Ninja Exorcist - 2D action from ASE *Out Now* on XBLIG

[theALLseeingEYE]

Hey everyone,
just wanted to say Ninja Exorcist is finally out on the Xbox indie games section.

Xbox.com Link
http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Pr...5-d80258550b8a

Here's some info on the title:
http://ninjaexorcist.wordpress.com/

Facebook: facebook.com/NinjaExorcist


So ya, hope everyone has fun with the game. If you get a chance to check it out, I'd love to hear what you think of it.

Cheers,
Joel

[RAziel1979]

Game looks fun man, I even let my boy play it for a little bit. I need 50ms points to buy it though.
I really like where you went with this game. A 2d game with skill trees? AWESOME!

Keep it up man, go all the way!

[theALLseeingEYE]

Thanks man, ya, I'd feel kind of bad asking friends to go out and buy MS point cards just for my messily $1 game , But I hope those who do really like it, and find some other cool things to buy.

It would kind of be perfect for them to get it at the same time Dust: Elesian tale comes out . That game looks awesome.

[Guirec730]

Only 50 points? I'll post some impressions after I put in some time with it.

[Purple Gryphon]

looks good I will easily spend the money on that. Let you know what I think after I play it but the backgrounds look really nice.

[theALLseeingEYE]

Thanks Guirec and Gryph for checking it out.

Ya, let me know what you think. Hope you guys have fun, if there are things that bug you though, don't hesitate to let me know, it can only make the next version stronger.

[Guirec730]

I played it for about 15 minutes and I definitely see potential. Will play more for sure.

[Guirec730]

So far, I'd say the music and the stealth skill tree are my favorite elements.

And even though the animation doesn't have a lot of frames, the big enemy that served as a first boss looked very crisp.

[Yarrrmonger7]

So do you actually get money off of this? I have 280 ms laying around so I'll give it a try for less than a dollar, I'm just wondering.

[theALLseeingEYE]

So do you actually get money off of this? I have 280 ms laying around so I'll give it a try for less than a dollar, I'm just wondering.

Hey Yarrrmonger. Yessir, we will receive 70 cents of your dollar for the purchase! So it's much appreciated. I hope you have fun with it.

[Guirec730]

Beat it. Liked it. Everybody buy it. It's a freakin' dollar.

[Yarrrmonger7]

Nice I'll buy it now.

Edit: Just bought and I was lloking at the scrrenshots. Holy hell, I was expecting crap graphics (no offense most indie games are) but I am blown away. Enjoy your 70 cents sir I am sure I will enjoy this because let's face it, ninjas are amazing. Btw it kind of looks like kakashi fro Naruto to me. Probably just the hair though.

Edit #2: Pretty sweet game so far. Really enjoyed it until my friend wanted to play some ME# and then I got the shadow... Now it looks like I can't play for a little while...

[Purple Gryphon]

I will try to be super critical just to give you ideas. I have only played the first 2 levels so far.

The tutorial level was fine but the level could have been more linear. You had areas to explore but they had no rewards. I spent like 3 minutes wall jumping up this wall at the end of the level and found nothing. It will discourage people from exploring. I don't know if there are any secret areas yet but those are always good in games like this.

I also noticed that when I did stealth kills the second guy would be alerted. Not very stealthy for a good ninja. Is it just me or is that planned?

Also is there a way to customize your ninja. Obviously game play comes first but if you could add ways to change the outfit or just the colors that would be cool. Maybe as part of leveling up.

[RAziel1979]

http://n4g.com/news/1047133/ninja-ex...isode-1-review

[Yarrrmonger7]

Nice find.

[theALLseeingEYE]

Sweet, pretty happy with that review. Sounds like he had trouble with the stealth a bit, but seemed to get it more after my programmer posted some tips.

Got another preview on Armless Octopuss:
http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2012/0...exorcist-pt-1/

Also got some feedback from a reviewer who seemed to really like it too, hope to hear his review soon. Oddly, he was having issues switching between projectiles, hopefully he figures that out.

Looks like we'll have a Team Xbox, and possibly a Gamespot article soon too.

[AKAtheMilkman]

I haven't gotten that far into it yet, but what I've played so far is pretty good.

[RAziel1979]

At least we got something to be excited about with ASE game around these parts.
I will be buying this today.Got me some points.

Once I finish it i will give all the feedback you need to create the second one. get your pen ready.

[Guirec730]

I get having trouble with the elements that are unique to the game...the grapple physics, the stealth, y'know, the stuff that you have to learn.

If you can't switch projectiles, you don't play very many videogames. Lol

[Yarrrmonger7]

I concur. Also for episode 2 one word if possible. Co-op... Or loot. Loot would be better because I am a massive loot whore.

[theALLseeingEYE]

I haven't gotten that far into it yet, but what I've played so far is pretty good.

Sweet man, I know your a big Dishwasher fan, so I hope it's something you can have fun with . Vampire Smile did a lot of great things for that series, I've always loved the attitude, and how Savage it felt (The cleaver was always badass).

At least we got something to be excited about with ASE game around these parts.
I will be buying this today.Got me some points.

Once I finish it i will give all the feedback you need to create the second one. get your pen ready.

Sweet . It's too bad the old community has faded out a lot here, if SK can hold on, and put out something great, that could help revive things. In the meantime, I'll do my best to continue making fun games.

If anyone has any suggestions on that too, feel free to let me know what you think would be cool. This time, we played things pretty straight, I think in the future we are going to look into doing something more unique on all fronts, and hopefully really work on making the theme rich and creative.

I get having trouble with the elements that are unique to the game...the grapple physics, the stealth, y'know, the stuff that you have to learn.

If you can't switch projectiles, you don't play very many videogames. Lol

Ya, makes sense man. Regarding the grappling hook, in which ways were you having trouble with it? just getting used to swinging around? I consider it a pretty freeform hook, especially compared to Bionic Commando. But that has it's difficulties, since it could mean it's a bit tougher to use.

Regarding switching projectiles, they knew it was D-pad left/right, but for some reason it wasn't working for them. Could be that they ran out of shuriken and were forced into just arrows. Could also be an issue with their controller, I've never seen an issue there in the past several months, and haven't heard of any issues, so hopefully it's them and not a real bug.

I concur. Also for episode 2 one word if possible. Co-op... Or loot. Loot would be better because I am a massive loot whore.

Agreed, both Co-op and more loot would be awesome.

We probably won't be able to do actually different weapons, simply due to the already high amount of animation Daigo already has, but one thing I don't like currently is the Y combo. It's too slow (it's a technical issue, it just isn't adjusting to a good speed, it's either too fast, or too slow). But I want to change Y to a single Power attack. It would also be cool if that allowed us to add some power attack weapons , like picking up a Scyth, or Staff.

As for other loot, ya, that would be sweet. We already have multiple other projectiles implemented, they just need balancing and tweaking.

It would also be great to have Armour. One problem with that again, is due to our current animation system, we can't really change the physical appearance of the Main character, without just overhauling him entirely, so any loot like this would likely be unseen outside of stat effects, and icons in a menu. Is that still interesting for you?

Also, we've always thought it would be cool to have swords with different elemental effects (like light, shadowflame, perhaps poison).

As for co-op, I'd love to do it. For now, we can probably only get couch co-op in. I'd love to do online though, but since my programmer has never done online, implementing that would be a big project, so it might have to wait for a future game. We'll see, online co-op would be amazing though.

We'll see how it works out .
Cheers,
Joel

[Purple Gryphon]

Could you do different armor by just changing the color palette of the hero. Maybe add some elemental effects like you would with the weapons. That could work and still give a visual clue as the using different armour sets.

Also for the mini-map, I did not see any indicator for areas that if you fell in were instant death. Maybe use a color key to show these areas. A nice aquamarine would be cool.

[theALLseeingEYE]

Could you do different armor by just changing the color palette of the hero. Maybe add some elemental effects like you would with the weapons. That could work and still give a visual clue as the using different armour sets.

Also for the mini-map, I did not see any indicator for areas that if you fell in were instant death. Maybe use a color key to show these areas. A nice aquamarine would be cool.

Hey Gryph,
Different colors are possible, but it could be tough. Basically, the problem is we didn't support that from the start. I think for a character with this much animation, we'd need to tweak all the colors through programming. This would mean the game needs to be able to parse out the different colors on the character for each animation. The problem being, if there's slight discoloration or distortion within the color, only part of the color would be changed. We can certainly just tint the entire character, but that tends to look pretty odd.

On the other hand, if we made the characters out of full flash puppets, meaning the character's body is animated through a separate program, which links all the character's body parts together it would be a lot easier.

Doing elemental effects on weapons would be quite plausible. I think that's a cool idea, and could be quite easy to just tint the effect for different elements.

And ya, you are right about spiked not appearing on the mini-map, hope people aren't getting too frustrated with that, since it was a complete oversight. We've already implemented it for a title update.

[Yarrrmonger7]

I haven't found any spike death traps yet... Also for the stuff I was talking about I was saying for your next game. I didn't know you were adding stuff to this game which is sweet if I'm correct.

[Guirec730]

When using the grapple it is hard to accurately nail a target while in free-fall, especially because the physics box or whatever of the platforms is about two feet into the rock from the ledge.

Also, when you touch anything, you lose the grapple. Wouldn't be that big of a deal if the above "issue" wasn't there, but it's pretty hard to stay in the air for any length of time. A "rappel" move where you put your feet flush against the wall could make that more fluid.