Chinese Association of Idaho State University (CAISU)

Alpha Version.0 Activation Code [key]

About This Game

To this date, this game is still under development, the final product may vary.
Feedback/ Bug reports are always appreciated

What is Alpha Version.0?

It's an action platformer within the same veins as Megaman. Think of it as a alternative of what MegamanX could have been.

Ok sounds fun, what's different?

We couldn't just do the obvious and make it a fast-paced dash'n shoot. So we had to alter the sauce;

First off, there is no dashing. Instead, we opted for a crouching button and the ability to slow down time to manage through perilous situations.
You are also fitted with a shield which can be brought up when stationary to block small projectiles.

All 6 weapons weapons can be upgraded up to 4 times and used with no ammo limitation.
In other words; Every weapons can be your main gun.
Of course some weapons fare better in certain situations, but you can still stick to one, level it up and roll with it for the rest of the game if you so desire.

Each upgrade also gives the weapon a new appearance and firing sound, which gives each upgraded weapons a completely new feel.

Same goes for armor pieces. Each equipment parts (chestplate, boot and helmet) gives you either new passive or active abilities while also altering you appearance.
Some abilities might even let you reach normally unreachable places for added secrets and stages!

You also have the choice of playing as the preset character or creating one of your own!
However the custom characters do not change appearance when putting on new armor pieces.
It also does not alter the game whatsoever, it is purely cosmetic.

The game's resources can be freely modified. Meaning you can create your very own custom character parts, redo any stage's tileset and replace the music with your favorite tracks at a simple drag-and-drop!

Whats the story?

Bad mean robots invade city with virus that makes every automatons that is not them possessed.
Shoot em' real good so they cut that out.

In all honesty, we don't have much skills in story-telling.
But even if we did, we planned out the game so that there is zero dialogue/interruptions aside from brief cutscenes save for one VERY specific optional thing which even then is very lightweight.

Here's the game's context;

The game takes place into the future, in the desert lands.
In the middle of the sea of sands rests a city that manages to prosper thanks to a bubble-like shield around it that protects its citizens from sandstorms and doubles
as a big air conditioner to the inside.

The people living inside consist of humans and their semi-sentient androids built to serve them.

During a particularly nasty sand storm, the shield fails and the people experience, for the first time in years, a heavy gust of hot sandy air.
This causes a major panic and people are scrambling to find refuge from the wind outside.

Then seemingly coming from the eye of the storm, a giant yellow airship emerges.
From it, yellow militarized androids descends in the middle of the panic and begins to hunt down humans.

As for the human's androids, some for no apparent reasons shuts down, some stay sentient while others joins the yellow robots in their hunt.

Before anyone knew, all communication systems stopped and the city became a human hunting ground.

And so begins the game.

The demo takes place weeks after these events and also considers that you have cleared all but 2 stages.
Just take this in mind while playing it.

This all sounds very neat-o! Anything else?

We do have a few other things that lays into balance, namely the map editor.

As it stands right now, we do have a map editing system in place.
Its very basic, single screen, 3000x3000 map size with a beginning and a ending trigger.

In other words, its very bare-bone and pales in comparison to other map editing tools even if we were to add all of its intended features.

However we also have a game mode planned called "Rogue mode" which shares a lot of the already programmed stage editor's assets. Namely a randomized theme, weather, music, fog density and natural hazards (thunderstorm, high winds, etc...) system.

So we had the idea of letting players to create "blueprints" with our map editor and letting them put it in a map bank alongside our own maps.

But then came questions such as "Will it actually work?", "Will people use it?", "Is it worth going through all the trouble just for our first game?", "How will people share their maps?"

So we're still unsure about the map editor.
It all boils down to "is it worth doing the effort?", really.

This game is still in development? Whats left to do?

More of everything.
However we do already have a good amount of content in our hands. But if we had to give a number, we would say its 70% done.

We work on the game nearly all days of the week. Clocking roughly 55 hours each week on it; refining, adding new animation frames, tuning bosses, fixing bugs, adding new stage screens and stage mechanics.
While this demo still features some assets that could use some more love and caring, we feel like it gives a good idea of what we're going for.

We're also very open to suggestions, so feel free to post it!
Feed back is also extremely welcome.

Being critical of your own work is hard. Its difficult so put yourself in the shoes of someone who's playing for the first time when you already know exactly whats going to happen and can nail the pattern of every enemies and bosses.

How many of people are working on this?

Actively; Two.
Which makes me and my brother.

We had a swell fellow named Finn Mertin Kirkwood (Also known as 'Finn M-K') do the soundtrack for us.

We've lost track of how many years we've been working on this game but I'll go with a wild guess and say 4.
After 4 years of prototypes, redoing stuff and as the kids say 'gitting gud' we finally have a good basis to work with and have something to show for it.

Co-op?

We could. But it would be local only, with coop specific characters running around in singleplayer designed maps.
It would feel shoehorned, clunky and flat out not good.
We'd rather focus our efforts into making a good singleplay game rather than a "Eh" Solo player and even greater "Eh" Two player game.

Doing something that WOULD be good is making a 1 player and a 2 players version of all maps and bosses and each player having an armory/powers unique to his own. We just don't have to man power to do that.