The New Crossed Sword Game Studios Announcement Forum

[The_Kodex]

Crossed Sword Game Studios

Announcement: New Game

I know I’ve been gone for a while, I’ve been working on some of the other important things in my life, but I am proud to say not only to expect more updates soon (Bad Timing actually since I probably won’t be on here for the next 3 days for personal reasons) but also I am working on a new game!

Most of you guys know what the flowjam is. Some of you were even there for the first, I was. If you’ve been here for at least a year you most likely participated or knew about the Flowjam: Summer Jam, the second flowjam that took place about a year and a bit ago.

For this flowjam the theme was “It’s all about time”, and so I created a game called “Chrono Space”, a time travel puzzle game and submitted it to the flowjam and lost, rightly so. It was top down so the controls were wack and annoying, the story was horrible, I only got around 3 levels done and the best thing about it was the art.

Well, I am proud to say instead of rebooting it or remaking it because honestly the game likely needs fixing more than a remake and I’m doing a lot of those lately I am deciding to give it a soft reboot.

Crossed Sword Game Studios has officially begun work on Chrono Space: Mechanical Mayhem!

The Story:

In 2025 the Aliens known as the Katahn invaded Earth. To help battle against a threat Thomas Blackwell and his corporation was tasked with building a robot army to take care of the aliens, in which they did.

After 5 years of war the robots finally drove the aliens away from Earth. Unfortunately, during the war, Blackwell and his council decided use the robots for world domination.

Using the robots Blackwell and his company took over the world and thus 19 years later the future was a terrible place where Blackwell’s robots roam the streets of every town, keeping everyone trapped in this nightmare society where he contols everything in his ‘perfect’ world.

Despite the dystopian dictator enslaving humanity there was still hope as a resistance, one so big yet still managing to stay off the grid, plotted to undo all of this.

Using Time Travelling technologies the resistance send their best soldier former marine Connor Morgan back to 2029, one year before the war ends to take out all of the members of Blackwell’s inner circle.

The game follows you as Connor as you venture through Earth during one of its greatest conflicts trying to stop Blackwell and his equals from achieving world domination. Its an action pixel platformer shooter game and my attempt to make a game from the 1990’s.

This won’t interrupt my work on the A Tale of Light and Darkness Remake or any other of my projects, this is just a new one. And if this game comes out okay I am planning to do 2 sequels and potentially more!

A Little teaser of the sprite for the game:

(Sprite for the original game summer 2020)

(Sprite for the upcoming game spring 2021)

Thank you for everyone’s support and expect more updates soon!
@ManiacPumpkin @meburningslime @MetaNinja @Greggo @rcreger @browngr

[Greggo]

Awesome job improving the sprite! Looks great!

[The_Kodex]

@Greggo Thank You! Hopefully the whole game will come out looking just as good hope my attempt as doing a game styled like those on the 1990s pays off!

[The_Kodex]

Chrono Space: Mechanical Mayhem

Update:

I am happy to announce I have done more work on the new game today!

Because I didn’t update you on what has been done so far on the game, I have coded the basic stuff for the player including movements, double jump, and shooting as well as a health system.

I also did an enemy and a some tiles that make up some of the first level as well as some other minor things. The enemy faces the player and shoots strictly left and right when the raycast hits the player and is actually a pretty good non-moving enemy.

What I did today was update the sprite for the enemy, make the gameplay a lot better and smoother, did a punch sprite for the player (Can’t show that one yet) and made the player able to block attacks (WIP).

Additionaly I also made it so if you press 1 or 2 on the keyboard it locks the player to face left or right, great for shooting at a still target. (This can be deactivated).

(The Enemy)

Thank You all for your support!
@MetaNinja @ManiacPumpkin @meburningslime @rcreger @Greggo @browngr

[MetaNinja]

The enemy looks really cool! Good job, I am liking what I am seeing from this project.

[The_Kodex]

A Tale of Light and Darkness Remake

Big Update:

Hello There, it’s been a while again and that’s because I’ve been busy working on my games, and now I can finally share with you all what I’ve been doing!

First, I have re-scaled the game and have had to alter the backgrounds accordingly. They still look mostly the same just a little bit different:

Second, I have FINALLY finished the health bar for this game. (I’ve been putting it off for months). Over 7 hours, 50 frames and 50 separate animations:

Literally the code for this:

Anyway, I’ve additionally improved the sprites for the platforms and gave some animations:

And gave the Icon of the main protagonist of the game its own idle animation too:

Made a slight adjustment to the horizontal moving platform activator machine:

And also made some huge adjustments to level 1 and have expanded it even more.

I have also written a rough mock-up of some of the lore for my game, so read the backstory of The Tale of Light and Darkness below:

The Backstory:

In the beginning the universe birthed 2 forces of light and darkness. For each force was 3 deities, and those of the light and dark despised each other and stayed in their separate realms. In between their realms was the main universe, and the only thing stopping those of the light and dark from fighting each other.

Aeons later, after the creation of Earth and the rise of humanity, the border between earth and the other 2 dimensions grew thin. In preparation for this, the humans started work on creating a sentient android, one that could wield the power of both light and dark and that would bring balance to the universe.

Unfortunately, the creation of the androids took too long to finish, and by the time they were close to completion soldiers of the darkness invaded the space station and killed nearly everyone on there. Luckily few survived and managed to finalise the android as best they could and activate it, causing the birth of Lithios.

The Plot:

After being awoken and discovering this mission Lithios sets out to collect the Orbs of Light and Darkness from their respective realms to stop more soldiers of the light and darkness from being created and to grant him enough power to take on the 6 deities.

Thank You all for the overwhelming display of support, I’ll keep everyone updated as best I can!
@meburningslime @ManiacPumpkin @MetaNinja @rcreger @Greggo @browngr

[00T_Free]

Looks great!

[The_Kodex]

Crossed Sword Games Studios

New Milestone:

Hello everyone, this post isn’t actually an update about the game, but more about the forum.

This has been going for quite a while, since about December 2020+, and over the months since we have managed to accumulate 200 (And One) Total likes on this forum!

I would just like to thank everyone for supporting this and letting us reach this milestone, truly something I feel fantastic about.

Expect more updates soon!
@MetaNinja @ManiacPumpkin @meburningslime @rcreger @Greggo @browngr @00T_Free

[hihilogic]

Hey, ping me too!

[00T_Free]

Alright, can’t wait for the updates!

[The_Kodex]

@00T_Free Thanks and @hihilogic Will do

[The_Kodex]

A Tale of Light and Darkness

Update:

Hello There! It’s been 3 days since the last update on a game and today I have got more work done on A Tale of Light and Darkness!

Since the beginning of development on the game, moving platforms have been a big part of it, the ones that go up and down and left and right. But, seeing the platforms floating in the air with nothing suspending it left me to try to do something to fix this.

After hours of workshopping, I have designed the rail that goes behind the floating/moving platform! (Vertical only so far.):

Obviously, it’s hard to imagine what this looks like tiled and in the level, so here is a snapshot of early gameplay testing to see what it looks like in action:

I know it’s of terrible quality but it’s technically the first look of the game. Trust me, the final version of the level won’t look like this for the most part but this is just a look at the MVP Rail.

Also, I re-designed the neon floating platform from this:

to this:

(Better, right?)

And I also redesigned (Or more rescaled) the “Space Lab” Backdrop for the second level to fir the new aspect ratio of the game:

I would also like to take time to mention and thank @JR01 for helping (as he always does) fix the longtime problem of the moving vertical platforms themselves, It’s still being worked on as a whole but he helped fix the main problem with them so thank him!

As you can see I’ve done a lot today and have many more updates coming! This is easily my most ambitious project yet and I heavily look forward to posting more updates! Thank you to all my supporters seeing this journey run its course. (Wording was a little off there, I’m not leaving or stopping or anything).

@ManiacPumpkin @rcreger @MetaNinja @meburningslime @hihilogic @00T_Free @browngr @Greggo

[MelloJello]

So pwetty. Also, robot man is very cool

[The_Kodex]

A Tale of Light and Darkness

Update:

Hello There! This update is a lot more “tell” rather than “show”. I haven’t done all too much art-wise but I am proud to say I have done a substantial amount of work to the second level and after hours of work, it is close to completion.

I have actually added a new “hazard” item called the “Electric Tesla Shield” That looks like this and harms the player:

(so jiggly)

Unfortunately, there isn’t more I can say besides that and a lot more planning for the story of the game has been made. The level is long and a lot harder and this game is starting to come together. I have a bunch of stuff art and others I am going to add so stay tuned!

Also thank you for everyone keeping this forum alive and following this dev-log!

@ManiacPumpkin @meburningslime @MetaNinja @MelloJello @hihilogic @rcreger @browngr @00T_Free @Greggo

[The_Kodex]

Crossed Sword Game Studios

New Milestone:

Hello everyone, this unfortunately isn’t an announcement for any of my game (but do expect some soon), but actually acknowledgement of a recent milestone we have reached.

As of today right now, we have had 1.1k views

I’d just like to celebrate this since this is a big achievement for myself and thank you all for supporting me and and this dev-log, post your thoughts about this or any of my recent games down bellow!

@00T_Free @meburningslime @MetaNinja @MelloJello @hihilogic @rcreger @browngr @Greggo

[MelloJello]

Congrats, the work you’re doing deserves it!

[The_Kodex]

@MelloJello Thank You very much! I’m working super hard on this and appreciate you’re support!

[The_Kodex]

A Tale of Light and Darkness

Update:

Hello There, short but impactful update on the game, I’ve upgraded the run system again.

It started as a usual run system. Base run speed, run animation and that’s it. I then later made it so the longer you run the faster you go with almost no limits.

Now, I’ve actually created a walk animation to show the difference between the run and the walk phases of the “getting” faster, as well as making the player press “shift” to instantly enter run mode with it still gradually getting faster.

(The Run animation sped up by a lot and in the top left rather than the bottom left - how it is in the game)

(The New Walk animation)

Also, since the Flowcon is coming soon I thought I would start asking around about my game and spreading the word, so…

What do you know about my upcoming game A Tale of Light and Darkness:

• Literally nothing, never heard of it
• I’ve seen a few posts about it, not quite sure what it exactly is
• I know what it’s about but not what it’s like
• I know what the gameplay is like, nothing else
• I know what the art of the game is, nothing else
• I know about the story and gameplay
• I’ve been following this forum and know as much as you post about it
• I played the original flowjam game

Vote and comment bellow about what you know of my game and I’ll make sure to answer your questions and then tell you all about it.

Thank You to everyone old and new who has supported this forum since december and / or beyond!

@MelloJello @hihilogic @ManiacPumpkin @meburningslime @Greggo @MetaNinja @00T_Free @rcreger

Also a special thanks for @browngr for hosting the main event of Flowcon 2021.

If you don’t know, it’s basically an E3 for Flowlab. It’s a game announvent / showreel event where flowlabbers announcer or update the audience of what games they are realising or working on soon, and I’m gonna participate.

Thank You all!

[The_Kodex]

Neostar

Big Announcement:

It’s been a hard 2 weeks. I haven’t announced anything here for an extremely long time, mainly because the fourth flowjam just concluded, and I just submitted my game!

I’ve been working my butt off pulling various all-nighters to get this game done, and it’s finally ready to play! My newest game, Neostar, is a mobile continuous runner with 3 levels so far and a pretty good tutorial. I have worked really hard on this and have neglected announcements and posts because I literally haven’t had the time.

A special thanks to grazer and @JR01 for helping me with this, without them my game would barely work.

A Discussion dedicated to the game (Post feedback here):

NEOSTAR - A New Continuous Runner by Crossed Sword Game Studios!

Hello There, @The_Kodex Here! You probably haven’t seen me on the forums for a while but this is purely because of my work on the flowjam! My submission, which I for one am pretty happy with, is a continuous runner game with 3 levels for you to play as well as a tutorial! it’s very polished with a main menu, title screen, level select and tutorial. The 3 levels are not only fun but challenging to complete! I will be finishing this game after the flowjam winner is announced, trust me, but for …

If you have entered the flowjam and submitted your own game, rate mine here:
https://flowlab.io/flowjam/entries

And Finally, the game itself:

Flowlab.io - Neostar

Thank you to all my supporters for helping me grow this forum!

@MetaNinja @meburningslime @Greggo @ManiacPumpkin @rcreger @00T_Free @MelloJello @hihilogic @browngr

[meburningslime]

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