[Prototype] Timeloop (Atari Lynx)

Timeloop was designed for the AtariGamer Lynx 2020 Programming Competition on the theme “Future.” For some reason, this theme inspired me to explore time travel, and more specifically timeloops (much like the movie “Groundhog Day”). If you don’t count all the time spent on having the game idea itself, I think I spent about 6-7 weeks (during summer) to make the game from scratch.

Here are the main prototypes of this project. You’ll see that the earlier versions use strange graphics. It’s normal, I simply reused graphics from my previous Lynx game (Fishing for Atari) as placeholder graphics when programming the core gameplay.

-= PROTOTYPE 01 =-

First gameplay test. You can move the player for 10 seconds (the initial duration of a timeloop), and then the game will play the movement back. It took me quite some time to have the whole “player movement record / playback” system working. This is just the first draft, with strange bugs and not totally accurate playback.

-= PROTOTYPE 02 =-

The movement record/playback system now works as expected! So I can start working on making the rest of game. The second step is the soccer ball, that you can see as a static red dot on this prototype. The timeloop duration have been adjusted to 6 seconds.

-= PROTOTYPE 03 =-

The active played is now an orange dot (so you can tell it apart from the replay doppelgangers). And you can also interact with the ball (and so can the doppelgangers!)

-= PROTOTYPE 04 =-

You can now dash / speedup while pressing the A or B button.

-= PROTOTYPE 05 =-

The goal appears in the game! You now have something to do with this ball! (the actual goal zone is the blue rectangle, don’t mind the Atari ST sprite underneath).

-= PROTOTYPE 06 =-

A score counter appears! The left digit is the total number of balls scored, while the right number displays the current timeloop / level. Now the core gameplay is set up and working. Although it still needs a lot of balancing and tuning, I’ll first focus on creating the graphics and audio.

-= PROTOTYPE 07 =-

And here comes the first version of the game graphics! The word you’re looking for to describe them is “ugly.” I’m a bit ashamed of showing you something looking this bad, but yes, at some point I did consider to make the game looks like this...

-= PROTOTYPE 08 =-

Hopefully, I ultimately realized how ugly the previous prototype was! So I decided to go in another artistic direction, with a more “light” look and cartoonish colors. I redrew the game assets using the wonderful Sweetie16 Palette by Grafxkid. This new prototype isn’t animated yet, but the new graphics look is fully implemented. And frankly, it looks way better!

-= PROTOTYPE 09 =-

Now the graphics are animated. I also did some polish on the overall art (score animation when you are close to game over, etc.). With the graphics part completed, the last major task remaining is the “timeloop transition” animation. Far from a trivial task, this animation needs to convey the whole idea that the game will reset from the start while the avatar you controlled will replay your previous moves. It must also be short is order to avoid making players bored. And last but least, no words or text should be used: I wanted the animation itself to be as explanatory as possible of the whole gameplay concept.

-= PROTOTYPE 10 =-

And here come the result! It took me quite a long time to make a working “level transition” animation, but I’m quite satisfied with the end result. In the latter prototypes I fine tuned the animation you’re seeing in this version by shortening it when there are at least 6 avatars onscreen.

-= PROTOTYPE 11 =-

For this version, I finished all the "final touches”. I added a title screen, a game over screen, and the remaining timeloop time is now displayed on screen. 

-= PROTOTYPE 12 =-

Here, I focused on balancing the game difficulty. For example, after the level 10, sometimes the required score will increase by 2 points instead of 1. So I made the game harder than the previous versions, but also more fun to play (or at least I hope so!).

-= BETA 01 =-

I added some very simple music (a six second loop based on the famous classical music William Tell Overture by Rossini). And now the game is finally complete, and ready to be tested by players other than me! This version was sent to you, my wonderful Patreons supporters. Using your feedback, I made a couple of extra fine-tuning on the game, and finalized the “release” version that was available publicly. 

Thanks again for your support, and I hope you enjoyed this game and all the steps leading to it!