With a more focused idea in development, I thought it was needed to look at other games of similar taste and to compare and contrast and to find out what techniques and methods to game developers use into enhancing both gameplay and the visual feel of the game. One of my favourite 2D side scrolling games was Donkey Kong Country, the original version on the SNES. What I love about the donkey kong franchise is the whole variety of different environments from snow worlds, to caves, to the sea and of cause the jungle which you are set to explore. it makes the levels seem a lot different and more interesting. What i mean by this statement is the actual level design and layout is very similar all the way through the game. most levels consist of ropes, barrels and jumping between ledges (whether that be trees in the jungle or mountains) you get the idea. The game is constantly evolving and never gets repetitive. This has influenced our decision when coming up with the initial idea for the game as in our game you are set to explore a wide variety of different landscapes, climate and culture. The theming of Donkey kong is brilliant, even when I play on the game now, it has aged very well. Some of the game obstacles are brilliantly thought out and provide a great balance between difficulty and enjoyment. Who docent like swinging on ropes, and ducking and diving between spikes. There are also plenty of open spaces in the game where there are enemies in the way, which you have to defeat such as the armadillos or snakes throughout the game, this provides a more varied gameplay. The gameplay is so fast paced and fluent which really makes the game enjoyable, the way you bounce of enemies and swing on ropes is animated brilliantly and just makes the game feel more slick, animation is not my strong point but its defiantly something i would recommend my team mates to look at on both of our projects, when we decide on the abilities the main player will have. The levels are'nt too long but all provide a good challenge except the first level, which is made for tutorial purposes and getting you in a feel for the game, but its the little things like this we have to thing about on our game. is the level we model going to be the first level, if so do we make it slightly easier or do we just throw the player straight in, depends on the interface. If we go for anything like our design a few blogs ago we will have to use a tutorial as there's special gameplay such as ned farting which requires the player to shake the controller, players might not now how to do this so it is very important or players could become very frustrated.
donkey kong like many other side scrolling games relays on the format you have lives and can earn more by collecting items in the game such as different colour balloons, and for every 100 bananas you collect you gain an extra live. Obviously the balloons are a lot harder to collect and other you an extra challenge during the game as some of the balloons are very difficult to collect, that they try and tempt you into loosing a life as they will be in some dangerous positions. The colour of the balloons also helps, There very bright and also only stay on screen for a limited time, even if you don't need anymore lives you find yourself attempting the impossible at times just to gain some extra lives. The one negative I have about donkey Kong is that you can keep playing the first level over and over again building up your number of lives to a stupid number. It just makes the game feel a lot easier knowing you have that safety. However I understand how frustrating it can be if you loose all your lives and have to repeat x amounts of levels again, but there needs to be a balance between the two and as to this point I'm not sure but its something to look into. Do we even need lives, I'm not sure cause tbh there pretty meaningless in Donkey Kong. I think a better system is to follow a certain format like most FPS and you have to reach a checkpoints through the level and it saves the data there so when you come back to playing thats where you start, but i think its something to ask around as to what they prefer.
Heres a few screenshots and Video of this brilliant game which I recommend to everyone aswell as the remake which is on nintendo wi
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