When we started to develop Stonerid in Autumn 2011, we were quite unexperienced in game development. That’s probably why we chose platformer as our first game. Many people who start their adventure with game dev, often choose platformers, maybe just because it’s one of the easiest game genre to do. In this post I would like to show you how Stonerid evolved during the development process.

Recently, when I was looking for the first level in Stonerid, that we’ve ever created, I found something what you can see below.

It looks quite different than levels in current version of the game, because it was only test level. Anyway, most of the key mechanisms worked correctly, so I started to design a few normal levels.

As you can see, they look rather good (however still significantly worse than the newest levels), much better than the previous one. We also add parallax background, which offered 3 independent layers to use. These levels were created at the beginning of 2012, a lot of time before the official release in december 2013. To design these levels I used a very cool editor, written by our programmer (my elder brother). By pressing one key I could switch to the level and immediately test it. It really speeded up the whole process. Take a look at the first version of our level editor.

This editor was constantly improved. It became a very powerfull tool, with a huge number of useful features. Below a screenshot from the current version.

One of the first screen, which you can see after you run Stonerid, is a game menu, located in fiery cave. This one below, from the first version of Stoneird, doesn’t look so bad, but in final version we significantly improved it.

As you can see we also changed a main character’s design, for both forms. Now they are also much better animated.

Atronast Mountain – main places in the game, also significantly changed. We completely rebuilded it and added more details. The Great Tree is now much greater and it’s covered with toxic substances.

During the development process we many times redesigned other important screens, like „options”, „loading” or „level summary” screen. It’s quite difficult to create something that looks good on the first attempt, that’s why we created so many versions.

At the beginning „loading” screen was a just black with a small centered caption „Loading”. I know this screen is not important for most of the players, especially that loading times in Stonerid are relatively short. However, in my opinion that simple thing improves a little the game’s mood.

We’ve worked on Stonerid for about 2 years, it’s quite long period of time. Why it took so much time? One of the reason are parallel worlds. The first version was a just simple platformer without that feature. But after half year of development we decided, that it’s not enough if we want to get players attention. That’s why we implemented parallel worlds. Because of that, all levels required much more time to create and were more difficult to design.

When I look at these screenshots today I wonder how come we made Stonerid. We didn’t make any „normal” game before, and so many obstacles appeared on our way. Main goal was to get on Steam and we also did it. I know that Stonerid was for almost 7 months on Greenlight, it’s quite long, but who cares about it now.

Hi everyone, today I have a good news for you. After long discussion we finally agreed on the title of next game – Razenroth. What does the title mean? It’s the name of the main villain, however I’m not going to write more about him today.

All levels in the game will be randomly generated, that’s why we still polish a first level. We want to make sure that everything will work really well, so it takes a little time. However, if we complete work on the first level, the next will be much easier to create.

The main hero (his name is Charles Carter) is able to use various spells, skills and equipment. Our goal is to create over 200 of different items, to make game more unpredictable, but we don’t want to make Razenroth a long game. We would like to create the game that you can play a few times, and each time it will be a little different experience.

Don’t forget to check screnshots and 2 short videos. If you would like to receive the newest information about Razenroth, just subscribe our blog, visit Twitter, or Facebook profile.

In this version we implemented a few things, to balance game difficulty, so I would like to tell you more about the changes that we’ve made. The biggest problem with Stonerid was its relatively high difficulty level. Quite recently we released version 1.0.1, with a lot of improvements, to make the game more friendly for inexperienced players. However, there still were a few thing that could be improved, so that’s why we decided to release another version.

One of the thing that we made is normal difficulty level. In the previous version it was also possible to enable that mode, although I noticed that people don’t know how to do it. However now, nobody miss it.

Easy mode is designed, for players, who didn’t play Stonerid earlier, or just play platform games quite rarely, that’s why it should be easy. Now player can regenerate its health poins by collecting toxic substances. 10 toxines give
1 hp. Moreover, if you’ll find toxic barrel your health points will be completely regenerated. These things, don’t work at normal difficulty, but you can get a lot of prizes in this mode, unavailable at easy level. All improvements are included in demo version, just click the button “Download now” on the right column. One more thing. Now you can buy Stonerid also at IndieGameStand Store.

Swamp is a dark and rainy place. It contains a lot of various plants and monsters. We’ve completed 2 swamp levels so far, if everything will be ok, Stonerid will be finished in next few weeks.

However that will happen in future, now it’s time to show you a few screenshots.

In the previous post I’ve written a little about new functions and modifications that we did, to make Stonerid a better game. Today I’ll write more about the main modification – two parallel worlds.

At the beginning (over one year ago) Stonerid was a really simple game, and it’s mechanics was very simillar to other platform games, like Super Mario Brothers. However we decided to improve something, because our game had not any really good features (except quite good graphic, in my opinion of course).

That is why we wanted to implement two parrallel worlds in Stonerid. This is not a typical feature, but we had to ask ourselves: Is it really worth to do that? Will this mechanism significantly improve our game? Right now, I can tell that was worth to spent a lot of time and add “two worlds” feature, but there is no rose without spikes. To create a good level, with two parallel worlds I need to spent a lot of time, much more than I needed previously.
 
Place your cursor over the images to see the change.
 

 

 
Main advantages of “two parallel worlds” system.

1. Game offers 2 playable characters: stone character and demon. Each of them has his own world. These worlds aren’t the same. There is a lot of differences between them (you can see that at our last gameplay video). We can easily switch between worlds (just by pressing “R” key).

2. Player can freely change world, but it is impossible to use this ability in all places. It works this way because these parallel worlds aren’t identical, so when you can’t perform the change, it can means that there is some obstacle (for example wall) in this place, in the alternative world. Additionaly, if you can’t switch, there is a small, red cross, appears over main hero’s head.

3. Freely changes can cause some problem for the player, like unexpected death. That’s why you have to be carefull when you switch between two worlds. You never know what kind of dangerous thing can be hidden in the alternative world.

4. Sometimes you can feel a little lost. When you do something in the first world it can affects on the things in the second world. You have to remember about that. If you don’t know what should you do next, maybe you have to look for an explanation somewhere in the parallel world. What will you do, if locked doors blocks your way? Where is the key? It can be hidden in one of two worlds. This feature gives really a lot of interesting possibilities.

5. There is many situations in our game when you have to decide quickly and there is no time to think if you want to stay alive. Stonerid very often requires quick reflex and players shouldn’t forget about that.

6. Each level is bigger and looks more open, when you have an option to switch between two worlds.

7. Now Stonerid is a quite difficult game. It’s not easy if you want to complete all levels, especially if you want to collect most of availabe items. We are not sure if the fact that game is difficult is an advantage, but we don’t prefer easy games, so we don’t want to make our game too easy.

8. Time doesn’t affects on an alternative world, it passes only in a world, in which you currently are. Each object, like a monster or trap, just stops when you leave the current world and switch to the parallel area. It’s a very usefull feature if you know how to use it properly.

As you can see “two worlds system” can be really interesting, because it provides many different possibilites and makes gameplay more complicated. Don’t forget to like our Facebook page, or subscribe our Twitter channel if you want to recive the newest information about our game.

Today I will show you the new version of the game menu (on the right), which will appear in the full version of Stonerid. You can compare it with the old design. Our graphic artist has changed almost all of the elements and now the new menu looks totally different. In my opinion, it looks much, much better than the previous version. Do you agree?