Very cool concept art. Does this mean you are ditching the low-res art and going full on HD?
Haha, no we’re still sticking to the 640x360 resolution 
We actually tested out a couple of different styles at different resolutions, and we found in terms of speed and production cost, working at a lower resolution is the best fit for our team size.
Believe me, if I could make this game in HD with the art these guys are producing, I totally would. Unfortunately it is just sooo far out of the scope and budget that it’s not viable.
Art looks good. Curious to see how it looks in motion.
Forgot about this, gave it a quick try.
First thing that comes to mind that could improve is enemy placement. In the demo enemies appear and come at you at fixed intervals. There doesn’t seem to be much variety in how the waves are placed, or their approaches. You made the AI go for your back from time to time, which is good, but their behavior shouldn’t be limited to just spawning and coming at you. Come up with varied placements, make them come while you are fighting the other group instead of making them appear only once you have dispatched the previous wave, avoid “dead air” in between enemy waves, work with their placement on screen, make their behavior more varied as in make some cover some areas instead of only making them come at you. You can also mix up attack types as in ranged guys that work in tandem with the melee ones, make them stay away and the melee guys protect them, that sort of thing.
As for the combo system, it’s very free-form and fun, but maybe you should make the juggles less floaty and add some sort of juggle potential system. I was just launching enemies and then infiniting them with walk up attack xN, which sort of defeats the point of having a complex combo system in place. Damage could be a bit higher too.
Overall it shows promise. With a few tweaks it could be really good.
@Cronopio I disagree with adding any kind of juggle limit. One of the most interesting challenges in Scott Pilgrim and AVP is infinite juggling enemies! It’s mostly unnecessary if you make the enemies sufficiently aggressive, it will be a huge challenge to avoid attacks and keep infinite juggles going. And in the case of bosses they have a combo-breaker or something so its a non-issue.
AvsP does have juggle limits, you can’t just keep juggling forever in that game. It gives you leeway to chain several attacks, quite a bit if you relaunch from OTG but you can’t just walk up jab to keep everyone juggled, the timing is much tighter. You don’t want a game with braindead juggle infinites as in Sengoku 3, you can juggle entire mobs with walk up attack with zero timing; what would be the point in having tons of options if you can do something like that?
@Cronopio You have no idea how happy it makes me to hear you say that, because those are all things we’ve been working on the last couple of months.
Currently we’re experimenting with 10 different enemy types with a variety of attack ranges. They also don’t all come in for the attack at once any more, with some loitering in the background waiting for a chance to strike. Enemies also have much lower HP and now spawn mid wave as well. There are still breaks between some waves, but feedback like yours is helping us find the balance.
In terms of limiting air juggles, we use hitstun deterioration, so after around 6 walk up punch juggles the enemy will be able to do an air recovery (I think I’m going to nerf punch especially hard though). Air Recovery however, is an ability we want to reserve for higher tier enemies, allowing you to mess with the lower tier grunts however you want.
Thank you for taking the time to play the game and giving us feedback. If you have any other suggestions, please let us know, we seem to be on the same wavelength.
That sounds promising and would take care of nearly everything that needed tweaking. In addition to hitstun deterioration I suggest making the juggle state a bit less floaty so timing is tighter, but the main problem of easy infinites will be gone in any case so that’s good.
Huh, could have sworn AVP didn’t have any hard-coded combo limits…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GgZTIqr4OA
It has combo limits, Avspadmirer has a detailed list of the hit points necessary to knock every enemy down. You can’t juggle infinitely either, and the ground infinites are probably only possible due to the gun cooldown cancel that I guess resets the hit points. Now compare to a game that doesn’t have any limitations like Sengoku 3, in which you can launch then walk up jab xN, the difference is obvious.
Here is some of the sprite work that Dawid Strauss has been putting together for us. We are drawing a lot of inspiration from Hyper Light Drifter and also the gorgeous Dead Cells. Focusing on detailed backgrounds, and characters being more flat-shaded and stylised.
I’m really stoked with the amount of progress he’s made in such a short amount of time.
Just a note that the animations are a first pass, and still need to be touched up by our cleanup artist, who is starting with us next week.
http://shatteredrealmsgame.com/imglink/main%20chars.png
http://shatteredrealmsgame.com/imglink/New_baddies.png
http://shatteredrealmsgame.com/imglink/bulletelf_run_sprite.gif
http://shatteredrealmsgame.com/imglink/sheet.png
Looks very nice! I like the style. Only small thing I would change about that run is to have the body move up and down a bit, looks like he only moves his head right now and that takes weight away from the animation. The legs and knee protections on the punch animation change size too.
Otherwise really nice spritework, love the motion blur and deformations, looks really really promising.
A question, what lenght do you aim for? Arcade style, as in less than an hour for a full playthrough, or more console style with several hours and saves? I personally prefer shorter, more focused arcade games but I know I’m most likely the minority haha.
Thanks for pointing out the tweaks in the animations, I’ll be sure to pass those on to the art team.
The length of the game is still something we’re discussing. I personally am also for a short but highly focused gameplay experience, but many players enjoy a longer experience (hours/$ = value). If the game is really fun to play, players might be satisfied with a shorter game that they can play through multiple times. Adding in some secret stages can also make subsequent playthroughs more entertaining by taking different routes.
The next few month is going to give us a good indication of how much content we can produce given our budget, so by the end we’ll have a much clearer idea of how long the game could be.
A good compromise could be to use branching paths (not unlike what Capcom did with the Dungeons and Dragons games).
You can keep playtime arcade-like and focused, but also satisfy people with the mentality that sees arcade games as too short for their money, without stretching levels with unnecessary padding.
This game looks awesome so far! i can see theHyper Light Drifter influence in the color schemes and background. I will definitely keep an eye on this thread!
Looking at the Bullet Elf’s moves/ key frame sheet, are you opting to have different combat styles per character?
Thanks, glad you are liking the new art direction 
Yes, there will be different combat styles for each playable character. Lynx is our close range rushdown character. Her rival (guy with blades on his arms) will be mid to long range, focusing on kicks, and the grappler (guy with ferret on his shoulder) will focus on positioning enemies with throws. These three will form the core characters for the game, but we obviously have a lot of other ideas for characters. I personally would love to have a shoto, combining the best of all shoto’s into one super character.
Are there any archetypes in particular you guys would like to see?
Our artists have been working furiously the last couple of weeks on the new art assets for Shattered Realms.
We’re starting to put them in the game and wanted to just show how awesome everything is looking.
Here is the concept art for the Beast King boss. Seriously, Akuma can kiss his ass
There is still plenty to do, but we’re making good progress.
Some rough lines for characters, 360 degree reference views and move ideas for Lynx.
http://shatteredrealmsgame.com/imglink/Rough_lines1.png
http://shatteredrealmsgame.com/imglink/shattered_realms_turnaround.png
It really is shaping up nicely!