Jet Dancer Game Update Summer 2019

Hello everyone, it’s been a while. Just thought I’d share the latest news on the Jet Dancer game.

I’ve been putting a ton of work into the project when I could find time to do so, between the responsibilities of my day job and family. I pray for the day I can reduce my hours in the office and dedicate myself to the dream of being a game developer full time, but until then, I have to squeeze in the work when I can.

The main update I’d like to share is that the game now has a third boss! Lovely Gauntlet, the powerhouse of the SW girls, is now an active and fully functional boss fight in the game.

Lovely Gauntlet, the base form. In the game, her gauntlets are proportionately larger.

It was tricky deciding how I wanted her to behave, and I had to abandon a few ideas in order to get a working, challenging fight. I had plans of enabling her to grab and throw things, and I even thought about having her throw the player, but it proved too tricky to implement efficiently. Still, what she can do is beat the heck out of the player in very short order with those powerful fists of hers, and I even incorporated a knockback feature that does extra damage if the player collides with a wall during the flight.

I also made a minor but needed UI tweak: instead of a long red bar for the boss’ health gauge, I made a HUD for it. It shows the boss’ portrait and visually gives the player a better idea of how the fight is going.

The game now has a lowered resolution of 1792×1008, which may still be too high, but I wanted the game to look good during the platforming segments as well as the boss fights. Jet Dancer is a platformer first, a combat game second, even though my focus on the boss fights may do little to support this.

My plan is to focus heavily on level design and giving the player more to do with Jet in the game besides destroy enemies, but before I do that, I want to get one more boss done. Those who follow my work know to whom I’m referring…Jet Dancer’s eldest ‘sister’ and the first of her kind, Fallen Wing.

…And I’ve already begun working on her sprite. She’s going to present a few different challenges for me, particularly considering the wings and the fact that she flies. I already have several attacks in mind, and a few other surprises in store for the Jet Dancer vs. Fallen Wing fight.

But I acknowledge the game needs more than just boss fights to be interesting (or does it? There’s a great game called Furi that works well with that feature…hmm) and I plan on doing a lot more with Jet Dancer’s moves in due time. I won’t talk much about that right now because it’s empty words without action, but I have bigger plans for this game than I had in the past when I just wanted to put my characters in action.

That’s pretty much all I have going on right now. Thanks for reading and stay tuned for the next update…I promise it will be sooner next time.