Eagle Island

Eagle Island, ça fait un moment que je suivais le projet. J'ai même risqué un financement participatif quand il a été question d'un pallier "portage sur Switch". Parce que je ne risquais pas d'avoir un PC-Steam dans un avenir proche, mais une switch, ça ... malheureusement, mon code de téléchargement reçu en guise de compensation à la participation au projet ne permettait pas l'accès à la version switch >_<

I've been following the development of Eagle Island since its author (@Pixelnicks) announced his crowdfunding campaign. The animations were tempting, and I finally decided to join the adventure. Okay, I might not be that much into metroïdvanias nor roguely-inspired levels, but it was about a boy and his owl, and I've been an owl-lover for quite some times.

not exactly the type of gameplay I'm after ...

What truly decided me to join was the "Nintendo Switch port". I knew I wouldn't be playing the game on any other device, but I had already the #sijavaisuneswitch hashtag in the back of my mind.

When the development finally was over, and that the switch port hit the shop, I had a bitter surprise: the redeem code I had received in exchange for my contribution wasn't available for the Nintendo Switch.

I understand why, of course: the port has been coded by a third-party studio and the indie author doesn't have direct control over whether they will donate copies of their work or not. So for one year or so, I owned the game, but couldn't play it unless I bought it again.

Le jeu est basé sur un générateur procédural avec mort permanente et accumulation de power-ups dans un sac à dos qu'on pourra ré-ouvrir avant d'attaquer un niveau suivant. Bon, je dois bien dire que je ne suis pas encore complètement mordu de la logique "roguelike", mais ici, on est roguelike qu'au sein d'un niveau. Une fois le boss trouvé et vaincu, il y a une sauvegarde permanente de sa progression, y compris les nouveaux pouvoirs acquis. Tout en étant sympathique, c'est pas vraiment le genre de gameplay que je recherche. Je passais donc plus ou moins mon tour.

If only I could scroll up to see the top of those trees! ...

But I kept following Pixelnicks' posts and somewhere around mid-May, I noted that the background trees drawn by @skittlefuck were exactly the kind of references I needed to polish the graphics of Bilou's Green Zone.

And so I made the jump. I the very day I purchased it, I was publishing snapshots that triggered some level design thoughts.

It took me some time to get used to the gameplay. (A) to jump and (Y) to fire isn't exactly what Mr. Thumb is used to. There is an option to remap the buttons, but unfortunately, it also remaps the "OK" and "Cancel" actions for the whole menu system. I finally thought that it would be easier to adapt to a new game than to a new 'OK' button. I'm still messing up from times to times, but I got it mostly in the muscle memory, now.

Puis, à force que Pixelnicks poste des p'tites captures d'écran de son interface améliorée (eh oui, il continue à travailler sur son projet), j'ai fini par me rendre compte que ces arbres, c'est vraiment le genre de décor que j'aimerais pouvoir étudier pour améliorer ma "Green Zone". J'ai fini par craquer.

Le gameplay n'est pas exactement celui dans lequel j'excelle. Ni avec le ciblage à 360° qui rend les combos presqu'impossibles, ni avec son mapping de boutons étrange. A défaut de m'y adapter, je me débrouille pour ne pas trop m'embrouiller.

I was tempted by the '360° aiming', too. It helps at start, because you can shoot where you want, Yoshi Island-style. But as soon as the challenge curve ramps up, it stops being helpful. You see, many of the actions in Eagle Island expect you to shoot from mid-air, and to chain successful shots. If you miss a target, your penalty is an "recovery" delay for your owl (who acts as a boomerang) before you can shoot again, while you can easily chain "hits" shots. Unlike Megaman or Super Mario, Quill and Koji don't have big functional blind spots. But being limited to 8 directions for aiming requires you to mix JUMP and SHOOT to reach your target.

Well. With its interesting mechanic where the #1 way to regain health is to chain 3 hits in a combo, there is really much I could say about Eagle Island's gameplay. I've only started understanding the mechanics of the game.

But I'm making a pause (as I reached the 2nd big boss encounter) to review the screenshots I made. They might help populate the 'pyramid zone' too, after all.

But I'll have to come back to those trees and analyze them better than my "big mustache made of socks" current comments, because I definitely see that style fit better in Bilou's woods than any other trees I collected for pixel study those last months (years ?)

Mais ce qui nous intéressait, donc, c'était les graphismes. Et en jouant un peu plus, je suis tombé dans des recoins qui pourraient bien être intéressant pour la zone de la pyramide également. J'y reviendrai donc (après tout, j'ai encore du travail avant de vraiment commencer à faire plein de pixels pour le prochain jeu). Et comme j'y reviendrai, j'en profite pour y ajouter quelques autres snapshots qui m'auraient servi de référence si je n'avais pas acheté le jeu. On retrouve le même type de "couche de feuilles superposées" dans le travail de arcadeHero, mais je n'avais pas le sommet des arbres. Chez Riankamos, en revanche, j'avais bien le dessus aussi, mais le style n'est pas vraiment pertinent pour Bilou

@arcadeHero

@RianKamos

EagleIsland