#lakefeperd

[blazehedgehog]

What do you think of the spark games?

I played most of the way through the original Spark after it was $5 last year and...

It was... fine. Just fine. I don't think I'd classify it as a great game. That's for a number of reasons, first being the story. Lake keeps trying to tell stories with the Spark games, and usually they aren't very good. Good on him for having storytelling aspirations but also I don't know if he handles feedback very well?

Spark 1 had a different story originally versus what it has now. The story it currently has was when Lake completely rewrote the story as an April Fools joke to be "lol random." Except he, uh, never changed it back after April Fools was over. So it's still got this clownshoes version of the original story.

The issue there is I think Spark 2 still references the original non-April-Fools version of the story. Spark 2 was its own narrative nightmare -- I remember he released a demo full of middle schooler swearing and got really grumpy when people made fun of him for "not understanding his vision" or whatever. It was around that time he replaced the story in Spark 1 with his monkeycheese April Fools joke plot. It’s fine that he wants to write story in to his games, but this whole “I can’t believe they think I’m wrong, I’ll teach them a lesson” way of reacting to criticism is more than just embarrassing, it’s downright concerning given the things I hear about that guy’s personality.

The real reason I'd say Spark 1 was only "fine" is that it finally got me to pin down what I didn't like about Sonic Before the Sequel and After the Sequel. If you weren't aware, something about those games has always bothered me on some level, but I could never pin down what it was that I didn't like about them.

Well, Spark finally shed some light on the situation: the levels have tons of ideas, but it ONLY has ideas. Game Design 101 is that games are a constant loop of teaching vs. testing. You teach the player how a new mechanic works, and then you test them on that mechanic with increasingly complex and stressful situations.

Here is a koopa troopa. Here's a koopa troopa in an enclosed space. Here's a koopa troopa that jumps. Here's three jumping koopa troopas in a group. Here's three jumping koopa troopas in an enclosed space. Every time the player gets too comfortable, you crank the dial up a little more.

Spark doesn't do this. It presents you with an idea, and that's just the idea. It never gets any more complex, it never gets any more difficult, the whole game's challenge curve is just a flat line.

But I get it. Difficulty balancing is one of the hardest parts of game development. It's very easy to make something way too hard by accident. There are worse fates than Spark having bland pacing. Again, the game is "fine." It's not a 10/10, maybe not even an 8/10, but we'll say it's a solid 7. It is okay.

[roposhipin]

*headbangs to The Special Boss Theme from Fark’s Story mode as i yell in panic, trying to survive said special boss ingame*

[latin-dr-robotnik]

It feels so satisfying to reach the halfway point of the level just as the music changes. Pretty much on time for the toughest vertical climbs :P

[radplays]

Indie Darlings - Spark The Electric Jester

This game rules so very much. Like it's so fun and satisfying to play. I honestly spend most of the video marking out at everything.  This game was made by the game peep who made Sonic Before The Sequel and Sonic After The Sequel, and with that kind of pedigree, you know this is some good stuff.

It's not perfect, because there are some crashes that happen in this video, but it's still MAD COOL, so I don't mind that much. You can get this game on steam right now over here:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/601810/

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[blazehedgehog]

So every few years, Lakefeperd resurfaces his “XF” project. I believe it started out as a riff on Stunt Race FX (called “XF Racing Institute”), but has slowly grown in to its own thing. I think it even predates the release of Spark the Electric Jester on Steam, surprisingly enough.

This year, it resurfaced again, now as “XF Drive” looking completely different and very sharp. I couldn’t help but make a short video showing it off. It’s essentially a driving game, but it takes queues from 3D Sonic level design -- so you have booster pads, twisting roads, a drift system, and so on.

I’ve had a weird relationship with Lake’s games. He’s an extremely talented person, but you could feel how quickly Sonic: Before the Sequel and Sonic: After the Sequel were made, or at least I could.

I don’t want to say too much about the Spark the Electric Jester games, since I only played those in demo form and as of yet haven’t found the time to buy or play either of the Steam games. But those demos could be rough, too.

XF Drive, though, is maybe the first game of his where the moment I picked it up, it instantly felt amazing. The video doesn’t show the entire demo, it does leave out the boss fight track, which could use a little more something (maybe boost pads scattered the road around that you have to hit to catch up to the tank faster?)

But the rest of this is very, very, very good. I would play a whole game of this. It’s a shame, then, that on the game’s SAGE booth, Lake says this is not his “next big project.” I get why that might be. I think half the reason this looks as good as it does is because it recycles music and assets from both Spark the Electric Jester games, so it’s not really its own game right now. But, man, I wish it was.

(Also I typo “Feperd Games” as “Fepard Games”, which is something I do a lot, but usually I catch it before it goes out. I didn’t, this time, and I can’t go back and edit the video now to fix it, either.)

[latin-dr-robotnik]

Though I've been slowly distancing myself from Sonic recently, I found much to love in speeding through Spark the Electric Jester 2!

Its levels are like the 3D Sonic fan attempts that rely more on physics than automation, and even though the difficulty curve isn't really fun in later stages, the first half of the game has some great and memorable levels to try and get the speed run medals.

What? Haven't you heard about Spark?

Spark the Electric Jester is a indie videogame series developed by Felipe Ribeiro Daneluz, also known as LakeFeperd, from Sonic Before the Sequel, After the Sequel and Sonic Chrono Adventure fame. The first game was a 2D love letter to Sonic, Kirby and even MGR, while Spark the Electric Jester 2 marks the series' transition to 3D: with lots of inspiration from Sonic Adventure and Heroes, and a darker, "edgier" storyline like Adventure 2 and Shadow. It's a fun game to play (even though I didn't like its story) and has a stellar soundtrack.

I've been pumping video after video about my best level times. They are kinda far from what dedicated speedrunners can achieve, but I'm having so much fun I don't care.

[blazehedgehog]

@lakefeperd has put out a new demo for Fark the Electric Jester, which I find to be interesting and weird.

Spark the Electric Jester, the original game, was sort of like Freedom Planet insofar as it wore its Sonic influences on its sleeve. Fark, then, has the guts to attempt to take those Sonic influences and bring them in to the third dimension.

The results, at least as far as this April 2018 demo go, are mixed. There’s some smart ideas, here -- wide roads, no scripting, a clear delineation between running, platforming and combat segments, and an interesting take on Sonic’s homing attack: it now has its own devoted button, and can be used whenever you want. The catch is that not all enemies are susceptible to the homing attack, so sometimes its only really useful for closing the gap so you can switch to melee.

Melee is one of the weakest parts of this demo. It’s pretty clear Lake is trying to ape Platinum games here, and while the idea might be sound, the execution needs a lot of work. You’ll note in this video I end up running past a lot of enemies simply because they take too long to deal with. The game is telling you to go fast, go fast, go fast, but then also asks you to stop and bonk on a robot, sometimes for up to a full minute or more. The timing on the parry is too tight, the combat doesn’t feel fluid enough, and I still haven’t been able to land a single hit on those guys with the shields.

It’s nice that the game lets you run past them, because I’d rather just avoid those encounters, but if that was the case, why spend time putting that combat in the game at all? Why devote all those buttons, spend all that time on animation, for something I’d rather ignore?

I also started to get really tired of running by the end of this video. Even if it’s just scattering gems around the road to make you steer more to collect them, there needs to be more gameplay to the running segments than just holding forward. There’s no risk, reward, pass or fail for the most part. You just watch Fark run and try not to bump walls.

Also not pictured here are the cutscenes. An earlier version of this video was going to be the entire demo, but with all three levels, the boss and cutscenes, it came out to nearly 20 minutes. I’d thought about just making a version of the video without cutscenes, which probably would’ve been around 14 minutes, but that would’ve been weird. The cutscenes are also kind of... bad, to be honest. Not poorly animated or anything like that, but they tend to go on for a while for what appears to be a very average video game storyline. There’s also an issue with the villains swearing like sailors, which gives the game a very low brow “I’m a teenager on Newgrounds in 2004” vibe. It’s one of those things where just because you could put swearing in your game doesn’t mean you have to, and you certainly don’t have to put THAT much in. It’s a little cringeworthy.

But y’all can just try the demo for yourself, I guess.

[mashounen2003]

Visit Original Link

I was playing through an old demo of Sonic After the Sequel, mainly to see if it still had placeholder music or already had the original soundtrack featured in the game's final release.

On the first level (the only playable one in this demo), I recognised most of the music... except for this song here, used as the placeholder for Act 2.

It's pretty nice nonetheless, so I'll upload it here. If anyone else recognises this song, feel free to let me know.