Utopia [DEMO]
Humanity is on the brink of extinction, and so you find yourself on a lonesome journey across three different planets to find one suitable to replace Earth. Many soldiers have walked your path before, but none have returned to tell their tale. Will you persevere?
UTOPIA is a retro metroidvania adventure, currently being developed with GB Studio. In this demo you can explore a large portion of the first planet and get a feel for the flow of the game!
One short sidescrolling Shoot 'Em Up section is playable. These sections will be short and sweet, and will serve as a sort of minigame that will be playable whenever you travel from planet to planet!
The game is being created with the intent to be playable on the Game Boy Color, when it fully releases! A Steam release is also planned.
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If you enjoyed the DEMO and are looking forward to the full release, consider donating to show your support to the project! I'm developing this game in my spare, free time, so any donations, however small, are immensely helpful!
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ARROWS = Move / Use Upgrades
Z = Jump/Interact (A on Gameboy)
X = Shoot/Cancel (B on Gameboy)
Return = Start
Backspace = Select
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You can find the list of all the assets that were used in this project, along with links to the authors' store page, here:
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- Utopia DEMO - Bug Fixes #164 days ago
- Utopia DEMO - Downloadable files available now!73 days ago
- CreditsJun 09, 2024
Comments
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I hope I don't come off as harsh (as this is an early demo) but there are (a lot of) things I would like to share. I've only gotten so far as the Xenovore so far but it's been very fun! I don't know how far the demo goes but I'll play it some more when I have time. I very much hope you continue and release the full game! WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD
First some good things:
• More metroidvanias (especially on the Gameboy) are always good to me!
• I like the atmosphere and it looks great aesthetically.
• The Xenovore was scary haha o.o and the Escudo looks very cool. The sprites are great.
Next I want to bring up some stuff that could be glitches?
• I can stand inside of doors, which is odd and actually makes it so that if you walk too far forward you can't open it without backing up. Some sort of collision might be needed.
• There is no pause menu or even pausing, though this could just be something that hasn't been implemented yet.
• If you charge a shot and then enter another area, it looks like you no longer have a charge shot, but in fact if you press B again you fire a charged shot.
• Scanning Virtus causes my game to glitch and nearly soft-locked me by display a "Scanned" message repeatedly. I was able to break out by shooting Virtus between the messages thankfully.
• Running into Escudo while it was exploding caused my character to "reset" location a few tiles back.
• You can use Jellite as a platform from below, undermining (what seems like) the intended path of jumping across the two of them.
• Sometimes trying to fall through a gap with two platforms either side causes you to immediately walk onto the other platform instead of falling.
• Reading a log while walking causes your sprite to walk in place while reading.
Finally, I wanted to share my one cent about some of the design choices:
• The shooting mini-game is neat, but it could get tiresome if you have to do it constantly.
• I hate that I can only shoot left and right. However I understand this would obviously interfere with the scanning.
• The scanning range is too short, this could just be a skill issue though.
• Not being able to jump to an area that's the same height as a platform I am able to jump up is strange to me. Visually it makes no sense.
• While this could be tied to the "no pause menu" thing, I'm not so much of a fan of how you can only see the map from a specific machine and the bestiary from the ship.
• I think the save machines should actively indicate you are healing while saving. My first save was at full health so I didn't realize until I intentionally tested it.
• There was a case where a Gloop was up an area that was half a block up and you can't jump and shoot it, my shot always went over it entirely.
• The lack of a charge animation caused me to question if it worked at first. Maybe something like a flashing white outline for charging that then turns into the red flashing for fully charged?
• Beating Virtus (the first boss?) doesn't drop any health which is pretty scary. I had one heart and I was afraid I'd die to some random enemy as I left.
• Warp points that aren't unlocked should be ??? at first, similar to the Depart option on the ship.
Hello! First of all, I really appreciate the in-depth feedback and constructive criticism! I'll try to address a few of the things you pointed out below:
First, I'm glad you really enjoyed the atmosphere of the game!
• The door collision is definitely something that irks me aswell, but I had problems with implementing collision for them before. I'll definitely look into that in the future and try to find a solution!
• I probably won't implement a typical pause menu with inventory and stats and such, but I'll probably make it so that pressing Start pauses the game.
• Still haven't figured out a solution to the Charge Shot flickering not staying on when you change screen, but I hope I can fix that in the future aswell.
• That scanning Virtus behavior is definitely a bug, I'll fix it as soon as possible, thanks for pointing that out!
• The Escudo thing is because I need to reset the scene, because I can't make Actors have collision that behaves like a wall, I need to completely load a different scene. I could probably solve that by saving the Player Position before the scene reset though... will look into it!
• Don't think there's really a solution for the Jellite problem, I'll just need to be more careful with their placement, and make it so the player can't reach them from below I guess!
• Platform behavior is intended, it only happens if you're at max speed, even though it's not very noticeable, there's a slight acceleration to the character, so if you don't stop holding left or right, you can cross small gaps like that, could be interesting for speedrunning aswell!
• The log sprite running in place will be fixed, thanks for pointing it out!
As for the other feedback:
• There will only be 3 shooting minigame sequences, they can be replayed by selecting "Reminisce" at the Player Ship menu, if you're so inclined to gather all the Insignias (Since a few of them require you to accomplish certain things in the shooting minigames).
• I wanted to keep the gameplay kind of "simplistic", and also I need the D-Pad so the player uses the different shot upgrades. I wanted to avoid using button combos and such, since that could get kind of overly complicated for a Gameboy game.
• My intention was to make Scanning kind of a risky thing to do, you need to get up close and personal with the creatures to collect their logs!
• You're right, I'll probably increase the jump height a bit more so the Player can reach the same height as the platforms!
• The pause menu with all those tabs implemented in it is currently out of scope for me, but who knows in the future it might happen! For now, it'll have to stay like that. Also, I want the player to really pay attention to the maps and try to memorize rooms, or even write the layout down on paper (kind of harkening back to old times ahah), so that people don't overly rely on opening up a map menu ingame everytime they get a bit lost.
• I'll add a message once you save the game saying that the player health has been replenished!
• I'll have to investigate that Gloop problem, I can't recall ever seeing that happen...
• That makes sense, I'll do some test with adding a "charging" state and a "fully charged" state to the Player character.
• Virtus should be dropping an HP refill, so that's another thing that's not supposed to happen, will fix!
• Will look into implementing the ??? text to Warp Points!
Thank you so much for all the feedback, I really appreciate it! And I hope you enjoy the rest of the demo!
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD
Figured out the Gloop thing, it was just a skill issue after all haha. Spikes doing 4 damage sure is brutal o.o I was able to get the Voltanium Shard but I couldn't get out :B My first Metroidvania was Metroid Fusion so I'm probably just too used to all the quality of life stuff in modern games.
I'm sad the demo is over, but I'm excited to see what comes next.
That being said, I have one more suggestion:
• Perhaps the bestiary could have the sprite of the enemy on the menu, otherwise just choosing from numbers is very ??? Some enemies are larger though which might make it more complicated, there would need to be less entries on each page.
I also did find (possibly) 2 more glitches:
• I've noticed that killing a Karkanon while it still has a shot on screen causes the shot to stay still and linger.
• I'm not sure what caused it but I noticed that there was 2 occasions where I had 4 out of 5 health and picking up another health caused me to drop to only 1. I've not had it happen any more times though, I dunno if I didn't notice getting damaged since I was playing it while tired.
Nice job getting the shard! It's possible to get out but it requires a very precise jump and downburst. Also, you can also get to it without taking damage with precise downburst movement, but that's not the intended way to get it (you will need to wait for the full game to figure it out!).
That's a nice first Metroid game, wish I could forget all about those and play them again!
My initial idea was to make the spikes reset your character to the initial position (think like Hollow Knight does it, if you've ever played it), I'm still not quite sure if that's better than just having them damage the player... will need to playtest more to decide on that!
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• That's an interesting idea, but I think it would lead to waaay too many pages, because GBStudio cannot handle too many sprites in a row without visual glitches, but it's true that it would look way more appealing that way...
• Will need to investigate the Karkanon glitch, thanks!
• Do you remember by any chance which screen the weird HP drop happened in? It's probably a wrong script on a specific screen, I'll look for it!
It's a gorgeous looking game - we need more Metroid style games on the GB platform. Very similar to Depths of Europa (only that it's space, metroid, a moon, lol!)
Keep up the good work and keep developing! Add the .GBC file as a demo ROM to the downloads - would be good for people to test on real hardware.
Thank you! I found out about Depths of Europa recently, looks really interesting aswell!
And yes, I will post the downloadable demo file either today or tomorrow!
I was able to get the rom from the online embed, but it would be good to have an official demo download file 😉
could you post downloadable demo?
A .gbc file to play on hardware/emu?
I will make it available either today or tomorrow, so be sure to check it out if you want to try the game on real hardware!
Hey! Yes it will be available either today or tomorrow! I hope you enjoy it!
can you reply to me again when its up? So i dont miss it
I love the idea behind this game and it plays great! Will follow and keep posted as I work on my game.
Thank you!
Still working hard so I can upload the updated DEMO, so expect that to come soon!
Nice to see u make a new Game! And Utopia looks and feels awesome 👍 im exciting for more 😊
Hey, thank you!
I'll be updating (and probably also expanding) the demo soon since a few things have changed since I uploaded it!
Game feel is a big focus of mine in this game. I really want the movement to be fluid and responsive.
Hey, nice use of my assets :) Though I have to ask to please not use the space background as the background of this itch page as it mean anyone can easily download it, I hope you understand.Also you are free to share a link to your game in the comments of any of my asset packs you used.
Thank you, really loved the planets! And I totally understand, I'll remove it as soon as I can 😁