Oz - Dark Illusion

A game for the August 2- 6 2D Game Jam Mini
https://itch.io/jam/2d-game-jam-mini 

It's the beginning of a Vampire Survivor-like.

The theme of the jam is "Illusion".

Dorothy Gale recently lost her grandmother and imagines herself in the magical yet strangely dark world of Oz. Her mind, broken and split by guilt, imagines her friends Lion and Tin Man (in a potential full game, we'll also add Scarecrow).

At first the place seems rather happy if devoid of her original friends.
Soon, however, the illusion is shattered as darkness takes hold of both her and the Land of Oz.

Aside of a story based on illusion, I've also implemented a little optical illusion that emulates moving grass and shadows (if a bit crudely,  given the time constraint).

Gameplay:

• Switch characters with SPACE and use their unique abilities to your benefit.
  • Dorothy is permanently surrounded by a bubble that causes AoE damage to any enemy foolish enough to fly towards her
  • Tin Man masterfully throws his axes
  • Lion is a scaredy cat with no means of protecting himself but he's a fast runner. Ideal for rushing towards those dangerous green orbs.
• Move on top of  green orbs before they can poison the environment around you

  
  

  • Failing to destroy the orbs will tear a permanent hole into Oz' fabric. Touching such a toxic, dark hole will result in instant death.
• Survive long enough to experience another level (x minutes).

A lot of time and effort was put into creating detailed sprites. Unfortunately, many of the animations are still choppy or unfinished. Furthermore, there's some nightmarish details (bloody human skin underneath Tin Man's helmet that will be visible through a tear in his eye socket, alongside bloodshot human eyes) I haven't had the time to add yet but that will make the final game feel a lot more appealing to fans of the likes of American McGee.

We also have plenty of more ideas for interesting gameplay twists that we have yet to implement.

Performance is not the best inside the browser. Rest assured this will be fixed in the next release.

Lastly, the game is currently not well supported on mobile.

We hope to alleviate all of these issues with an upcoming release.

As a console enthusiast, I hope to bring this game to both XBOX and Switch eventually (in fact, I already have a working XBOX build that I was continuously testing alongside the desktop version).

As a massive fan/collector of retro hardware, I also envision a faithful port to 16/24 bit platforms such as Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, Amiga, PC Engine (technically 8 bit, I know...), SNES and Neo Geo. Given that relative maturity of modern tooling, a port to 32 bit platforms such as Sega Saturn and Sega Dreamcast would also be in the cards.

We hope to further develop this game post-jam and especially hope that it'll be enjoyable in its current early state.

Cheers,

Claudia -- Music and SFX, Kirill and Mark

PS: For those wondering. My game OceanThrill Murder Mystery is still very much in development.

I recently had to experience some set-backs and a very stressful day job that didn't make me feel fulfilled or even appreciated (You just know an employer lacks people skills when they can't help you foster your own skills and constantly throw challenges at you they very well know would be better resolved by your team mate, only to then guilt-trip you and use your lack of specific know-how as leverage while you struggle to learn what's required of you) but now that those things are mostly resolved and I'm in the process of creating my own full-time game studio, there finally will be an update soon (a spectacular one at that. Especially for fans of the Sega Master System 😉 )

PPS: My eternal gratitude to Grug from Telegram (you know who you are) for allowing me to use one of his epic guitar riffs that has been constantly on my mind for the past 2 years. Keep on rockin'!