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[bmaczero]

Hi Bay12ers,

Long-time DF player and amateur game developer here.  I'm a big fan of Toady's work as a game dev.  In ten years, I would love to be where he is, sitting on a really nice, original game idea and developing it full-time.

I wanted to share a game I've been working on for almost two years with a small group of students from UC Irvine.  It's an indie puzzle-platformer called Camera Obscura.  Camera Obscura revolves around a unique mechanic that allows the player to activate a camera flash so bright that it creates "afterimages" of all visible platforms. These platforms are solid enough to walk on, and they can be moved around for a short time, mimicking the player's movements. This ability allows players to cross wide chasms, reach high platforms, and otherwise alter the shape of the environment to accomplish the ultimate goal - reaching the top of the mysterious Tower. Check out this gameplay footage to get a better idea: Youtube.

We posted the game to Steam Greenlight just last week.  It seems like we're making pretty good progress, and we're really excited about the chance to be published by Steam!  If you want to check it out and possibly support us by voting the game up, you can check out the Greenlight page here:
Camera Obscura | Steam Greenlight

NEW: Download the demo here!
Demo Installer (Recommended)
Demo ZIP

Here's a screenshot (you can see more on Greenlight):


The game also has a full, custom soundtrack by the amazing Trenton Ng, and we've shared a few of the tracks here if you want to check them out:
Soundtrack

I'd love to hear any feedback or thoughts you guys have on the game, as well.

Thanks a lot!
- Brian

[Absolute Niro]

This actually looks pretty interesting. It's hard to come up with an original "gimmick" for a puzzle platformer, but this seems to do it quite well. Obviously it's not finished yet, but I do think the environment looks pretty bland, though.

[hemmingjay]

Upvoted! Looks very cool.

[bmaczero]

Thanks a lot, guys!

Yeah, the graphics have been the largest source of mixed feedback on the Greenlight page.  We're definitely brainstorming ways to improve the look and feel of the environments and levels.  Our artist is planning on redrawing a couple of the backgrounds, and we'll be trying to add more parallax layers and background objects to give them a little more depth when appropriate.

[EnigmaticHat]

My thoughts on the graphics:  the backgrounds and the main character look pretty nice.  My main complaint is the platforms.  They're the same small texture repeated across a large area of the screen.  Placing some stuff on top of the platforms might go a long way; maybe some vines grown over the dirt, exposed gears in areas with moving platforms, a few bricks missing now and again.  That sort of thing.

The enemies look like a bit of missed opportunity.  Graphically, they're just small animals and slimes, gameplay wise they seem to work like goombas.  I don't know enough about the kind of world you're making here to suggest anything specific, but you could do something to differentiate the enemies from those in other platform games.

The camera mechanic looks very nice, like Niro said its rare to see a new mechanic like that.  From what I've seen the game's style reminds me a lot of Golden Sun (that's a good thing).  I'm definitely interested.

[bmaczero]

Small update here - we've uploaded a playable demo!  Find the link in the first post.

Thanks for the tips, EnigmaticHat.  You're right about the tiles - in some of the levels we've started adding "decals" that break up the space a bit.  We'll be working more on these soon.

You make a good point about the enemies, but the way we've used them in the game kind of requires them to move according to simple rules - in a lot of cases, they act as puzzle elements, and the player has to avoid or even move them around.