Mommy's Best Games, Inc. is an independent game developer founded in 2007. This is a view behind the scenes of our game development and marketing!

Nathan

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Serious Gameplay and Replay

Gameplay
First off, let's see some of the insane action in motion for Serious Sam Double D!


That was the first official gameplay trailer for the game. There will be some more trailers highlighting various aspects such as the GunStacker system.

Replayability
With a few weeks before release, Serious Sam Double D has undergone a drastic but excellent change that heavily increases the replayability of the game.

Previously the game followed a simple structure: You battled your way from the start to the end, finding powerups and cool secrets. But if you happen to miss anything, the only real way to get it was to start from the beginning again and hope to remember where it was.
Level Select screen letting you replay any level again, with all your gear.
Not anymore!
Now Sam has a Persistent Inventory system which means any gun, connector, secret, or challenge you happen to find, he gets to keep in any level. Plus, you can replay any previous level you've been!
Yes, you can take all the guns you've been collecting all along the way and head back to easier, previous levels any time you want and search for more hidden guns, secrets, or challenges tucked about.

So while initially you may have only had access to 3 guns in the first level, you can battle half way through the game, then replay the first level, now with something more like 12 guns and tons of connectors! Then you can find more weapons, then head *back* to level 7 or 8 (or wherever you were) with yet-more guns to better even the odds.
Starting level 1 from scratch with the Machine Pistol.
Returning to level 1 with a 5 gun stack, ready to fine more loot!

Plus we have good news that the Secrets menu is working great. You can look any time you want at secrets you've unlocked and revisit the funnier ones, or just use it to know how many are still to be found. And because the inventory is persistent, you can simply play from whatever secret you visit and any more powerups you find will be added to your inventory for access in later levels or your current one.

The black arrow is pointing to the little treasure box icon that shows up when you're near a secret.

And one extra helper is the Treasure icon. It definitely doesn't make it too easy, but it does fade in slowly if you're getting warm when finding a secret.

5 comments:

Kevin said...

WOW! The game is fast paced. I could not tell from the screen shots, until seeing the game in action.

The fast pace of the game kind of reminds me of Gunstar Heroes for the Sega Genesis.

Oh yeah, and the game looks fun.

Nathan Fouts said...

Thanks Kevin!
The Sega Genesis is my favorite console, so I'm happy to hear it reminds you of that (and Gunstar!)

The game's intense, but playable, much like the 3D Serious Sam games.

Matt said...

The persistent inventory sounds great! Reminds me a bit of the Castle Crashers weapon system, which is definitely a good thing.

Ádám said...

I seriously ( :) ) cannot wait for this game! It has what's really missing from games these days: frenetic fun, fluid controls, and colourful environments. (And colourful is a weak word, the whole art style of the game deserves praise!)

This is exactly what I was looking for the summer, and to my surprise, after the demise of Duke (which I never thought would happen), my only hope is in Serious Sam. From the gameplay videos and screenshots, I'm already conviced. :)

Any word on multiplayer? I know that it's hard to work out the online part for smaller developers, but that would be just the tip of the iceberg on an already great game!

Greetings from Hungary, and good luck for polishing up the game! :)

Nathan Fouts said...

@Matt
Great! The inventory is not as big as CC but it's pretty substantial and definitely adds a lot to replay.

@Ádám
Multiplayer won't happen at launch unfortunately. We had to finish the game before Serious Sam BFE and in order to do that, we couldn't make an excellent single-player *and* multi-player.

That said, it's possible we may had some off-line coop after launch.
Very happy your so excited about it, I'm confident it will deliver an great experience!