ANATHEMA - Classicvania Coming to Steam

This looks promising, a bit rough on the edges but full of love. I'll keep an eye on this, definitely.

Any console plans down the line?

Tried the demo out, not so far into it tho (2-B).

Graphically the game definitely got the 90's PC gaming feel with all the digitized 3D characters, and even the UI screams retro lol
Aurora moves A LOT FASTER than the original Castlevania titles, I'm kinda bittersweet on this. Move faster means the game's pace is faster, which is a good thing in an action game, but nostalgic-wise it sometimes feels a little bit too fast. Maybe turn it down a little bit? Anyway it's just my own opinion tho.

Some other minor complaints:
1. The wall sliding animation takes too long to start. I know the direction you are going as in real life the scythe needs to stab in to the rock first then start sliding, but as a Megaman fan I kinda used to jump immediately whenever the character touches a wall.
2. Sometimes I had a hard time whip-grabbing the hook or hitting small targets like those soul flames.
3. The Medusa-type enemy at bridge section in Stage 1 could move faster horizontally.

Pretty decent game I'd say

Right off the bat.

My first run.

First thoughts were "my jump feels a bit weird". Maybe it were my computer, but it had a "jagged" feel to it, like it were more mechanical than fluid. Then I notice how fast the fire were animated, which is rare, since the flames are huge, and usually "big fires" animates a bit slower than small ones. After that I notice the sky, which could be attached to the story, but it feelt like it moved super fast too. The rest of the game environment were cool. And I understand the feel for it should be "you are in a hurry, now go and slay!" but there is no need for us to feel we are in a hurry, because we want to explore the game anyways. That is my honest opinion. Matter of taste really. But the normal jumping felt odd at first.

During my first playthrough I also feel down in a pit, where the camera pans down. But when that happened, my reflexes took me to the walls edge and I tried to, and manage to get back up. During this session the camera had some weird issues and went up and down super fast. Reason must be that the camera are locked into two different lanes, and it could cause nausia to some people.

My second playthrough (because death) I got hit by falling ghouls / zombies that had appeard from the ground and spit out of their coffin, after a few hits along the way, and that one hit. My character went numb. I could run to left and right but not croach or jump, nor could I attack. So I paused and hit exit.

My first playthrough I found a secret, but I died when I were backtracking to safety. At first I thought I were "cursed" by the skull-snake with its fire, since I could not move there either more than left or right, so I couldn't jump. Now I see there might be issues with my xbox handcontroller and the game (the code).

The double jump takes time to get used to, but no issues there actually. However, the double jump on the side of walls feels like there is kind of a delay, I must wait before I can jump again so she can cling on with her Scythe-whip and continue upwards. (Could be my controler once again).

Will try again later, and I do not know if you guys want this kind of feedback or not. Just my first thoughts. How far in development do you think you have come?

I enjoyed the music and the environment, and it really puts you into straight action. If this is the first level of the overall game, I would approve it. It learns you the basics and even throws in alternate challenges for the most vivid of gamers. Thumbs up!

Hello all.

I'll try my best to touch on the above comments. Thank you all for your feedback.

Our original concept from 2015 was much slower paced and more akin to original classicvanias in terms of their movement and speed. However, we revamped it into the version you see because we decided that we wanted to try to be a little different instead of an outright Castlevania clone. One method we decided to make this happen, was to ramp it up a little bit and make your movements faster and create a sense of urgency through the controls.

The wall sliding activates as soon as the sprite begins the falling sequence. Megaman X actually follows this same principle, the difference with Megaman is you can release the jump button to control your jump height and that makes your fall sequence begin, thus enabling the wall sliding.

Do you mean hitting enemies with the soul fireball powerup?

They did initially move faster, but a slower movement felt a little more intimidating while keeping it fair. Plus, we are trying to keep an essence of Castlevania without straight-up making it Castlevania. This was another factor to slowing their movement down.

We changed the enemy placement to a higher platform at this area, as he was originally more even with the player and that caused a lot of issues. Did you have an instance where when you landed on that leftmost platform you still took damage? I ask because it should be low enough where you don't take damage off of the whip-swing unless you double-jumped into his path. Enemy placement can always be refined. I just wanted to get a better understanding.

Do you mean you expected the checkpoint to be closer to the boss?

Can you elaborate on what area you are referring to by "jumps into the unknown?" There aren't any areas that require leaps of faith, unless there is a camera issue I'm unaware of.

I've debated on adding a tutorial area. I haven't ruled it out yet.

Do you mean because it isn't as floaty as games such as Symphony of the Night or the demo for Bloodstained? Or rather, in the sense that it has more weight to it?

This is something that always bothered me deep down in secret. The issue is, it's all pre-rendered sprites instead of 3D graphics so if I use an animated sprite I have to keep the frames of animation reasonable otherwise it eats up a lot of ram. If I slowed the current animation down it would look robotic, but I am looking into changing this into more of particle effect type of effect that I can slow down.

I wouldn't say our intention is for the player to feel they are in a hurry with the sky, it just seemed to fit that the clouds move fast.

I can definitely see your point here. This is one of those things on my list that I do intend to smooth out in the future.

What kind of controller are you using and were you using anything like x360ce or Joy2Key?

Do you feel it is because the jump is more weighty than floaty? The wall slide activates when the player begins their fall sequence. I wouldn't think it's your controller, but rather, how the game lets you begin your wall slide and jump.

We are always looking for feedback. We definitely want to know how players feel about anything, down to design, controls, etc. I'd say we're approximately about 20% into development. We had a prior version that was scrapped and we rebuilt from the ground up into what you see now.

This is indeed the first level of the game. We're glad to hear that you overall like it. And thanks for your feedback!

I'm new here, so I haven't seen the other threads where you've stated your feelings but I completely understand where you're coming from. And I can honestly say that I do agree with you that female leads are becoming overdone - I would even say "tropey" to the game genre itself in my own personal opinion. We didn't institute a character creation system for a wide variety of reasons, mostly because our game is more of an arcade game and also for a variety of technical reasons that would make character creation not very conducive for our goals. Making spritesheets for multiple genders, outfits, etc. would take development time away from crafting a more focused gameplay experience. Our story is focused on a central lead character and as we're just a couple of guys funding this out of our own pockets, we unfortunately cannot afford to pay multiple voice actors of two genders to play the same character to allow a player to choose a particular gender. I've not played Monster Hunter so I can't comment on that series, but Dark Souls and Pokemon both do not feature voice acting for characters beyond grunts, screams and similar sounds so this contributes to letting them get away with multiple genders. As far as a random citizen goes, our story is focused on a mortal that has inherited the powers of the angel of death. Making it about a citizen would essentially ignore this character dynamic and change our story around as well as the skillset. We really want the story and voice acting to take a large part of the spotlight here and this required not instituting a character creation system to make it a game we can effectively complete within a manageable time frame. Lastly, this game was originally conceived to fill a void that Konami has abandoned, as we haven't received a classicvania title since 2009's CV: Adventure Rebirth. Part of that concept was to also fill a void where Konami mostly ignored Sonia Belmont.

That said, I do completely understand where you're coming from and I hope I don't come across harshly, challenging your opinion or disrespectful, as I don't intend to come across that way at all. I respect your opinion and am just trying to share some insight to the reasoning behind this particular choice for our lead. Hopefully over time as we show more, since the gameplay and story make it the kind of game you like to play, maybe we can change your mind about female leads.

As a sidenote, since I haven't seen the other threads with your stance on female leads, I was curious to know how you felt about Miriam being a female lead?  I know Koji Igarashi said he wanted a female lead because it was overlooked at the time, and is now a thing.  The only counterpoint I could make is that we announced our game in 2014 (in the original form before we revamped it) before Bloodstained was announced.



In closing, thank you again everyone for your feedback!  We are grateful for it and hope you share more as we show more of the game!

First thanks for the reply! It always feels good communicating with devs!


1. Sorry if I didn't make myself clear, I'm referring to the animation BEFORE the falling sequence actually begins. Like in Megaman X if you are close to the wall, you'll start wall sliding immediately whenever you push down then same direction button where the wall is. Here we seems to have a little stop (5~6 frames maybe?) before the fall sequence begins.

2. No, it's the green (and blue) orb-ish flame that you whip it for "souls" and I believe it serves as hearts in Castlevania.

Hi again esperware, I will now try to respond in turn:

Elfina talked about the little flames. I never had trouble with them. Either you jump or double jump then hit them.
When it comes to the rings you have to attach to to get to the other side, I admit that they are a bit tricky for a first timer, as you have to make a wise use of the double jump then wait for Aurora to begin to fall down so she aligns with them and then hit them. This was particularly blatant in the mire stage.

As for my previous questions/statements:

1) Actually the issue is about being on the leftmost platform and the lizardman instantly jumping there as well (from the topmost platform). Given the enemy got two ways of behaving, it's all about being lucky or not.

2) Yes, as you can see in Castlevania and Megaman games (I am/was a big fan of the latter too), once you die at a boss, you instantly respawn at the room just before him/her (unless the game had an older structure). It allows the player to test his/her mettle again.

3) No, what I meant there is that it's not simple to guess what's in front of Aurora unless she proceeds very very carefully.
As you could guess, stage 2-A makes Aurora jump between branches (and what sturdy ones they are!) of tall trees, but there is no way to know that there is a huge chasm below until you jump into it/fall.
The "jump into the unknown" means that it takes guts for Aurora to precariously jump when a giant bottomless pit is waiting for her and/or enemies just waiting there (gladly there were no enemies just at the edge of a ledge, at least).

Now for three new questions!
- How do you recover health in the game? I have a hunch that you can't, but at least the stages are short enough.
- Would it be possible to make so that Aurora looks down or up when standing (full with camera panning)? Maybe that could add to the game.
- How would progress be saved? Autosaves? Passwords? Saves upon game over? Saves via menu? Save points?

Thank you! See you next post.

@enkeriagin You know, turning V-sync and special effects made the game very fluid. You should try that.
I also use a XBox 360 controller, of the wireless kind.

A friend of mine gave some feedback, it ain't much but its some honest reactions at least. Take as is.

The firebreathing skull snake wiggled "odd", the first coupld of wavey animations, he stood close to it without issue. Then suddently he took damage. I responded: Well, perhaps it is a random generated animation or fixed attributes that every X wave is wider. But if this is a bug, then you should know about it.

When the ground were destroyed and you feel down, he responded "Wooah! This was fun!" He later on said that kind of things, that surprise you are awesome, change in environments, like sunset actually becomes night. Windows in a house suddently brake and wind catches on, perhaps damp some lights. Flashing lights in murky buildings or walls that are destroyed by big enemies. Just to mention a few.

What? I have to restart? - He felt that it became much more focused gameplay when he knew there were no checkpoints. The way from A to B were fine after two tries, the pattern are easy enough to remember if you love platforming and action.

Secret Room behind the crates which became a trap, was a "puzzle room" like he said, a mild one. He liked that one a lot! If there are one on each stage, or even more, the game would be a blast. Ofc, it is hard to make different type of challenges, and an actual "puzzle" aren't needed. But he stated it were a puzzle room, even if that is the wrong name for it, as he explained.

There were issues with the sound. He lowered but both him stating it and ME hearing some random sounds were way higher than they should've been. Some slashes from our hero and both could hear her yelling "hyaaah!" and two times during his playthrough we heard the whip lash sound. The issue could be that many sounds are put ontop of each other perhaps, and one of those later ones are the one that ignore the volume-settings. I asked about his sound card, but he didn't know. I could ask again if this is something you wanna know more about.

At the end he said the game was very promising, and he have eyes more for mechanics than graphics (like no mention of the fire or the sky, something I wrote about earlier for example). He never had issues with his controler, which is a Playstation controler with some kind of software that fools games into thinking its an xbox handcontroler.

I asked him to play it once again and leave me more feedback.

Last thing to mention, he played more than half the first level before he responded with a surprising voice "What? You can double jump?" - I will not lie, I did a facepalm and said, Yeah, it said so in the beginning. He did not respond, he was "TOO INTO IT!" So yeah, he liked the game very much.

Thanks for the responses and time put into it. I hope we give you some things to boggle about. And if you want suggestions and brainstorm, we are happy to help.

--

The feedback were written down by me during him playing his game, I listened to it on Discord. He is 40 years old and a gamer in general.

Sorry for the delays getting back to the thread here. I've been busy working on the upcoming patch with new features, bug fixes and mechanics tweaks. Thank you everyone!

Was it perhaps when the Spine Flower fired its projectile? The enemy has a fixed movement pattern, but perhaps there was a hiccup that we've not encountered with its movement?

I tend to stress a lot over the level design and details and I'm constantly adding more as time goes on and the ideas and opportunities present themselves.

While there are checkpoints, the game doesn't specifically clue the player in when you've reached them. Part of the reason is we want a player to feel some intensity when they reach a new area. However, we are adding checkpoints near bosses to alleviate some of the complaints we've heard. I personally feel the checkpoints put the player relatively close to the boss, but I guess others didn't feel that way.

While it is a simple mechanic, I'm constantly thinking of new ways to spice up the level design so it isn't just a simple gallop to the right. However, exploration mechanics will be expanded upon as there are many things we aim to include in the final game.

This is a known bug that is due in part to the engine we use, but it should be fixed in the upcoming patch. So far, tests have proven positive that it is working as it should now.

The upcoming patch will allow more controllers to be natively compatible. We haven't tested PS3 or PS4 controllers yet, but it does add support for DirectInput gamepads.

I'm glad he liked it. It seems a lot of people are skipping the controls explanation. I've debated adding an interactive tutorial, but my fear is that people will claim we're "holding their hand" at that point. However, we did come up with an idea to make this a little less patronizing while still being optional.

Thanks for your feedback and sharing the game with others. We're always glad to hear feedback from anyone who wishes to give it!

Thank you very much! We fully agree. We knew from the outset we wanted a very large amount of music and we wanted it to be as catchy as possible. We grew up humming the tunes of many great games and hope others will end up humming ours.

This particular point makes me personally feel very good. I sink an awful lot of time into the level design, pondering the aesthetic, trying different things and trying to get a certain kind of vibe. I always felt atmosphere is one of the most important things to games, movies and music and it is far too often overlooked.

Some of them do feel a bit slow to me also, and I tweak them in small increments every so often. The ladder animation is one that I still feel needs improvement. It does have a lot of hip-swinging and is a result of the motion capture performance so until we can get more mocap data to work with, we'll have to continue with this animation but the speed can always be tweaked until a right balance is found.

I agree. It makes the threat feel a little more real, to me anyway.

Thank you! We're just glad you gave it a try.

Thank you! When we made the original version that was more of a straight-up Castlevania clone, the character had an unfortunately stiff walk so when we began the revamp work, I knew from the start we had to the running animation perfect. I've found myself just running against a wall because I'm very proud of that.