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This is Jack - a guy that met Satan and tricked him into promising to never take his soul He wasn't good enough for paradise either, so when he died he ended up in purgatory Death has now brought him back to life to deal with Satan's Halloween Shenanigans, in exchange for a solution to his Eternal Torment

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So during the past few days I have been making a number of improvements to the game according to feedback

First I increased the number of enemies around the map and put in some additional stuff trying to fill in the map, you can see the enemies in circles below. I had to implement a couple of lines of optimizations to avoid doing any calculations for this amount of enemies while out of sight, but it was easy.

more enemies

So now about half the level has a medium to high distribution of enemies.
I also added a tower to the level, which will be your destination. Just an asset from the asset store for now. Added some fires and voila:

road cover


Then I wanted to add some settings so that people could have at least a bit of control on performance in-game, before I roll out a complete set of controls. Someone mentioned motion blur was too much and I saw someone play with a low frame-rate and it was really bad.
So I added motion blur, bloom and ambient occlusion controls, since those are the heaviest effects.

new menu


Finally I created a live cursor, which recognizes enemies and tracks them if you can hit them, at the moment it is just a green particle effect, but the plan is to make her into a fully fledged character. Joan the Pixie will follow Jack around and give him hints, target enemies and have a voice, so that the game isn't as silent and lonely as it is now.

live cursor


Next on the agenda?

  • complete the level
  • make a navigation map
  • add more enemies and props
  • add interactive objects and characters

but first the map. You can download and play it now

New build: Bigger map and tons of fixes

New build: Bigger map and tons of fixes

News

More feedback came in from a few sources and repeat reviewers (fans!). One was a video and showed me something I would never do, others were descriptions...

Jack McLantern - How it all started

Jack McLantern - How it all started

News

So this is Jack McLantern – my take on the Jack o’ lantern myth – what happened after the guy who convinced Satan not to take his soul… well it’s...

Jack I don't feel so good

Jack I don't feel so good

Feature

Jack I don't feel so good - Dissolving zombies, knights and barrels.

Direction Based Hit Reaction

Direction Based Hit Reaction

Feature 4 comments

So my enemies were lacking some reactions to getting hit by weapons among other things that would make things more juicy, I decided to use the morning...

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Jack McLantern Alpha 0.3.8

Jack McLantern Alpha 0.3.8

Demo

Changed Jack's pants and some other slight adjustments to his model

Jack McLantern Alpha 0.3.7

Jack McLantern Alpha 0.3.7

Demo

Camera adjustment made to see if some issues on some PCs are fixed

Jack McLantern Alpha 0.3.6

Jack McLantern Alpha 0.3.6

Demo

Just a small update: - zombies and skeletons now throw some gravel when they come up from the ground - enemies get alerted to shots fired and axes thrown...

Jack McLantern Alpha 0.3.5

Jack McLantern Alpha 0.3.5

Demo

Added a church, tweaked mobs further, added various props and tweaked the level.

Jack McLantern Alpha 0.3.4

Jack McLantern Alpha 0.3.4

Demo

New build with a bunch of adjustments to the enemies to make sure they never lose their way. Let's see if it works.

Jack McLantern Alpha 0.3.3

Jack McLantern Alpha 0.3.3

Demo

Jack McLantern general update with small fixes too minute to list

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Guest
Guest

Are there bosses?

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koyima Creator
koyima

There will be bosses, yes.

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Guest
Guest

Will there be alternate costumes and stages?

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koyima Creator
koyima

yes and yes

Reply Good karma+2 votes
pkyrkos7
pkyrkos7

Greek Power <3

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koyima Creator
koyima

woop woop

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Guest
Guest

Will enemies be taken from Irish mythology?

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koyima Creator
koyima

Yes, but the majority will be more familiar classic game monsters.

Reply Good karma+1 vote
Guest
Guest

I love the idea of this game and its look. I think however that some of animations and sounds could use some work, though, especially in terms of the fireball and when the axe hits a target. I think what would be cool to see is something like a stylized aftereffect when the fireballs makes an impact, like it creates a skull/jackolantern face after it explodes or something. From a control scheme pov, I'm a little confused as to why jump isn't the A button and slide isn't the right bumper, as it would be simpler imo. One thing I am a little concerned about is enemy, stage and combat variety; granted, this is in its very early stages, and it looks very promising, but I'm somewhat concerned that there won't be variety as far as enemy types, attack patterns and that the combo would just be mindless hacking. I'm definitely keeping an eye on this. I wish you the best of luck.

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koyima Creator
koyima

I haven't uploaded the latest stuff on indiedb, check out the youtube channel for example: Youtube.com

Reply Good karma+2 votes
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