PiN - A hand-drawn 2D Platformer [Wishlist/Try the demo on Steam!]

[lZebl]

Hi everyone!
I’ve been tinkering away on Godot since November 2023; and I thought I should start getting involved with the community a bit.

Here’s my little passion project:

[What is PiN?]
A hand-drawn 2D action platformer with light combat.
Run through each level, collect medals and restore peace to each biome by defeating the ruling Daemon.
Currently, I’m working on it solo (definitely not for the entire thing).

[Features]
-Single Player campaign
-Core levels, challenge levels, special levels and boss levels. Core levels move the story beat forward. Challenge levels will test you based on what mechanics you’ve learned so far. Special levels are one-off, unique levels with different gameplay mechanics. Boss levels… I mean…

-Time trials with Ghosts (upload your own level’s race ghost and download others’ to beat them)

-Player progression system - Your combos, scores, medals collected and levels completed net you XP. Gain enough XP to earn “tags”. Tags are perks that you can equip (one max) to alter your gameplay. (Think spare health orb in a pinch, float while falling, prevent sliding while wall-sliding, temporary speed-boost)

Edit: Newest stuff right below!

As of March 17th, you can Wishlist on Steam! (and try the first demo)

PiN The Guardian Spirit on Steam

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Cover - Finally finished this bad boy. Will probably update it as time goes on.

Updated Visuals. PiN’s had a facelift, as has the first level. Tutorials now use your current binds to instruct you. The first level has swapped from hot orange everywhere to purple/orange.

Ghost Racing awaits! Hit “Interact” on a leaderboard outside a level, download a ghost, and try your best at claiming the top spot!

Title Screen

Opening Cutscene

New Character Portrait HUDs

Assets in general have levelled up (guess which one came first )

LOTS more to share.. but you can try it yourself with the Steam demo soon (whenever the review is over!

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End of Newest Stuff!

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Edit: Playable build out today!

PiN by Zebedy

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Stills:

Making sure he looks expressive:

Spine_Mini Reel

Quick look at combat:

Short Combat Example

Trailer for the demo:

New rim-lights for better visibility (finally!):

More acrobatic flow and animations:

Triple Helix Jump and Corkscrew

[qaqelol]

This is very cute !! I love the UI and the game aesthetics !

[lZebl]

Thank you!

[redflare]

Hey!

Just wanted to say, this looks really charming. The art style gives me some Rayman vibes (from the stills), and I mean that as a big compliment.

You’ve clearly put a lot of heart into it already.

Great job so far, and definitely keep going.. I’ll be looking forward to see more.. Keep us posted!

[lZebl]

Hey redflare,

Thanks so much for that! Rayman is definitely an inspiration here.
I actually changed the death animation to this last week as a sort of homage:

[ComicallyUnfunny]

The art is gorgeous, but i’m worried about visual clarity.. while i thoroughly loved how everything looked, foreground, background, and even characters and items seemed to blend. you might need some more lighting or something to distinguish them from the background.
edit: to clarify, everything’s there if you look closely, but eh lines between them are a bit unclear.

[lZebl]

Thanks a lot ComicallyUnfunny, really appreciate your honest feedback here.
Maybe I could add outlines to characters which turn on if there’s too much background noise behind them? Same with the items. That could at least help with reading the screen a bit better.

I have optional lights on the characters too, which I could switch on. Although for this particular level, I’m trying to find a balance between visibility and a convincing sunset behind everyone. It’s a bit tricky but I’ll definitely keep working on it.

[ComicallyUnfunny]

I totally see what you’re saying. As a very cartoony 2D game dev, I have the option of adding nice outlines to everything, but of course, your style doesn’t fit that.
I’ll see if i can find a good example of something that is clear to reccomend.
edit: maybe some small outlines, if you think it would fit.

[Luova_Labs]

Hello!

If the background is a sunset, couldn’t you darken the foreground and sprites (silhouettes, basically) to improve visual clarity? (Would coding that be difficult? I am not sure…)

Edit 2: I just realized that you’ve already done that in some of your images…

[lZebl]

For sure, I could try small outlines - I’ll let you know how it turns out. Thanks for having a look! Lmk if you find something (but no stress if not).

[lZebl]

Hey Luova_Labs!

Yeah definitely. and it’s not too hard to do. I just darken the canvas modulate node and it darkens everything. In some of the screenshots you can see, it works really well. But in other areas, it might hide enemies and items you need to keep an eye on. So I’m starting to lean into having an outline atm

[willthoven]

This looks amazing—I love the aesthetic and the art style you’ve created. I look forward to seeing how this progresses!

[lZebl]

Very kind of you! Thanks for the support willthoven, and I hope future updates wont disappoint!

[lZebl]

@ComicallyUnfunny, what do you think to this? Aside from outlines, I’ve added volumetric fog to soften the colours in the background:

[ComicallyUnfunny]

I like that, but your little guy PiN isn’t standing out enough. make the fog affect him a bit less while maybe putting some shine behind him and that should be good, i think.

[lZebl]

Got it, I’ll get to it. Thanks for the input!

[ComicallyUnfunny]

An example from Rayman where Rayman isn’t affected by background colors as much as the background itself, making him stand out:

Notice how Rayman stays orange even in the green background. He also pops nicely because of his body color. PiN will pop well because blue stands out well against orange, but the heavy sunset effect is making him feel like part of the background.

[lZebl]

Oh yeah, compared to mine… this is super clear. Thanks for this! I’ve tweaked it a bit and I’ve reduced how much the fog affects him:

[ComicallyUnfunny]

That’s exactly it! The game looks crystal-clear!!

[lZebl]

Thanks for your input! It looks so much better there