Very exciting news!
The Forever Grotto and Extinction Event were featured in the April 2020 SIMMER Rewind!
If you’re interested head over my ‘simmer.io’ page to play these games.
https://simmer.io/@FirebrandOfPhx
My two current projects are a Beat Em Up based on a location in Phoenix and a western Retro FPS.
In parallel with Streets of Rage 4 being released I have been working on the Beat Em Up proof of concept and finally got a working prototype system going.
I put this together using assets from the GameDevMarket by 'Fassous' and a beat em up template by 'Osarion'. My intent with this project was to understand how Osarion's Beat Em Up engine worked for a future project. Keep your eyes posted in the future for that! For now here is ‘Road of Brawl’!
https://simmer.io/@FirebrandOfPhx/road-of-brawl
It's a small project but it has laid a lot of ground work for me.
I have been playing Streets of Rage 4 and it is just a phenomenal game. It feels like it is the gestalt of ideas from the whole series and executes so well on making a good 'Streets of Rage' game.
Beat Em Ups really shine when they have three things:
1: Phenomenal Artwork with a story being told by the level art as storyboard in the background.
2: Bangin music that keeps the inertia of the player going through the game.
3: A decent combat system.
Streets of Rage 4 knocks all of these out of the park. You can play as any character from any of the games once you unlock them. Each of them retain the nuances from their series such as the Streets of Rage 3 characters having upward and downward rolls.
If you have not played it yet I truly recommend playing Streets of Rage 4. It is one of the best Beat Em Up games in the past twenty years.
Kamen Rider Black RX continues to be good and is trending slowly into better.
The first four episodes introduce Black RX, Acrobatter, and Ridoron as well as the Sahara family(Shunkichi, Utako, Shigeru and Hitomi).
Episodes 5-11 had Crisis Empire attacking the friends of Minami Kotaro, and failing.
In episode 12 were introduced to the concept of Crisis Empire Rebels and General Jak audible states that they cannot mess around with the Sahara family and Reiko.
This has me interested on where the trajectory of the show goes from here.
Episode 15 we see the birth of RX Robo Rider after Hitomi of the Sahara family was kidnapped to the Demon World in an attempt to make 7 girls that were kidnapped become one of the possible candidates of Princess Garonia through some miracle water?!?!
The audience at this point I don’t think understand who or what a Princess Garonia is, I mean I don’t know who that is.
Minami Kotaro thinks that the kidnapped Hitomi is killed when Black RX and Death Garon are in a battle. Through his sorrow over her death a new power is born. RX Robo Rider!
Episode 15 wraps up and Black RX is still looking for Hitomi. Fascinatingly in episode 16 Shigeru is talking with Reiko says that Minami Kotaro has been gone for half a month since the kidnap of Hitomi. That’s like two weeks for her to be in the clutches of the Crisis Empire.
Episodes 12 through 16 have some length to their continuity. They're really a shocking set of episodes and bring some weight to the plot that was lacking in the first 13ish episodes. I’m very stoked to see where this all goes. Could fall flat on its face though.
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//RESOURCES FOR ROAD OF BRAWL//
GameDevMarket - 'Fassous'
https://www.gamedevmarket.net/asset/48x48-brawler-foes-sprites-3339/
https://www.gamedevmarket.net/asset/brawler-pack-1-1597/
https://www.gamedevmarket.net/asset/48x48-gameboy-brawler-game-pack-3542/
Unity Asset Store - 'Osarion'
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/templates/systems/beat-em-up-game-template-78297