Tower of God Game Progress

You just can't get indier than this...

 I would never in a million years consider myself a game designer, but I do like to goof around now and then. For a few years, I've VERY sporadically worked on a little platformer styled after an old school Gameboy game. I shelved this project in my senior year of college because I didn't have time to work on it, but lately have found a GREAT deal of free time and picked up "development" all over again. After about a week of work, I've just about finished the first stage, and thought I'd share.

The game is all about vertical movement, not unlike the initial stages of Kid Icarus on the NES. I decided to emphasize this by using a particularly tall screen, so the player always has a good idea of what is above and below them. For most of the actual platforming sections, the screen only scrolls vertically, but there are occasionally horizontally scrolling sections. Initially the entire screen would resize according to the scene, but I decided to just stick with the tall orientation.

The idea for the game originally came from a thought I had about a hero that fell from the sky. Having fallen from some mysterious height, the stranger would attempt to reach the heavens and discover the cause of his fall. To accommodate this concept, I thought of a Tower, the top of which is is hidden in the clouds, that the player would have to ascend. I really wanted a scene of the Tower reaching into the clouds, which was initially why I experimented with the tall screen, but it ended up suiting the gameplay pretty well.

I still have a few kinks to work out, particularly in the boss fight, which is functional but could be a bit more exciting. As soon as I'm satisfied, I'll try to get a demo up here. Until then, enjoy the screen shots!