[Indie] CrossCode - Throwing Balls in a 2D Action RPG!

[R.D.]

Hey everyone! A friend pointed us to this forum and said we should totally show you our game! So here we go /o

Play the CrossCode Demo now
www.cross-code.com
(Playable in browser or offline for windows)​

CrossCode is a retro-inspired 2D Action RPG set in the distant future. You follow a player called Lea as she logs into CrossWorlds - a fictional online game of the far future. Two things are strange about Lea: First, she can't speak (literally mute - not just a silent heroine). And second, she doesn't remember a thing about her past. Despite all of this, Lea starts exploring CrossWorlds, meets other players and overcomes a multitude of challenges all along the official track of the game. That is, until the past catches up with her. CrossCode combines features of the Action-Adventure and RPG genre, delivering both, a great variety of puzzles and an engaging, fast-paced combat system with plenty of options for character growth.

Here's a bullet list of features:

• 16-bit, SNES-style 2D graphics with detailed animations
• A soundtrack inspired by old SNES and Playstation JRPGs
• A unique ball throwing mechanic with charging functionality and ricocheting balls, used for combat and puzzles
• Fast-paced combat system featuring close and ranged attacks, guarding, dashing and great variety of special attacks
• A complete RPG system with leveling, equipment, consumable items and skill trees
• A detailed movement system with auto-jumping and precise collision

Videos:

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Pictures:

He currently having a fundraiser on IndieGogo! Check it out:

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You can find all of our TeamMember on the IndieGogo Page too if your interested Some of you might recognize Felix "Lachsen" Klein!

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Finally I want to point out that game was done with HTML, JavaScript and CSS. Yes, the whole thing is done with Web-Technologies with our custom engine derived from the impact.js Engine! Those technologies have come a long way and you can finally do full-featured games with it. Nintendo even has a Web Framework that lets you port your HTML5 game on the WiiU!

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Latest News: Fanart Contest!

Next DevStream: Mar 22 2015 12 pm PST (20 GMT + 1) - Click to get to the Channel

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Play CrossCode: CrossCode Demo
CrossCode Forum: Forum
Twitter: @RadicalFishGame
Facebook: FacebookFanpage
Website (DevBlog): RadicalFishGames

Cheers! Looking forward to what you think!

 

[Niektory]

Hey everyone! A friend pointed us to this forum and said we should totally show you our game! So here we go /o

He pointed you here? You have some sadistic friends!

I've tried the demo and it has some potential, but some problems as well.

I don't like the auto-jumping feature. Seems lifted straight from one of those AAA games that play themselves. Drop it, or at least give an option to disable it.

The controls are good, but perhaps it would be a good idea to let the player assign melee and ranged attacks to separate buttons. It's easy to use the wrong attack in the heat of battle. I have a mouse with additional buttons, let me use them.

The crab battle was horrible. "Let's have it chase the player for a few seconds, then get bored, open its armor and let the player whack its innards with impunity." I couldn't help but facepalm when I saw it. Thankfully the boss of the puzzle level was a little better.

Speaking of puzzles, not a single one required me to activate my brain. They were all obvious.

Fighting normal enemies on the other hand was pretty fun. When they come at you in high numbers you need to pay attention to interrupt or dodge their attacks in time.

I haven't finished the exploration part because screen tearing was getting on my nerves. I tried to force v-sync on via the NVIDIA control panel, but no dice. You should have an option to enable it at least for the standalone version.

Is the game going to be linear, or will it open up after the tutorial?

 

[J1M]

When this kickstarter fails you should do a different kickstarter for an HTML5 SNES game engine.

 

[R.D.]

@Niektory

Thanks for the detailed feedback. being critical about games isn't something bad imho. It helps teh developer to get different opinions because you often tend to like you own stuff but it is good to prove yourself wrong from time to time in order to make something better

Auto-jumping is something we won't cut from the mix since it's relevant for puzzle mechanics and a jump button would have no gain. In fact we did a small game for a game jam once where we added a jump button with the same mechanics (throwing stuff and platforms) and nobody liked it. However a lot, simply jumped around while in CrossCode they used the dash to do "something" while walking around. It's even faster! The original idea comes from the 3D-Zeldas btw!

We got a lot of request concerning the separation of the melee and ranged attacks. Do that is something we'll probably add in! It's only fair as it's much easier to pull of with the Controller. The same goes for shielding as people to want to play the game with a trackpad too

The first boss in the story mode is really easy. We did this on purspose. Originally it was much much harder and we thought it would be way to easy. But the Testers actually had a lot of problem and even after we nerfed it once and released the demo, people still had a hard time to we nerfed it again. To be honest with you, we won't do it again :p I like a challenge too, but we also want to keep it fair for everyone! But there is hope for hardcore players! We have a system that scale the aggressiveness of enemies. And we can do that based on a difficulty setting we plan to implement!

Yepp, classic first dungeon level design (I see a pattern here, you'r a seasoned player!). It's so good to read that because it means we can push the complexity of puzzle areas further We have some crazy ideas concerning puzzles and I can't wait to add them. But again, we need to keep it fair for all players. So intuitive puzzles are the best way to go. But Sidequests can contain ridiculous puzzles and it's going to be fun building them.

Good to hear! In the future you'll also be able to perfect guard enemies in order to not only take no damage at all but also stun enemies and leave them open for attacks. With Skills and Modifiers you can also increase you invincibility while dashing making it really fund to just dash through an enemy attack and follow up with a special attack.

Tearing? That's a first! Can you tell me you system specs (perhaps via PM if you like) so I can have a look into it. The game normally runs at 60 FPS with V-Sync enabled. Actually V-Sync is always enabled since we don't have any saying in the matter. The browser or standalone backbone does the heavy lifting and tries to be at the same refresh rate as the monitor is. This is also why CrossCode runs with a variable timestamp.

The game will get more and more open. We follow a design pattern that combines linear storytelling from eastern RPGs with the open-world style of western RPGs. It looks a little something like this:

Excuse my poor drawing! As you can see they might be a special point in the timeline where the openness is reduced because of the plot but it goes up again and has a steep fall very close to the end (the usual end rush so to speak).

Thanks again for the awesome feedback! It's always good to get an opinion from someone that has a lot of experience because hardcore games are something we enjoy ourselves and it's possible we want to show this in our game too!

J1M
If the Kickstarter does not work we'll simply continue but much much slower. It's going to take along time before we release anything from our engine. Mostly because it's based of a proprietary engine so we can't just release it :D Also we plan to make more games with it! The engine is super flexible and extremely modular so we can reuse components and add new ones very easily! (We also scared to clean up the engine and add documentation, that would take a long time D

@Topic
We just released a new update containing some interesting news! First off, our sprite artist T-Free took the feedback for the graphics to heart and made them ore detailed! This is just a small example of what will happen if we meet the funding goal. We'll continue to polish them even further if we can! Check out the changes:

Our concept artist also sat down and created some new enemies for an upcoming area we call "Heat Area" for now:

You can find out more in our most recent blog post: Click on Me!

Cheers!

 

[Farage]

I actually liked your demo, posted about it on other forums and stuff, you have a solid platform there too, i was impressed overall.
Good luck with your 'kickstarter'!

 

[R.D.]

Thanks a lot!

We just released a tasty new update including our impressions of the SXSW in Texas last week as well as new concept arts and a special animation done by our sprite artist T-Free.
We also met with a lot of other awesome game developers such as the Starr Mazer Crew. We were booth budies the whole time at SXSW! Rad!

Here's the link: Click on Me

And here are some those tasty gems:

 

[Zombra]

I just heard about this game today. I like everything I'm seeing. Looks like release is getting darn close.

 

[Siveon]

Play the demo. I loved it and am looking forward to this game quite a lot.

 

[---]

Game will leave EA in September!

 

[Kruno]

September is after August. :O

 

[bataille]

Apparently, it's been released just now!

Never heard of it before; looks very cool! Will definitely try it out.

 

[bataille]

Is anyone playing this? I've spent 7 hours in it so far, and oh mah gad! the thing is so charming, warm, and cozy. It's such a joy to play something that is obviously a labour of love. Get to it!

 

[Villagkouras]

Is anyone playing this? I've spent 7 hours in it so far, and oh mah gad! the thing is so charming, warm, and cozy. It's such a joy to play something that is obviously a labour of love. Get to it!

I've played for about 2-3 hours, I'm kinda overwhelmed by the number of quests, but I like it. Definitely will go till the end.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Dumped a bunch of time in yesterday. Seems big, definitely a labour of love, pretty as all hell. Only gripe so far is there's not much to find secrets wise- quest compass to the nth degree everywhere. Found a couple places ahead of time that seemed somewhat hidden and later had quests lead me directly to them. Best thing I've gotten by exploring so far is just some extra loot I don't need.

Definitely want to sink way more time into it though. Hoping later areas are better.

 

[Roguey]

Sank about five hours into this and was ready to post positive impressions about the combat, puzzles, and cute dialogue, but then I hit a wall after unlocking the second proper area because everything's level 13+ while I'm at level 7 because apparently I was supposed to be grinding hedgehogs, moles, and bulls this entire time.

Guess there won't be any goty this year (except Wannika ).

 

[bataille]

I don't think you need to grind enemies. Equipment gives dozens of levels worth of stats, so the progression is done mainly by getting weapons and such. So far almost every upgrade from stores I could afford by killing enemies I encounter just once or maybe twice. Besides, enemies stop giving experiences very fast (I think around you outleveling them by a couple of levels). If you just explore the stages and don't fixate on enemies, you outgrow them naturally by the point when tougher enemies start appearing. It's also worth mentioning that it's quite important to keep combos going to get ingredients for stronger items.

Besides, don't let the boss battles discourage you. It seems that they are designed to be this challenging no matter what. All the enemies and bosses are more about their unique patterns of attacks and behaviour, and once figured out, you'll be able to dispatch them quite easily. It's true both for regular mooks and boss encounters. Once you get what sonic the hedgehag is about, it's a smooth sail from there.

 

[bataille]

And a few minutes after writing this post, I encounter this bit. The game communicates this well enough, but the developers just make sure they get the point across, I guess, heh.

 

[Roguey]

I don't think you need to grind enemies. Equipment gives dozens of levels worth of stats, so the progression is done mainly by getting weapons and such. So far almost every upgrade from stores I could afford by killing enemies I encounter just once or maybe twice. Besides, enemies stop giving experiences very fast (I think around you outleveling them by a couple of levels). If you just explore the stages and don't fixate on enemies, you outgrow them naturally by the point when tougher enemies start appearing. It's also worth mentioning that it's quite important to keep combos going to get ingredients for stronger items.

I gave myself all bronze equipment from that one store, then grinded for about an hour bringing my level from 7 to 10, and I still die pretty much right away against those second three level 13 turrets in https://crosscode.gamepedia.com/Rookie_Harbor/Quests#Smuggle_Trouble

 

[Damned Registrations]

You're not fighting skillfully then. Block the attacks, stun them with a charged shot when they glow red. Use cover and the shot reflection to make it even easier. I got killed by them a few times too before I realized you're not meant to slug it out with them.

 

[bataille]

I don't think you need to grind enemies. Equipment gives dozens of levels worth of stats, so the progression is done mainly by getting weapons and such. So far almost every upgrade from stores I could afford by killing enemies I encounter just once or maybe twice. Besides, enemies stop giving experiences very fast (I think around you outleveling them by a couple of levels). If you just explore the stages and don't fixate on enemies, you outgrow them naturally by the point when tougher enemies start appearing. It's also worth mentioning that it's quite important to keep combos going to get ingredients for stronger items.

I gave myself all bronze equipment from that one store, then grinded for about an hour bringing my level from 7 to 10, and I still die pretty much right away against those second three level 13 turrets in https://crosscode.gamepedia.com/Rookie_Harbor/Quests#Smuggle_Trouble

Items that you can buy with credits are completely useless. You need to trade ingredients for equipment at the market square (or near the obelisk, in bergen, etc). Also don't forget that you can block the turrets' pellets to wait until their shields drop.

Grinding is a waste of time. You could get those 3 levels by chaining frobbits from bergen mountains for three minutes (after five they would stop giving experience anyway). And it all results in 5% damage increase.

 

[Roguey]

You're not fighting skillfully then. Block the attacks, stun them with a charged shot when they glow red. Use cover and the shot reflection to make it even easier. I got killed by them a few times too before I realized you're not meant to slug it out with them.

Items that you can buy with credits are completely useless. You need to trade ingredients for equipment at the market square (or near the obelisk, in bergen, etc). Also don't forget that you can block the turrets' pellets to wait until their shields drop.

Good news, a combination of this did it. However, the other sidequests (defending a tree against a wave of enemies, fighting against multiple waves in the pit) are even more obnoxious and physically demanding. If it's this demanding now, I suppose it's just going to keep getting worse. I'm too old for this.

 

[Damned Registrations]

The tree was actually really easy once I realized they only damage it after filling up their "Licking tree" text box and the meter alongside it. I lost the first attempt and won the second one without it even getting damaged.

Those fucking snowmen though. And I did have trouble against most of the bosses. I like the challenge though, and the bosses have all been optional so far anyways. If you're not enjoying the combat, you can basically walk past every enemy up to the second town at the very least.

Also, these fuckers put in a god damned 8-bit theatre reference.

 

[bataille]

I spent close to 3 hours in the first elemental temple. I don't remember a longer and more involved dungeon in similar games.

I really should be sleeping now...

 

[conan_edw]

It really looks too cool. I guess I will pick it up some when next week. Kinda reminds me of Wizard of Legend which I also enjoyed

 

[Siveon]

When it came out now I have no cash. Such is life.