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The Amazing Fantastics is Final Fantasy Meets DC and Marvel

The Amazing Fantastics demo is

  • 5/5, great

    Votes: 4 50.0%
  • 4/5, good

    Votes: 2 25.0%
  • 3/5, meh

    Votes: 2 25.0%
  • 2/5, bad

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 1/5, terrible

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    8
  • Poll closed .

Bruce

Neon Arkade Games
Developer
Joined
Apr 1, 2016
Messages
64
Location
Philadelphia, PA
Prison Break Teaser



Ice Caves Teaser



The demo will be out in November.​
 

Bruce

Neon Arkade Games
Developer
Joined
Apr 1, 2016
Messages
64
Location
Philadelphia, PA
Was going through some old files and found a few photos of what The Amazing Fantastics looked like less than a year ago (programmer art ftw).

fMInIpP.png

Tn5Wi5j.png

H7AcWQW.png


Now (comics are still unfinished by the way)​

XAFwHxf.png

vWzz7ZA.png

3WBh4Iy.jpg
 

Bruce

Neon Arkade Games
Developer
Joined
Apr 1, 2016
Messages
64
Location
Philadelphia, PA
The demo is finally finished.

I don't plan on releasing it just yet because I want to get some feedback on it first. Anyone interested in trying it out? If so, let me know and I'll send you the link.

I've been working on this game for so long that my judgement regarding it is super clouded. Fresh eyes and fresh perspectives would be very helpful.
 

Bruce

Neon Arkade Games
Developer
Joined
Apr 1, 2016
Messages
64
Location
Philadelphia, PA
n7PisTL.png

After a year of developing The Amazing Fantastics I finally have a demo completed. I've put a ton of effort into this game and your feedback is crucial to its success so please share your opinions! Negative feedback is better than no feedback.

(P.S. I have a thread for this game already but it's several months old and the first page features some unflattering and very unpolished artwork and gameplay footage that don't represent what the game looks like now. First impressions are everything so I decided to create a new thread and dedicate it solely to the demo.)

uyu6av8.png


Videos







What's in the Demo?

The demo is about an hour long and covers the game's prologue/first two dungeons. Character creation, patrol mode, item management and equipment, and other features are not present.

VPiAHjx.png

Download
(If the links don't work try refreshing the page)

64-bit
32-bit


Codex, give me your feedback!
 

Bruce

Neon Arkade Games
Developer
Joined
Apr 1, 2016
Messages
64
Location
Philadelphia, PA
The guy on the left looks naked at first three glances, which gives the whole pic some strong sexual undertones. :lol:

I embrace this. Having characters in your game that lend themselves to sleazy fan art and fan fic helps build a dedicated fan base. That's what I always say.
 

Bruce

Neon Arkade Games
Developer
Joined
Apr 1, 2016
Messages
64
Location
Philadelphia, PA
That was pretty fun, even with the forced fight loss at the beginning. Are you anywhere near a release? Have you submitted it to Steam Greenlight?

Thanks!

Unfortunately this game won't be finished for a while. I haven't submitted to Greenlight because I don't feel like I have enough to show at the moment. I don't have much buzz yet either. I've been contacting blogs and posting on forums and social media but most of the time it feels like I'm talking to myself. Generating hype as an unknown developer feels like a full-time job and I'm hesitant to put any more time, energy, or money into developing The Amazing Fantastics until it looks like it has a good shot at being successful. I'd rather avoid the heartache of failed Greenlight and Kickstarter campaigns so I'm hoping that The Amazing Fantastics demo will be enough to build a decent following so that I can feel comfortable continuing development on the game and launching Greenlight and Kickstarter campaigns a little later down the line.
 

agris

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Apr 16, 2004
Messages
6,764
Hey Bruce I played it last night for a bit. My feedback isn't gameplay related, I'd need more time, but I did play long enough to give constructive criticism regarding UI, controls and feedback.

First, what I liked: the art, the comic book section, and the story's premise. And I don't like anime or jRPGs.


Now, criticism:

When fighting, we can cycle attacks with left/right arrows, or A/D, and enter selects an attack. Enter doesn't let us confirm the attack on the enemy, and that's a problem. Enter should consistently confirm actions. Making us use the mouse to click the center of the red circle is annoying when full keyboard support seems logical and mostly supported.

That extends to the Backpack/Special Attacks (fire symbol) during combat. Again, we scroll to them with the keyboard, enter selects it, but we can't use the keyboard to navigate the resulting list, enter to select a list item, or escape to move back a level to select a different combat option.

As far as a demo goes, you don't want the player to feel like they're fighting the control scheme. If you can't support logical keyboard implementation like I suggested, I think you should remove keyboard navigation of those elements entirely. Make it entirely mouse driven. I don't prefer this at all, but it's better than setting expectations, only partially fulfilling them, and frustrating the player.

My other feedback is aesthetic. The conversation 'bubble' at the bottom of the screen needs to be a fixed width. At 1920 pixels wide, it isn't pleasant to read. My head feels like a typewriter, rastering left to right to left. You'll notice games with dialogue boxes that support 1920+ widescreen will fix the width of the dialogue box to avoid this phenomenon. I think the common convention is fixed width of 720 px, which is 'fullscreen' for small 1280x720 screens, and maintains a pleasant reading space at higher resolutions. Also, it would be a nice touch if it looked more like a text bubble (like in the comic book interludes), with the text bubble 'horn' or wtf you call that coming from the direction of the character speaking.

Also, when fighting enemies, I think their health and (maybe?) timer should appear in the bottom text bubble, in-line under your character's. If we're not supposed to know the health, have a bar that doesn't move and is ??/??. I realize the first enemy we're not supposed to know it's health, but in the jail break sequence, the low contrast floating white numbers left of the enemies was inelegant. We're already looking at the bottom of the screen to see our timer/health/MP, might as well put the enemy's info there. Also, it would be consistent implementation, which is important.


Good luck, looking forward to seeing this develop. By the way, do you have a copy editor to go over the text? I noticed one instance of 'here' instead of 'hear', and the intro dialogue with the bad guy read like it hadn't been edited.
 

Bruce

Neon Arkade Games
Developer
Joined
Apr 1, 2016
Messages
64
Location
Philadelphia, PA
Thanks for this, agris!

I realize that the keyboard controls for battles are half baked. I anticipated most users playing with the mouse and the keyboard controls were kind of an afterthought. I was planning on finishing them for the full release though.

About the enemy HP, I thought that it would make sense to show the value next to the enemy since the player's eyes would already be focused in that area. I'll definitely consider your suggestion though. I think that the battle UI as a whole can be enhanced.

I don't have a copy editor. I have two guys for art and a guy for music, everything else I'm doing by myself. I'll try to improve the opening dialogue as best as I can.

• • •​

By the way, I wrote a devlog about how Final Fantasy and comic books inspired me to make this game. You can check it out at http://www.indiedb.com/games/the-am...evlog-1-making-of-the-amazing-fantastics-pt-1.

The Amazing Fantastics is on Reddit now too. https://www.reddit.com/r/TAFGame/
 

Bruce

Neon Arkade Games
Developer
Joined
Apr 1, 2016
Messages
64
Location
Philadelphia, PA
If you liked The Amazing Fantastics demo then please tell other people about it. I really love designing and developing games but having to obsessively email, tweet, and post about them on Facebook sucks. Help.

Anyway, my old website wasn't good so I fixed it up. www.neonarkade.com. Seriously though, help me.
 

sser

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Mar 10, 2011
Messages
1,866,662
Did a completely different artist do her boots or something?
 

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