A NEON night

A project for Amaze Me Game Jam

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In near furture, mankind has discover a new type of energy source. It was found that when it transform to power that we use it will emit bright colored light without generating much heat. So people start refering this new source of energy a name that they are familiar with, "NEON". As times fly by, changes also happened. Human body are reacting differently to "NEON". A disease that are unknown to mankind starting to emerge. World population have decreased greately due to this event. But among the remain human a portion of people have survive and their body accepted "NEON" as a part of them. Their body are much stronger and flexible, as they can control "NEON" externally and use them as a weapon. Those who are capable have started work as mercenarys. And so the story of the protagonist have started...

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aviavable keys

A D - left right movement

S - if you are not on a solid ground you can drop to a lower level. if you are standing on the edge of a block to transit to hanging on the ledge

W - jump onto a ledge and hang on to it if there is a ledge in jump height range (only works while leaning on a solid wall). If you are hanging on the side of a block to hop on to the block.

space - jump (hold space on wall to wall jump) If you are hanging on the side of a block to hop on to the block.

shift - dash

mouse left click - neon blast(enemy currently are not in game so it just effectively work as a recoil booster)

mouse right click/E - interact with item

ESC - quit game

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summary

The protagonist have the ability to absort "NEON" energy. To be more specific most direct light source can be absorbed. When player touches a light source, it will get absort by the player. In the current demo, dash would be the main way for player traversing the map. There is no specific main goal, but there is a soft limit of around 5 mins after the game started. After 5 mins some of the dialogue will slightly change but that should be it (atleast as I remember). 

player will have a NEON bar (the blue bar) which essentially serve as your mana pool and the dash count(the orange bar).  player will start at 1 dash charge but there are upgrades across the map to increase to a max of 4 charges at a time. When player dash or shot, a small amount of NEON is required. Your NEON value will slowly regenirate but the best way to regenerate NEON value is to actively collect any luminating NEON light source around you. After being collected, the light source will dim for a short amount of time. Then the light source will slowly regain its brightness back. Once it is fully recovered you can collect NEON from it again. If you manage to collect a NEON source you can also regain 1 charge of dash as well. This is best while collecting NEON during mid air so you can keep dashing between platform without touch the ground. Use this to you advantage to get to high platform. 

There are also total of three key card that let you travel between top and bottom of buildings. Most of these collectables are on top of some buildings so you may want to go look for it.

Your final goal in this game is to retrieve a losted briefcase. Once you got it, this "prologue" of the story is ended. This might sound simple but there isn't much limitation on what are the way you get to the final goal. You can choose to collect more dash charge and dash arcoss the sky or carefully jumps from bottom to up. And it's OK to wonder across the map since no matter what the finall location will reveal by your companion after five minutes. And reaching the destination before the five minutes mark will get you a slightly alternate dialogues, although you still need to wait for the five minutes mark to interact with the destination.

Personally, I recommend to play it slow as you would take time to plan what are the route you can use, which light source can let you regent dashes mid air, and also let the event play through since I also spend a good bit of time on writing the story and event.

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List of item/event on map (possible spoiler?)

Keycard emit a blue grow and can be interact when close by, allow player to use door to get acess to diffent erea.

A keycard located on the top of "Ever Night" building, opening the gate to the elevator shaft(on left under the orange hotel sign).

A keycard located on the top of "UNsoft" building, opening the door to the roof of the second building.

A keycard located on the roof of the third building(the green hotel building), opening the door to the ground floor of the third building.

Hologram box emit a orange grow and can be interact when close by.

A hologram box located at the middle of second building.

A hologram box located at the most left side inside the elevator shaft.

A hologram box located at the most right side on top of the entrance of the warehouse.

Events list

 A poster on the second floor of the first building

A poster on the second floor of the second building

A poster on the second floor of the green hotel building (currently there is an error cuasing the game break, please don't interact with it for now)

A poster on the roof of the second building

When you get the first upgrade of dash charge from a hologram box

When you get to the roof of the green hotel building for the first time

When you interact with the backpack on top of the roof of the green hotel building for the first time

When you go through door multiple time rapidly

When you go through door multiple time rapidly again

When you reach the most top left part of the elevtor shaft building for the first time

When you reach the most top right part on top of the entrance of the warehouse for the first time

Possible route

there is no absolute route you have to fallow, but here are some possible route.

On top of the elevator shaft, jump and dash right to get to the roof of second building, or using the keycard from the ground floor of second build can work as well. Then from the roof here, jump toward top right with two dashes plus a recoil jump to get to the top of green hotel building.

The two wide sign between the second building and green hotel building are actually standable platform, this is same for the welcome sign on left and the "Ever Night" sign.

From the second floor of green hotel building, follow the green light and jump along the balcony. If you plan the route well, you can even get to the top with just one dash charge.

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about devlopment

Since enemy was cut away from the intial plan due to not enough time, thats makes the current state of the game feel more like a sandbox platformer that a 2d shooter

In the uploaded submition, I found these error:

(not sure should I update the submition file itself so I will just list them here) 

please avoid the poster under the green hotel sign with a here sign and arrow pointed to it, do not interact with it or the game will break. I forgot to set a color with the dialog and the system will break. I am using two list to draw a group of dialog, one list for text, one list for color of the text. For that poster I added new text in the text list, but I forget to update the color list; it is an easy fix but no matter how small the update is, an update is an update. (4/7 fixed)

You can see a check item icon on interactable object, but the invisible object also display item icon even if they are not diractly interactable by player input. This is because the check item icon is an object itself and the instance create event have inherited from the parent object, where I forgot to over write the event in the child object. Also a simple fix, but again any update is an update. (4/7 fixed)

the object layer for bullet is incorrectly under the background light layer. I was so focus on the other parts and only found it out after the submition... (4/7 fixed)

if you jump towards a block 45 degree(from bottom right to top left), there is a small chances that the tip of the character will stuck in that block. Haven't try to jump from 135 degree, didn't have enough time to test it, nor time to fix it... but you can easily escape with a left click gun shot.

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4/7/21 update 0.6

general bug fix

20/7/21 update 0.7

added sound for fans, vents, steps, air conditioner, light buzzing

added star background

added smoke from air conditioner