Android: Nekronoid

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#1

Hell-o guys!

We’ve been willing to submit a game to this forum a long time ago, and we’re finally making it!! :smiley:

We’re Katacomb Studios, and we’ve released our very first game: Nekronoid.

Description
Nekronoid is a reimagined version of Arkanoid. We’ve been trying to add a special sinister look & feel, with gloomy graphics and dark music.

Play as a necromancer with thirst for revenge who will use every weapon and power in his hands to destroy everything in his way!

-Original and tetric design, immerse yourself in a dark and sinister world
-60 original levels
-More than 34 different blocks. Blocks with resistances depending on its material
-Necromancer rebound system which allows to adjust your accuracy
-Online scores
-Up to 3 score categories per level
-Take up to 7 potions to increase or decrease the power of the necromancer
-3 spells to destroy blocks and other original items…

Screenshots

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Technical details
-Game engine from scratch (loosely based on libgdx very first stages sprite batcher and main activity, both refactored and with extensive own code)
-Own composed music and sounds
-High resolution graphics (so they should look pretty good on tablets, we’ve tried on 7" and it we did like it a lot :P)
-Several C# tools for game development improvement: Map editor, file encrypter, file copier, etc.
-Only for Android (yeah I should have used Libgdx… I will do that for the following games!)
-Tried on different emulators, and many different phones and tablets (so if you find a bug it should be quite unique so please tell us! :persecutioncomplex: )
-100% free (not freemium), only with ads.

Team
We are a two-man team, me and my brother. I’ve done all the programming and he did all the music, sound and graphics as well as the concept art and design.
We’ve learned a lot with this project, and I know for sure I will use Libgdx for next games, since making my own engine it’s too much work :o Moreover, that engine it’s multiplatform!! I love that! ;D

First stages are simple, like an introduction, to get used to the control.
Feel free to post your opinions, what you like, what you dislike, if you think something could be better, etc.

Android Play Store link:

https://developer.android.com/images/brand/en_generic_rgb_wo_45.png

Our official homepage:
Katacomb Studios Homepage

We hope you like it!

#2

nice arkanoid

#3

Definitely reminds me of a gothic Arkanoid. :smiley:

#4

Looks good :slight_smile:

#5

Hehe thanks! From what you say we are succesful on making it look sinister and dark ;D

By the way, feel free to share your opinions, I’m interested in gameplay feedback :stuck_out_tongue:

Well I should continue programming, we have some projects in development that we are eager to publish! :slight_smile:

#6

I don’t find break out games very exciting but I really like the graphic style. It would work really well with some sort of character based game ie: platform/rpg/etc.

#7

I couldn’t agree more! My brother is great! ;D

This was our first project and we wanted to do it as best as possible, with most of the features a game deserve (online scores, stages, etc. we only missed achievements), but it was kind of an experimental project. I was learning android programming and I did all the engine and tools, it was great for learning, but sincerely poor for game development (I was fighting against too many things :o )
Now I’m using libgdx and it’s much more rewarding and powerful, with better performance and possibilities. The progress of game programming is much better and faster, and that’s really motivating.

That being said, we are working on 2-4 games with the same “original style” concept, and we find they’ll have a better gameplay. I hope you like some of them :D. After that “simple” games, we will work on more ambitious projects, one of them being a platformer! And the concept behind that game is also dark, and there’s gonna be skeletons, that’s for sure ;D My brother is really anxious to work on that project graphics, and I know he will make a good job (he’s great making characters).

So stay tuned, we are really working hard on more action/character based games :stuck_out_tongue:

#8

Nice work. It all fits together really well and I found myself getting a bit sucked in, so good job.

That being said, other than the art style (which was great), there isn’t much separating this from other Arkanoid games that we’ve all played a million times before, so it might be hard to really “hook” players. I’d suggest switching it up with something a little extra, in other words, what separates your game from other Arkanoid games? With a little extra oomph, this could be a neat little game.

Btw if you didn’t use libGDX, what did you use?

#9

Thanks for the compliments :slight_smile:

Well you are right, we had in mind making this first game, see if it had a good acceptance, and then making the “full game”, I mean, this was like a “demo”. But we lost a bit of steam making the project, and since it hasn’t been too popular we are not sure if it’s really worth it, moreover when we were thinking charging for it (1-1,5€ or something like that).

Maybe we should add some of the things we were thinking, and if it really attracts some attention, then try with the full version… By the way we’ve got a great and powerful tool for editing most of the game: levels, blocks, graphics, sounds, particles, etc. so adding levels and modifying many things will be easy, we’ll only have to work more extensively on the new features. And we should add multilanguage, it’s not “naturally” supported, I’ll have to make some changes to the code so it will get data from android native xml and not my own texts inside files…

About libGDX, I did my own “engine”. I’ve taken it from a game we were planning to release, but we thought that it would be easier making an arkanoid first and we would see all the process of making a game, with most of the things a singleplayer game could have, as well as planning a bit the team work. At the end I’ve come to the conclusion that libgdx is much MUCH MORE rewarding xD I’ve learnt a lot, but I’ve also spent too much time on certain things that are so common nowadays (things like coding a good sound player, texture manager, interface handler, nice looking effects, fade outs, particles…) or overcomplicated, moreover when it’s an arkanoid. Sometimes I try to make a warship or a tank to kill a mosquito ::), yeah you could exterminate a million of insects with a button, but if you only need to kill ONE mosquito, or maybe in the far future another one, is not worth it…

Another wall of text, I think I write too much :-X ;D