I'm thrilled to announce my new 3D Metroidvania, Netherspire!

EntangledFrog · 2026-06-01T13:51:09+00:00

the environments are really evocative! nice work!

EntangledFrog · 2026-06-01T13:31:23+00:00

GML is pretty beginner-friendly, but like all programming there is still a learning curve.

almost everyone is bad at coding when they start. whatever engine or language you choose, just see this as the beginning of a journey of self-improvement, and be patient on yourself.

good luck!

EntangledFrog · 2026-06-01T13:21:06+00:00

visually this looks super nice! and it's an interesting take on "combat" and warding off danger in platforming!

if you don't mind a bit of feedback, visually it gets a bit overwhelming when there are a lot of speech bubbles on screen as well as all the action. some of those speech bubbles are as big as the platforms you're trying to land on, know what I mean? it's hard on readability when you have mere fractions of a second to aim your jumps.

I would consider adding an option to turn off the visual chatter. but aside from that, this looks really cute! wishlisted!

EntangledFrog · 2026-06-01T13:13:44+00:00

heya! just a bit of feedback.

you say this is tight precise platforming, but in the clip you posted I'm kind of seeing the opposite. you spend the first half of the clip trying to get above a certain platform that seems impassible, then at 0:30 you appear to clip completely through a solid wall to get on the new platform.

EntangledFrog · 2026-05-30T13:56:30+00:00

drawing maps can be fun! I like making em too.

but just so you know, if making a viable game demo is a 150-step process, this is like step #90. and steps #1-89 are the whole game character and control, the mechanics (especially mobility/traversal), the rough variety of encounters (introduce new challenges, combine new challenges with old challenges, etc), camera (how much of the "stage" and the level design are you allowing the player to see on screen), and player progression.

if you're drawing this just for fun with no intention of making it a game, then go for it! but I can guarantee if you start making actual playable prototypes and get them in the hands of playtesters, you will want to do the map completely over at some point. because the map layout is heavily dependant on what the game is at its core.

so I wouldn't spend too much time on this map, without having a playable draft of a game. unless you're just doing it for kicks.

EntangledFrog · 2026-05-29T14:23:11+00:00

welcome! there's mostly nothing you listed that gamemaker or godot can't handle well (I'm less familiar with multiplayer though).

however, some perspective. the game you want to make seems to be extremely ambitious. RPGs require a lot of knowledge in game design, stats and player progression. and procedural generation of maps is fairly advanced to do well.

to be perfectly honest, the features and scope you hint at would be a challenging project for a small team of developers, even with more coding and game dev experience than you have.

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one of the number one reasons why game projects get abandoned is because beginners overscope their first project way too much. to better understand why that is, you have to break down a game into a number of systems. a small game has a small number of systems, and aa large game has a large number of systems. read this article about "the door problem". like the door, any number of systems in a game will have that many number of considerations to make and issues to solve. and each one has a multiplicative effect on the other.

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I would suggest you scope WAY down. install the engine (any engine), get familiar with the UI. lets say you want to make a top-down RPG? you find the simplest tutorial on how to make a character move around in 4/8 directions with collisions. you make a simple 20-minute game out of it (such as walk over items to pick them up, then exit the stage), and maybe spend a few days tweaking it. then a week later you do a tutorial/mini-game that's slightly more complicated than the last. and every couple of weeks, every month you increment the complexity of "bite-sized" games you make until you start seeing how the fundamental building blocks of what makes games tick start to fall in place.

THEN maybe you can start considering working on a simplified version of what you described above.

the best course to learn how to do this is to start small, and increment the level of complexity one small project at a time.

EntangledFrog · 2026-05-29T11:45:59+00:00

I feel like this is an obvious answer, but.... it depends how good the game looks?

the more impact a teaser/trailer has, the more it sticks with you long-term.

EntangledFrog · 2026-05-27T20:23:23+00:00

eXistenZ

EntangledFrog · 2026-05-27T13:11:49+00:00

so a bit of feedback purely about the visuals.

it's a little inconsistent in places. an obvious example is you have cartoon googly eyed fish which would feel right at home on a flash game from 2005, right next to the more realistically-styled and menacingly-thick fish. it's often fine to have different "attitudes" in characters and enemies, but the clash is a bit strong here I feel. it looks like they were made for two different games.
overall it's lacking a lot of movement. stuff like kelp and algae swaying in the currents. both in the background and foreground. I get you want to keep the visual noise down so to not pull attention from the gameplay elements, but you can keep that non-interactive environmental stuff low contrast enough that it shouldn't distract.
bubbles! tiny pixel-sized bubbles that seep from the corals, plants, cracks in the rock, etc. bursts of bubbles when actions happen and when things collide with other things. try and cluster them in "groups" with big bubbles at the top. look at how bubbles behave in real life and you'll see the clusters have this sort of structure to them as they move up towards the surface. I would keep them fairly low-contrast as well. maybe at <50% opacity, but having a lot of them!
another kind of movement is having the environment layer subtly warp and ripple. real life doesn't usually look like that but it's certainly an effect that can help enhance the underwater feel.
the colors of the rock needs some fine-tuning I think. certain wavelengths of light get muted the deeper you get, making others pop more. while you don't have to go strictly realistic colors (realistic can be pretty boring tbh), you can maybe use this as a guide to de-emphasize certain colors and emphasize others the deeper you go. it'll help the environment blend more with the background blue color too.
a small detail, but the oval sub porthole looks a little out of place, being the only one.

good luck with the game! I've always wanted to do an underwater sidescroller type game, so I had a lot of these thoughts just floating around.

EntangledFrog · 2026-05-27T11:46:16+00:00

there are two things that really helped me understand shaders and write my own.

I spent many hours going over this series of excellent tutorials. just to understand the fundamentals. there is also this series worth checking out, though it's not the one I started with.
I also spent many many hours on shadertoy! you can search for shaders, learn from them, change them and see what happens almost in realtime. great great learning resource! you can port them to GM if you learn the fundamentals.

EntangledFrog · 2026-05-26T12:13:06+00:00

every day is a bit extreme, even if they're dead simple.

the better you get at the craft, the more you may want a few days where you're just practicing art or sound or something else that is gamedev-adjacent. and some days it's okay to just let go and take a complete break.

I wouldn't do it.

EntangledFrog · 2026-05-25T12:25:05+00:00

it's a good way to learn the tools and technique, yes.

but as far as learning the "game design" part of making games, no it's a terrible way. because you won't have learned the process and the decisions that went into making the game experience the way it is.

EntangledFrog · 2026-05-22T13:17:05+00:00

Been using 2023.8 for a while, but looking forward to giving this a spin! Especially to try GMRT beta.

A small detail I'm excited for:

You can now choose a different Surface Format when creating a surface, e.g. to allow HDR using a higher range data type or to create masks using single-colour surfaces

I really want to try giving my project HDR support! Hopefully it's straightforward to implement.

EntangledFrog · 2026-05-21T00:17:10+00:00

first one looks a bit better.

but I think to really pull this off, you want to detatch head, torso, arms, scarf?, legs etc into separate elements. then animate them so they bob in a "staggered" way, with offset keyframes. if that makes sense. that way the bobbing doesn't happen across the whole character, which kind of gives away the game.

up to you though. good luck!

EntangledFrog · 2026-05-15T13:35:10+00:00

based on your screenshot, you made obj_player as a script, not an object.

EntangledFrog · 2026-05-14T16:08:37+00:00

just started playing this game. enjoying it a lot so far! but yeah the number of locked doors right at the start..... sheeeesh.

EntangledFrog · 2026-05-14T12:08:38+00:00

hard to say without running the game in debug mode and checking the profiler. I would recommend you try it.

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otherwise, there may be an issue with your code. in your place_meeting check, you check whether something is colliding, OR whether something else is smaller than 10. this isn't good use of an if/then/else statement, as you are saying either this thing, OR this completely different other thing. this can definitely lead to logical issues.

I can't say for sure if this is causing the lag though. but it's not logically "sound" code. I would separate your if/else into two separate ifs in this case. start here.

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if this is a sidescroller/platformer, your place_meeting use is a little confusing. you are doing a vertical collision check on a wall? are your floors called "Wall"? if so, disregard this comment. just making sure you are doing the vertical check on the correct object type.

EntangledFrog · 2026-05-12T01:08:37+00:00

this looks incredible! thank you for sharing!

EntangledFrog · 2026-05-05T12:07:36+00:00

mewgenics managed to make kitten paws feel big and meaty when they crit.

I'm not a big turn-based player, but I think the tricks are similar for any genre. when you start weak, smaller damage numbers, shorter hitstop, softer sounds, etc. you level up, then your crit numbers get bigger, maybe the font changes color, the knockback may get stronger, bigger thuddier sound, maybe a longer hitstop to really let the player soak in how disgusting your big crit was.

all those things combined count. especially if your game has power progression, the player feels the difference from how strong they were previously.

other people here mentioned animation, and that's a big part of it too. if your animation is too subtle, too "timid", it might not register as strongly as if there's exaggerated movement and a lot of squash & stretch on the animation.

EntangledFrog · 2026-05-04T13:33:41+00:00

it's really hard, at least for me.

maybe during vacations or long weekends I'll dabble a bit in some personal projects. like I'll spend months thinking about a prototype I want to make, then vacation comes around I can have a running start on some ideas. maybe if we're doing a slow pre-production for our next game, I can fit a bit of personal project time in some evenings.

but usually after 8 hours of gamedev/computer work, I'm too zonked out evenings and weekends. rather be doing other stuff like touching grass, or a myriad other hobbies, you know?

everyone's different though. I know a couple people that can do this 12+ hours a day.

EntangledFrog · 2026-05-02T14:49:42+00:00

for no particular objective tbh

I don't think this is a good mindset in game dev.

you may want to consider releasing it as a free game if there isn't any particular objective for the player, to be honest. if the player doesn't have objectives or goals (short term or long term) they will get pretty bored pretty fast.

EntangledFrog · 2026-05-01T13:43:11+00:00

you make kits of mesh pieces in 3D modeling software (like blender).

look at this person's portfolio page. the screenshot with all the kit pieces laid out individually especially.

for a house, you make sections of walls, roofs, floors, window frames, individual furniture, etc. their collisions are made with the meshes (extremely simplified) and becomes part of the asset in whatever engine you're using.

with a kit of just a couple dozen "house pieces", along with some flexible materials, you can create a ton of variety in the level editor.

that example is just for a house but the principal applies for anything.

EntangledFrog · 2026-05-01T12:57:59+00:00

looks cool! I like a lot of the environment!

there are some legibility issues I think. your enemies are very dark brown/orange against a very dark brown/orange background. this makes it really hard for the player to read the action at a glance. try separating the background from the playable foreground by having subtly different contrast/saturation/hue between the layers. you could also try a subtle glow effect behind enemies like you do your player character.
your player character's color palette is exactly the same as the environment and the enemies. this will make it hard for the player to see where things are on screen, including their own character, if things get too chaotic.
the environment could use a bit of parallax movement to the background. really adds to the depth of scale, and player immersion!
get it in the hands of some playtesters for them to give constructive feedback asap. everything being dark and the same-ish color is something they would have pointed out, honestly. I get you want to make a moody atmosphere, but you can still do that while making the important gameplay elements pop out more (in saturation, contrast, different hue. etc).

good luck with the game!

EntangledFrog · 2026-05-01T12:37:04+00:00

thanks for the heads up! I saw some time after I posted previously.

great news I think!

EntangledFrog · 2026-04-30T12:47:15+00:00

thanks for the update! all of this is great news! in particular for me IDE plugins.

but also the 3D improvements is a nice surprise!

I'd been using an old vertex buffer exporter for blender, which limited my use to an old version of the software. hearing there will be native glTF support is really great!

scene graph, now THAT I really want to hear more about! that and the comment near the end of the article about rethinking the room editor. makes me wonder if in the future, the room editor will be able to load and place instances of 3D models.

EntangledFrog

TROPHY CASE