Jacob age 9 is the team leader (Lead Designer, Lead artist, Lead programmer). Dad and Uncle Jon provided technical assistance. Game done in GameMaker Studio 1.2. Tile Studio used for sprites. Audacity used for sounds. Game play with Arrow Keys, A = attack. Weird quirky glitches are by design. The final boss can be tricky to kill. You only get one life, one weapon, one boss fight.
This really does feel like an attempt at old-school Atari Adventure. Hit detection on the boss is a wonky and could be tweaked, but the workaround is to just charge while holding A. I think the flying sword glitch could be interesting as its own mechanic.
Extra points for the backstory as recounted at KnoxGameDesign meetup.
Game Maker Studio? Cool stuff. I've been working with that for a bit as well though used AS3 to make my Jam entry. Some of the collision detection is a bit wonky. Have you tried making bounding boxes smaller then the actual sprites?
We cranked the collision detection down to pixel level (at least that was my understanding) we did not make the boxes smaller than the pixels. Jacob wanted to do the game in the compo time frame to prove he could do it just as fast as anyone. Gave dad little time to debug the finer problems like the weird collision detection. :)
Jacob: I started to program around your age, one of the two tools i used was GameMaker (the very first one) and i did an awful lot of games back then. When i was a kiddo like you there wasn't anything like Internet (there were things called BBS but in my country the only one that operated was the one my father ran) and it was incredibly hard to get visibility like here on #LD48. I assure you that if you keep doing this (design, code, create, imagine) you'll become a great asset to your family and friends, probably making a lot of money to fund all your creativity and desires. Keep the good work buddy!
And don't forget to give a good long hug to your dad and uncle, they're swell for letting you create and do this. 8*5 stars to you all.
Great job Jacob! I wish I had started real game development as young as you have. Kudos to dad and uncle for showing you such support.
I really dig the flying sword. It reminded me of the old Super Start Wars games for the NES and how you could control your lightsaber with The Force. The last boss is very tough.
Well this is good job. There's everything that you need : levels, boss, sprites, sounds, movement... I also like that you uploaded preliminary sketches! My only suggestion would be to write down the control scheme in the game's description, because I didn't realize quickly that I could attack.
Extra points for the backstory as recounted at KnoxGameDesign meetup.
And don't forget to give a good long hug to your dad and uncle, they're swell for letting you create and do this. 8*5 stars to you all.
I really dig the flying sword. It reminded me of the old Super Start Wars games for the NES and how you could control your lightsaber with The Force. The last boss is very tough.
Plus there are a few popups in game triggered by various keys telling you how to work it. We tried! ;)
The boss was a bit tricky especially before I realised I could attack ;)
I liked the sound effects.
Well done.