmon! And possibly save the day too.
Later on in the game, I plan on having both sides of the game have to co-operate with one another. Or if one is not able to play the kaizo side of the game, no need to worry! There will be playthroughs made available, or you can ask a friend to help out too! It remains to be seen how exactly I'm going to pull this off, but I'm going to try and make it fun and engaging for both players.
So far, I've come up with about half of the levels for the game. Then I started changing my design philosophy. Then I started going back and forth, not knowing what philosophy to go with. I then looked back at two hacks I made.
1: Super Mallow World - a mostly vanilla SMW difficulty level.
2: Mario & Luigi: Power Blast (demo) - More puzzly / powerup mechanic abuse.
I still am unsure what blend of both games I want to use for my non-kaizo side of the game. However since I've implemented custom power-ups, I'm leaning more towards puzzly powerup mechanics. These might not be mandatory for every level, but they will become a large part of the gameplay.
For the kaizo side, thats easy, of course I'm going to use all the powerups (that make sense!) Some powerups might not work in the kaizo scene as easily and as fun as others, such as the superball or the electric flower. I've yet to decide whether I'm able to use them all or not. I do have one kaizo level made so far, using the bubble flower!
Below are some screenshots, some featuring Mallow, some featuring Shy Guy. The last screenshot is the first part of the kaizo level I've worked on, the others featuring Shy Guy are just non-kaizo levels. Some of the screenshots feature from the recent Steampunk-themed EXGFX contest. I've reached out to the authors individually to ask if I could use them in this hack, to which they all agreed! I'm thankful to MM102, Flagpole1up, and Pokerface for all their amazing tilesets.
Screenshots: