Castle Midnight

Level 1 in Castle MIdnight

• Overall Vision
  • Summary:
    • An action adventure platformer in which the character takes on the dark forces inside and out of the Castle Midnight. It is similar in theme and gameplay to the Castlevania and Ghost N Goblins games.
  • Genre
    • Action Platformer
  • Target audience
    • Fans of difficult yet rewarding games
    • The players only need a computer to play it
• Mechanics
  • Character goals
    • The character’s goal is to reach the end of each level and beat the boss at the end.
  • Abilities
    • The player have the ability to move, crouch, and jump with the arrow keys along with attacking with A and D keys. They also have the ability to teleport behind themselves using the S button. This teleport is used to avoid enemy attacks and solve simple puzzles.
  • Obstacles
    • Obstacles include monsters that damage the player if they run into them, solid walls the the player cannot walk through, and of course spikes that instantly kill the player.
  • Items
    • The player can collect three types of items: consumables, permanents, and key items
      • Consumables: health potion (gives the player more health), magic potion (decreases the amount of time the player has to wait before using their teleport ability), quickness potion (increases the speed at which the player can attack)
      • Permanents: sword (increases the player’s attack power), bow (makes the player’s attack ranged), boots (allows the player to double jump), armor (prevents the next damage the player would take), necklace (makes the player’s teleport produce an explosion that damages enemies)
      • Key items: key (necessary to go to the next level)
    • The items appear (randomly) when the player kills an enemy
  • Resources
    • Health and attack speed. While health is above 0 the player can keep playing, otherwise the level restarts and gives them 3 health. Attack speed determines how fast the player can attack their enemies.

• Dynamics
  • User interaction
    • Key required to play this game include: arrow keys, A, D, S
    • Arrows make the player move, crouch, andjump (making a different animation happen when each one is performed)
    • A and D make the player attack left and right and change animations to an attack animation
    • S makes the player teleport behind themselves, it changes their x position to be 150 behind where their original position was. It also sets their animation to crouch
  • Proficiency
    • The player has to be able to figure out the enemies attack/ movement patterns and use their abilities and movements to dodge and attack in turn. 
  • Gameplay data
    • The UI layer displays the following to the player at the top of the screen:
      • Health (as an int)
      • Attack speed (as a double)
      • Teleportation power (a moving bar who’s width corresponds to the player’s ability to use their teleport power)
        • Turns blue if teleport can be used, otherwise stays yellow
        • Is decremented by a set amount when the player uses their teleport and increments by a set amount every tick
      • Attack cooldown
        • A bar that appears after the player attacks. Width corresponds to the amount of time before the player can attack again
      • Current item
        • Visual representation of what item the player is currently holding
      • Key item
        • Visual representation of if the player has a key item
  • Controlling the game
    • The user does not have the ability to pause the game. They start up the game by pressing the start game button on the title screen
• Aesthetics
  • Overall
    • Spooky aesthetic and a sense of wonder at discovering new enemies
  • Game art
    • The game uses 16 bit pixel art. Looks similar to the snes Castlevania games.
  • Sound
    • The sounds are all taken from sound asset packs from itch.io. They are a mix of background music, satisfying sounds for damage and item pickups, and enemy attacks.
  • Plot
    • You are a hero who wields the power of minor teleportation. You alone can take down the forces of evil plaguing the land that lurk in the dreaded Castle Midnight.
  • Emotional state
    • Satisfaction, at clearing a difficult level/ dodging and killing enemies. Relief when you finally beat the game.
  • Fun
    • Fun comes in the form of making your character stronger through the level. The more enemies you kill, the quicker you can attack, and the better chance you have of finding an item that can be useful to your quest.
• Credits
  • Art:
    • Much of the art for backgrounds, the player, and enemies came from assets in ansimuz’s GothicVania asset bundles from itch.io. https://ansimuz.itch.io/gothicvania-cemetery https://ansimuz.itch.io/gothicvania-patreon-collection
    • Art for the second level came from Szadi art.’s Pixel Castle 2D on itch.io
    • Finally, I got the icons for the items from Viktor’s 24 x 24 RPG items bundle on itch.io, I got the frames for animated fires from Stealthix’s Animated Fires on itch.io, and I got the animation for explosions from unTied Games’ itch.io bundle Will’s Pixel Explosions
  • Sound:
    • I used Kronbit’s 200 Free SFX from itch.io for most of the enemy and player-produced sounds.
    • I used Swiss Arcade Game Entertainment’s Spooky Music Mini Pack from itch.io for most of the background music in my 2 levels
    • I used 8 bit jazz’s Blue Rondo a la Turk from YouTube for the title screen music and boss battle music
• Reflection

Boss battle in Castle Midnight

The process for making this game was really fun for me. I spent a lot of my spare time just fine tuning parts of the game and adding more features. I found that if I managed my time each day, and set goals of what to finish each day, I got more accomplished. Some of the problems I encountered were: making the game hard but fun, designing the boss’s AI, and making the audio work correctly. I make the game the right balance of difficult and fun, I enlisted the help of a few of my friends to beta test the game through all stages of its development. I used their feedback to change the design of levels, add certain powerups, give the player more abilities (teleport, crouch, and even ability to increase their attack speed). Designing the final boss was probably the biggest challenge. I didn’t like how the moveTo function felt when used (in terms of how it made the boss move), so instead I wrote my own code to track which quadrant of the screen the player was on, and move in that direction. This movement gave the boss a floaty feel that I wanted. I also made it so that he could be stunned, giving the player a better chance at defeating him, and finally I added other monsters in the room for two reasons. 1. I found that it was too easy for the player to 1v1 the boss, so adding the monsters I did to that room gave a little more challenge and something else for the player to worry about. 2. I wanted there to be some way for the gain an additional stat or item that they might need for the fight (something achieved when killing either monster). The audio was messing up for me at times, instead of playing my sound it would output this garbled mess. I realized that I needed to get creative when setting audio to play. I couldn’t set it to play while a certain variable was true, because it would play the sound over and over. Instead, I set it to play when a certain variable was first turned true so that it would only play once. I enjoyed making this project, I now realize what all I can do with construct, and have more ideas for my next game.

   Title screen to Castle Midnight