Meirdent: Down Below Progress & Rain Redux Demo

Looks interesting. The graphics look nice here, great work.

Ooh! Metrodvanian hacks/games are my kind-of thing, so this is going to be a treat to play~

Down Below looks cool so far. I don't have too much to say about it, since there's no playable demo yet, but you've definitely got something good going on here. I can see a lot of inspiration taken from Cave Story, Yoshi's Island, Kirby, and other stuff, so I'm interested in seeing what direction the game will end up taking later on. Are you using GameMaker, Unity, or your own engine? Player movement in a 2d platformer can be difficult to fine-tune, so I wish you luck on that one.

I noticed that you've showed two different versions of Nagi - one from the "Down Below (6) video", and one in your C3 post. Your C3 drawing is an improvement, with nicer looking linework, consistent line thickness, and slightly less... "off" proportions. I don't know how to describe it, but I thought the torso appeared too long in the first drawing. I kinda liked the highlight colors in the first drawing.

Rain Redux: I played the Windows version. Anyway, this is kinda like one of those minigames you'd find in WarioWare, like Pyoro. I like the responsive controls, the tall screen setup is like an arcade game, the little bunny character is adorable, and it feels fairly polished overall. The actual game itself seems a bit too easy for me, though. The first time I played, I managed to reach the maximum of 999 points with one heart remaining. I did it a second time because I forgot to take a screenshot. The best strategy was to stand around at an edge of the screen, occasionally walking around a bit to dodge (or catch) things, but never straying too far from the edge. The game gets very intense with its drop rate when approaching 999 points, and I thought that was cool.

Some suggestions off the top of my head:

An incentive to score points quickly. Maybe you need to reach a certain amount of points every minute, or you lose.
Items that hurt the player when caught, but not when it hits you on the head.
A much longer life bar instead of four hearts. Let's say you have 100 HP. Coins shave off 2 HP, while gems take 30 HP. The drop rate and falling speed might have to be reduced a little for this. Maybe that would be too hard?
Some kind of penalty for letting too many things fall down?
Screen wraparound. Walk past the left side and come out on the right.

This is a small thing, but it bugs me: When the lightning appears, the thunder is heard immediately. It seems to happen all the time on TV and movies, though.

Anyway, keep up the good work

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Down Below: It looks like a nice little game so far, and one thing I can come to like is, well, Nagi. She's cute, but that ain't the point, the point is, like UTF said, your artstyle has certainly improved from earlier videos of Down Below. Unfortunately I don't see a download link for Down Below, as the only one I was able to download was Rain Redux, so I can't complement much more than the artstyle.

Rain Redux: It's a pretty nice cute little game to play on my free time, and it's kinda fun! In the first game, I finished with a score of 183, though I hear the max score is 999, correct? For a game like this where the goal is to get a score as high as possible, 999 might seem a bit shallow for all the hardcore gamers out there - the same issue i have with the GBA versions of the Mario Bros arcade game, the max score is 999,990 when I could easily score more points than that. Implementing powerups of sorts or other drops might help make the game a bit deeper in terms of gameplay, but for what it is, I like it for now.

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Sometimes, I like to hack SMW. This is rare though, but I always try something new.


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~Developer for "Mario Enters the Void", an abandoned hack. The thread for the hack can be found Here ~

I'm using GameMaker: Studio for both.


I got lazy and just programmed the thunder sound to play when the lightning object is created.
I'll put a bit of delay for the thunder sound, I feel like it would be better aesthetically.


I was hoping to have a demo ready by this C3, but I spent a better half of 2015 just trying to figure out how to make the game interesting.


Yes, the max score is 999.
A higher score limit, removing the coin stun and gem hurt, and adding UTF's hurt item suggestion seems like it would make Rain Redux more fun.


I'll see what I can do with everyone's suggestions, even if they probably won't make it past the concept phase.


I plan on adding rewards, unlocks, and challenges to Rain Redux.

Rewards will be based on coin ranges.
Ex. 0-299 = Bronze Medal

Unlocks will be based on certain coin amounts.
Ex. 250+ = Alternate player skin
Ex. 430+ = Alternate area
Ex. 680+ = New challenge

Challenges will be like the main game but with a slight change in gameplay. The best score earned in each challenge will be separate from the main game's best score.
Ex. Heartache = Player only has one heart


More Down Below progress:



-Lava/Volcanic area
-Ground pound
-Hidden Foreground
-Bombs
-Music slows down when the player is at 1/3 their max health

That all sounds like a good idea to me! I am also liking the slight progress on Down Below.

Now, if you were to go through with these concepts for Rain Redux, for the medals thing if the score limit is upgraded, the medals above gold should probably be:

-Platinum (Just after gold)
-Ruby
-Emerald
-Sapphire
-Amethyst
-Diamond (Highest?)

Also, since we're collecting coins and gems, it would be reasonable to be able to actually buy stuff with it, would it? Any collected goodies should be usable in a shop, for upgrades (Extra health) or concept art or special characters and stages and such that cannot be unlocked through just earning points, and require you to play the game until you have enough gathered coins.

What also interests me is the challenge concept. Are we talking things like "Collect X coins in Y seconds"? and such? If so, I would love to see what you could come up with, if this game grows to be big enough, Rain might just be the perfect time-killing game for me when i'm on the PC, much like how games like Temple Run tend to be my timekillers on mobile.

I could also imagine a local multiplayer mode where two players compete against each other. Player 1 uses arrow keys, player 2 uses A and D, both to move left and right. The highest scoring player wins of course.

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Sometimes, I like to hack SMW. This is rare though, but I always try something new.


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~Developer for "Mario Enters the Void", an abandoned hack. The thread for the hack can be found Here ~

Down Below looks really nice, like a mix between Cave Story and Super Mario World... I would give it a try!
Also, Lucky looks a bit like the pokémon Cubone. I bet that wasn't intentional, or was it?

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I quit hacking. Don't hack Nintendo ROMs, kids! ROM hacking is illegal an very very rude for the original creators!