I'll be at GDC Play this year, booth PL104! Come say hi and check out Trial by Viking!

Hello gamedevnet. This is Trial by Viking. It's a side-scrolling platformer where you are a viking working as an agent of Odin. In unfamiliar lands, you will meet friends and foes, solve a few puzzles, and gain the powers needed to stop the trickster god, Loki. If you are able to survive tricky gauntlets of magic and steel, you will find yourself face to face with some of the worst terrors that the nine worlds have to offer. Good luck!

Features:

morph into a polar bear

control a flying Valkyrie through mazes of hazards

ride on the claws of a great owl like a zip line

fight a Kraken in a swimming pool

bombs, double jump, dash, grappling hook

an ice axe for freezing enemies and turning them in to stepping stones

Development of Trial by Viking started at the end of 2013. Honestly this game started out with an idea of mixing Ghosts and Goblins with Cut the Rope, because I thought that would be weird and cool, but it has grown into something so far from that. I really wanted to give the game a great feel, and some of the early concepts just weren't giving me a feel I thought was fun. I still make use of ropes and being able to cut them, but I have changed it so that you use an axe to cut ropes instead of some sort of mouse/touch system.

One of the things I had liked about Spelunky, is how different elements in the game can sort of interact with each other. I made sure that many of the elements in Trial by Viking can affect each other in maybe unexpected ways, which sets up some interesting situations. For instance, you may throw a boomerang to activate a switch that turns on a fan that can blow a block upward enough for you to push it onto a ledge with a pressure plate that opens a door.

I will add some more gifs soon so you can see some other interesting mechanics in action, and probably some combat as well.

Hey guys. Here's a quick gif of the gear mechanics. Gears can control a bunch of different level elements. You might need to connect certain gears together in order to be able to rotate them the correct way to unlock a passage for instance. I added this because it's something I haven't really seen around. It opens up some interesting situations level design wise, because it's not just an on/off switch, you can use it to move things between two values.

Working on all new parallaxing backgrounds, which I'll show some screens of soon.

Hey guys, I finally got some new animations for a Valkyrie character that's in the game. The idea was to have a few entire levels where the Valkyrie picks you up and flies upward as you steer her through hazards collecting sunstones. Here's the initial takeoff sequence so far.

I think this might be a good time to explain how the level and upgrade systems work, since it helps understand the game a lot better.

There are 150 levels, and completing each one unlocks the next. You need sunstones to purchase permanent upgrades for your character. I switched the currency system up a bit by making it persistent, meaning when you replay a level, all the sunstones that you have already found will be gone. It will tell you how many sunstones are remaining to be found for each level. This adds a bit of a treasure hunt element to the game.

Anyways, here is a quick snippet of the Hydra. It a really tough enemy that shoots fire balls from each of its heads, and if you get up in his face, he may try to swing you around a bit. You definitely don't want that.

For the story, I knew I wanted to touch on themes of betrayal and retribution, the circular nature of time in Norse mythology, and a kick ass love interest that plays an equal part in saving the world. I decided the best way to tell it was through game engine made cut scenes and scripted interactions with NPCs during levels as well. In this part of the story, our friend's feathered spy barely escapes. This is a WIP at this point, but I will update here as it get's more polished.

I've had this idea for a level that has rising water for a while now. I finally got around to it. You have 15 seconds of breath, and the water wakes up the anglers spread throughout the level. some other cool ideas were changing the pitch of the water rushing in sound, depending on whether you are submerged or not. eventually you will be able to get an upgrade from odin that doubles your breath time. all together i think it came out really cool.

Throughout the game, there are levels where you ride a viking long boat. This means you have to play fast and not miss the bus. Since I have other levels where you can actually swim in the water, I had to find a way to make this water lethal. So I added a megalodon