Xmas Hell

[Noxalus]

Hello world!

I’m here to present you a little Android game I made for christmas, exclusively on my free time, for fun (free, no ads, no in-app purchases) and using MonoGame.

It’s an hardcore shoot them up where you have to defeat the ten Santa’s minions. There are achievements and leaderboards for every boss.

PLAY HERE

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It’s an alpha version, so please give me your feedbacks to enhance the experience until I release the final version for christmas

For whom that are interested in technical details or the story about the game development, it’s just below this line:

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Since 2 years yet, we decided with a friend as a challenge to make a small mobile game related to christmas with simple rules: the developement must start at the end of the year (end of october or at the beginning of november) and we have to release it on a store before the december 24th. The main goal of this is to learn new technologies, new way to make assets, etc…

The first year, I learned to use Libgdx, a game framework in Java, in addition with Box2D to handle a semi-realistic physics. At the end, I published a game called Xmas Tower, my very first game released on the Play Store.

This year, I wanted to written the game in C# using MonoGame. And this time, the idea was to make a danmaku using BulletML, an XML based langage to describe bullet patterns.

For the artistic part, I discovered the wonderful world of vector graphics with Inkscape, which allow any developeur without artistic talent, like me, to make its own game assets. I switched in the middle of the project:

In parallel, I also learned to use Spriter to make 2D skeletal animations, that works pretty well with vector graphics.

I also took time to understand the importance of having CI and used AppVeyor in combination with HockeyApp to quickly provide test versions on Android.

Please note that the game is open source and available on Github here.

I’m not really talkative, but sometimes I write some messages on my current progress on Twitter, if you are interested, it’s here.

[Jjagg]

Great game! I really like the attack patterns! It’s really, really hard though Awesome that you released the source code too!

Would be nice if you could scale how much the character moves relative to how much you move your finger. I think it would be easier to control if the character moved more.

[Noxalus]

Thanks a lot for your answer @Jjagg

I planned to add a settings menu to change music/sounds volume and player move sensitivity, I just didn’t have the time to implement it before christmas

[BlizzCrafter]

Nice project!

Can I ask you where do you have the christmas midi files from?

I like them

PS: Nice and funny animations :>

[Noxalus]

Thanks @BlizzCrafter

You can find the MIDI files I used here (and the FL Studio project files here).

[BlizzCrafter]

Ah, you created them by yourself, nice work and thanks

[AcidFaucent]

@Noxalus

This year, I wanted to written the game in C# using MonoGame. And this time, the idea was to make a danmaku using BulletML, an XML based langage to describe bullet patterns.

I had never heard of BulletML … looks bloody fantastic.

[Noxalus]

@BlizzCrafter Unfortunatly, I didn’t create them myself, I just “cleaned” them a little with FL Studio. Originally, I found them on a website like this one (but it doesn’t seem to be this one…).

@AcidFaucent BulletML is really great, once you understood how it works, you can make really complex bullet patterns with a few lines

[guy120334913]

@Jjagg

Great game! I really like the attack patterns!

Yeah, I also like how the boss has a separate health bar for every pattern. It gives you a heads up on when the pattern is about to change. I don’t really play bullet hell games so idk if it’s your own idea @Noxalus , but I like how it’s implemented!

[Noxalus]

In the Touhou Project serie, the health bar is splitted in different parts to indicate the pattern will change, which is good, but I found it clearer when there is a specific health bar per pattern. Moreover, as a player, you have more the impression of progressing (you don’t know how many health bars are remaining, so you can still think it’s the last one ).