🎱 Helmut Game

Update 3

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After another month of hard work here's an update to the Helmut game :D

I added some animations for Helmut and tried to remake the bedroom from his and Leslie's bed scene XD

It's possible to click on things like the bed, the painting, the bookshelf... oh please ignore that you can dress up by clicking on a bookshelf, it was meant to be a dresser but I've yet to model it :D

For now I'm not sure of the game's genre, just wanted to finally make a good-looking game after all these years and maybe use some ideas from Helmut's pictures like the bathroom with bucket-training, the barbell gym, the flex-cafe where he did the oversplit, etc..

I'm also not sure if this should be his home or Leslie's because in the story it's actually Leslie's home but I'm still not sure what Helmut is going to be doing in the game... :P

What do you think? 😄
Omg the hair floof animation is so cute!
Mwahaha, would be a crime not to be when everything else's so wiggly XD
I have spent way too much time on the little minigame. The game is looking absolutely fantastic and I think you have a fantastic art style on the sprites! Now just needs some bending moves XD I adore the little trot animation and Helmut reading the descriptions off. Made me think of old PS1 survival horror games like Resident Evil where they would describe items in the environment. It's really coming together! I can't wait to see more!

-Kada
Oh that minigame is only half done, I made only 3 gems and doubled them with different colors XD
I'm so glad you liked the sprites! Just need to think of what to do next and add more characters... So far the tech stuff took a lot of time, so little time left for the sprites :P
I haven't played Resident Evil but I imagine almost every point'n'click game has the main character talking to himself about every thing he sees XD In Helmut's case I'm hoping to add more jokes and puns when clicking around... Also glad you liked the animations, they sure took a lot of time with that many frames, but then what in this game didn't take a lot of time? XD I'm just glad it's like my 20th attempt to make a game so at least I know what I'm doing... XD But also finally getting that vibe of getting somewhere :P
Damn, this Bendy Crush game is addictive AF. %)
It's not finished but glad it plays well ^^
So far I'm thinking what will be the rewards for playing it, like maybe improving some of Helmut's skills he can use... 😏
Awsome it a good start I think your doing great for doing both art an a game it a good mix.
Thank you so much!! Wish I could do music and sounds but it's an area I know nothing about 😩
Other than there's sites where you can get free sounds or maybe even buy some soundpacks/music for like $20 :D
Shifty
Iam thinking whole day how to write best comment to cheer you up in your work, because I have at least idea how hard it is to create whole game from scratch. You are mirracle worker if only I have such dedication no my own projects.

Visual game assets are great, some superb, like bed from fantastic fantasy!!! :-)
Dressing up animation is amazing too! As well as walking animation as said by other people.
And I laughed a lot while clicking on abstract art description :)

After long thinking I have 2 suggestions which could make game much better in my oppinion. First is scrolling - I am fully aware it must be hard to programm and might be bit problem to implement on smartphones. But on desktop that is a "must" at least for me in every RPG. To be able to go with mouse on the edge of screen and scroll to sides, up and down... to center my screen where I want it to be centered.

And second idea I found to be very world immersing but not used in AAA titles anymore is text hint for every game asset. Be it floor, book shelve, window, wall, carpet which somehow describe thing more. Mechanic should be different than with main items which you already implemented as it should be. Such unclickable items should not blink but just show its description if you ie hower long enough (2sec) over them. The best implementation I have ever saw was in Fallout 1 + 2 old games. Still remember how I laughed at description of most unremarkable items like rocks :-D

Bonus idea - what about some "level" secrets which reveal some of your existing art in full beauty ie in popup window?

In any way superb work.
Making a game is easy, simply keep starting game projects every year for 10+ years and then run out of gasoline every time after 1-2 months, then start again after a year... It's like grinding, in the end you get enough EXP to level up :D

I think the first time I started making a game was in 2007 or so, since then I only managed to finish small puzzle games cloned from Mahjong, Tetris and 2048, but not the adventure game I always wanted 😐

This time it's finally a breakthrough because I learned how to do animations and sprites better and finally not spending a week on polishing ONE sprite like some time in the past, which was greatly demotivating ;D

It was also a great change to use an isometric view as it allows to show the world better compared to that straight view where you only get to see one wall out of four on a building. Well, here you can see two walls, so I think it's twice as good :D

Hmm, with so few assets and ideas right now it's hard to think what would be the best controls for the game but it's definitely something to think of ^^
Shifty
Oooouch and forgot one more idea! It would be cool to be able to go to book shelve and actually open some book there and read some story - ie one of your older one. This was done best in ie Skyrim game for me. And even this could be some sort of "sub game" to collect all ingame mini books.

Or there could be places where character can do some special bendy pose which he can't do anywhere else. Like some pose could be done only on chair, other on stairs... and well that "description" thing I was talking about could hint player to that and to press special "pose" button. Like it would not be obvious part of game but more hidden one for bit more currious and hardcore players.
And there would be special page with poses you already discovered this way and you can watch them there :-)

Sorry for multiple comments but I will post them as I get ideas if you dont mind.
Oh yeah, those Skyrim's lore books! That's definitely a great idea to add stories to the game, maybe every unique bookshelf could contain one story so you know which ones you've already checked.

Maybe it's also a good way to highlight objects you've never interacted with by adding red dots to them like some games do to attract attention :3

Yeah I wanted to add special places that trigger special animations, like maybe backfolding with a barbell in the gym or folding into a bucket in the bathroom.

Guess maybe each room could have a number of things you can interact with, so you can see the % of completion in every room, but some objects have special requirements before you can interact with them like winning the minigame gives you a power potion that you can use to do the barbell exercises. Then the goal of the game can be completing all the rooms :3
Shifty
I always wanted to do games, but realized complex one which I really wanted are impossible taks.
So I tried simple vertically scrolling shooter, but at the time I wanted somehow nice graphics so I started learning C which turned to be bit of a nightmare. So next atempt was python and there I managed to do very simple prototype but it took months and again I realized that for even simple game which would be ugly (can't do graphics) years would be needed... so I gave up. Same story as with learning japanesse or painting... each of these things I tried repeatedly like 3-4 times before relizing there just isn't enough time if I want to keep doing other things I already do.

So the fact that you obviously MADE IT now at least... is amazing you made it past that worst hurdle finaly!
Plus I think this "RPG" style is like "real" game I used to like 2D platformers but always regarded them as too 2D :-D (even 3D ones) ehm :-D I hope it make sense.

Highlighting of unfinished places might work fine via certain hotkey like "tab" or on smartphone via special icons. Red dots or gems in default view would ruin your art in my oppinion, break immersion.

Minigames uaaaaa I get the point but in that case I probably never see most of rewards X-D Iam just not too got at them.

In any case wish you most of luck and will!
Yeah I think it would take years if you don't know how to do it, that's why I think it was a good idea to make a lot of unfinished games over the years to learn things and keep trying. You see, I give up a lot but I never give up for good, I just see what I like and do it, if it doesn't work out then I give up but if I feel like doing it again in the future I just get back to it. I just don't care if something didn't work for me in the past, I just keep gathering infos about it for a new restart one day…

Now I'm using the Godot game engine, which has a Python-like language and I think it's practically the Blender of the gamedev world, it has incredible features yet very lightweight and optimized for performance, very amazing resource system and memory management that doesn't have enormous memory leaks like Java and also doesn't crash like C++, also the games work on the web with WebAssembly making it faster than Javascript, best of all it's free, like Coco Chanel's famous saying "best things in the world are free", I think Blender and Godot are on the list XD

I dunno, i just learn most things with Google and YouTube, thanks to a lot of tutorials you can find nowadays... I'm even starting to get better with Blender, modeling and rigging, so my current goal is to switch over from DazStudio to Blender and make my own characters instead of altering the Daz people, maybe even some stylized characters, and experiment with shaders, hopefully change my art style again to something more interesting.

But I agree, about 10 years ago gamedev was hell and very little you could do than learning it the hardcore way…but yeah, I don't wanna make my games super hard to play so no worries about difficulty…my goal is to make Helmut walk around the world based around my art just for fun but mini games could make activities more interesting I think.
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