(Formerly Cardinal Cell)

Quick update for now:  Over the past month I’ve been getting a lot of base functionality in:

• Dwarves knock enemies around in addition to stunning them.
• Items and monsters are flung from the sides of the screen at Stage start.
• Bonus gold is awarded for kill chains.
• The gold collected is tallied at the end of a level and each survivor grants a gold bonus.
• The player earns stars based on the amount of gold collected.
• The moon arcs over the sky from the start to the end of the night, because that is the length of our hero’s prison sentence.
• I can lay out a custom level for each individual venue, with 12 “hour” stages each now.  The player can select from a set in the main menu and try for a high score in each.

Forgive the temp sprites…  We’re still nailing the look.

I had a lot of fun last weekend with my game Cardinal Cell.  It was pretty fun in the end but it was ugly enough to make babies cry because I cobbled together the art on my own.  I could have maybe increased the quality another quarter-point on my own before finishing off the 48 hours…  I could have chosen a style.  I could have smoothed out the busy textures.  However, I was focused on closing the book with features-features-features.

I’m pretty confident that it was a mistake on my part…  while I go through other people’s games I constantly have to tell myself to not let an ugly game influence my assessment of its fun… or let a pretty game get away with dull gameplay.  Maybe it’s not fair, but that’s the way the world works.  Those of us with weaker art skills have a challenge to overcome.

Because the game looked so bad I did a quick reskin this weekend to use some pixel art and audio that I had handy.  I think the gameplay stands well on its own, but the revamp makes a difference in my opinion.  A friend offered up some real art and we’re going to rebrand it as…  wait for it… Skate Knight.

If you’re interested in seeing what a few hours of stock graphics and sounds can do for a game, check out the game on itch.io below.