Game demo : Knightmare - The Silver Collars

[ArchaicDevice]

Hi folks,

I needed to teach myself how to do a few things, so decided to do a Knightmare themed game as my practice project. Below are some screenshots from level 1 of the dungeon. There are about 25 different rooms in level 1, with a few of the rooms having two different puzzle configurations, so there is a bit of variety in the different paths you can take. You can't see all rooms in a single playthrough and there are two different ways to complete the level.

Characters you talk to will remember the choices you make and will often react to you differently depending on what items you're carrying, such as giving different dialogue options. The inventory and spell book have a visual HUD that you can click on to interact with. You also have an animated life force sprite that fades between states as you lose energy. The eye shield is in the game, which gives you some first-person areas if you're carrying it. I was intending to add the wand for point-and-click puzzles towards the end of level 2.

I've done some custom sprites and such but I'm also using images, audio clips, and about 12 seconds of spliced video from the show. I'm not sure what the etiquette is about releasing things that use content from the show, so I could do with some feedback about that from the mods before making anything directly available.

For now, enjoy the screenshots.

KMTSC_SS_1.jpg
KMTSC_SS_2.jpg
KMTSC_SS_3.jpg

[ArchaicDevice]

KMTSC_SS_4.jpg
KMTSC_SS_5.jpg
KMTSC_SS_6.jpg

[ArchaicDevice]

KMTSC_SS_7.jpg
KMTSC_SS_8.jpg
KMTSC_SS_9.jpg

[ArchaicDevice]

KMTSC_SS_10.jpg

[Beltane]

All of this looks incredibly impressive! I'll keep an eye out in case you ever offer it as a playable game here!

The VR-looking bits are my favourite, I always liked the claustrophobic quality of that sort of environment and I'd love to see the more menacing bits of the game. It looks like you've got some neat puzzles in there too!

[ArchaicDevice]

The VR-looking bits are my favourite, I always liked the claustrophobic quality of that sort of environment and I'd love to see the more menacing bits of the game. It looks like you've got some neat puzzles in there too!

Well, there's also the catacombs in eye shield mode... and what dwells there. I'm going to have dwarf tunnels in level 2 and I'm trying to come up with puzzles that'll work well in first person.

[Beltane]

So, but of an update! I've finally managed to get some time to play this and I'll play it again. I'm enjoying it!

I'm not sure how to get to the scroll in the 3-flower-spike room but suspect there's some sort of invisible path I just haven't found yet? I took a few falls tryinig to find it but haven't tested out all the squares yet. It looks like you don't come back to it so I'm assuming you can get hold of it.

I definitely appreciate the autosave!

So far I'm up to the cold room with the rocks - I seem to be hemmed in and can't seem to find a way out so I died there. Granitas said something about the cold so I might take another look at what he said when I play again.

I'd say that I'd possibly go for two adjustments: I notice that you lose a little bit of Life Force by moving to the next room so if you're near the end of red status when you exit the previous room, you die in the next one. Treguard will still talk to you as per his script even if you've died, and will then say "Life Force critical!" at the end, at which you die. I think I'd personally prefer if he said that your LF is critical before going through his script as I can see that my LF's gone black so I'm clearly dead and am just scrolling through his speech for nothing. I'd also argue that as I see the death LF scene of the eyeballs rolling away so often, being able to skip it would be good since I'm keen try again and don't want to wait around. Impatient, but that's just me.

The jester in the Eye Shield room doesn't seem to want to talk to me - I couldn't get him to interact so I assume he only does so under certain conditions? I thought he might comment on how close I called it while watching through the spyglass but he didn't.

Overall it's great and I love it! I'll try to play it again tonight.

[Beltane]

I got through to level 2! That was challenging and fun - thank you!

I noticed a couple of bugs: it's possible to slip behind the rocks in the 'frozen' room, and if you do you can't get back out, nor will a critical Life Force meter actually kill you, you just stay there indefinitely and have to close the game window. Even Esc doesn't work. And Velda's dialogue has a few typos.

But yeah, this was all sorts of fun, so thank you for the opportunity to play!

[Beltane]

P.S.: You've got to be really quick with that giant scorpion, don't you?

— Where I got stuck in the cold rock room bug

— Velda's first typo

— Velda's second and third typos

[ArchaicDevice]

Thanks for the feedback!

I'll go through those typos and bugs the next time I'm working on it.

The hidden path is either directly down from the exit door or directly left of the platform, depending on which route you take. Granitas and Olgarth will give you clues.

Talking to the Jester is a bit fiddly. You can only talk to him when he isn't moving, so just walk towards him and keep tapping the interact button. He'll give you a riddle to help pick the correct exit.

Sprinting past the Scorpion is meant to be very hard. You'll need to buy the REDUCE spell from Scaramonger and see what happens when you cast it in that room...

If you went past 'Velda', then you've surprised me by reaching level 2 via the 'hard' route.

The main route to level 2 is meant to be via Smirkenorff and there are something like five ways to convince him to carry you, depending on what you did during level 1 and what items you have.

Out of curiousity, how much of the Ramohna storyline have you found, and have you found the catacombite yet?