RETURN TO TIMELINE PAGE
What is Magma Blast?
A Super-Nintendo/arcade-style top-down puzzle-action game for PC and Mac. You've got FIVE minutes to race around sprawling, vibrant maze arenas and sink a gallery of foes with rainbow-coloured energy blasts. Your goal? Score a wealth of points, stack up combo chains and beat Magma Blast's dizzying range of pulse-pounding challenges!
DOWNLOAD INSTRUCTIONS AND LINKS AT BOTTOM OF PAGE
What do you need to know about Magma Blast?
In transferring The Gate from RPG Maker XP to MV, there was a notable problem: RPG Maker MV games run, when ready, at 60 frames-per-second, as opposed to XP's games, which run at 20 FPS. I had to alter a lot of The Gate's programming in order to adjust for MV's frame rate. This required a lot of tedious gameplay testing. To make things more fun for myself, I put together a simple five-minute game in a basic arena maze, using the game as my testing map.
Funny thing was, that five-minute game felt more fun to play than The Gate! Once I finished up the testing, I felt the need to flesh this five-minute game out a little more.
Ten weeks later, Magma Blast was developed!
Since I had to learn a completely new way of building maps in order to transfer The Gate to RPG Maker MV, I decided, instead of continuing work on The Gate, to focus on Magma Blast until it was finished. On top of the lengthy development that got me as far as The Gate Beta, it would take many more months to transfer The Gate to RPG Maker MV. In that same stretch of time, I could, I thought to myself, work on promoting Magma Blast as a finished product and developing YesMode's social media presence. That, ultimately, was the decision I made.
I'll discuss how I promoted Magma Blast in more detail with the YesMode Blog post. For now, I will talk about the GAME Magma Blast, which, like The Gate, aimed to avoid stirring up "GamerGate" impulses in the player, such as anger, apathy and aggressiveness.
In trying to build an atmosphere where fun, excitement and challenge could happen without rage, I looked at every element of Magma Blast and asked "could this moment ruin the game and frustrate the player?" I wanted players to make mistakes but always think "Maybe I can pull this back, even if I make a mistake." I structured the game around this never-quit mindset.
In Challenge Mode, you could repeatedly do a bad job on one challenge and think "I can make up the points on a different challenge." If your combo chain breaks, you can think "I'll build the next chains higher and get my points back." If you play with advanced rules and lose the Endurance Bubble Gem, you think "just build some high combo chains and KEEP GOING."
If you're stuck on Challenge Mode, kick around on free-play for a bit. Make progress there and keep up the practice that will help you beat Challenge Mode later. If you can't score high on free-play mode, switch arenas and rules. You always have something to do other than get angry and quit.
To end each game, you HAVE to last out five minutes, so players cannot let themselves rage-quit mid-game. They must overcome rage, stay calm and focus on what tactics to implement next (which adjust on the fly, given the darting arena layouts and unpredictable placement of opponents). Within five minutes, rage from mistakes has time to subside and players have chance to think their mistakes through. When they try the challenge again, they will dive back in determined, not upset.
There are too many games that fill players with rage where they should be filling the players with determination, and these kinds of games contribute to a negative gaming landscape. Magma Blast is designed on every level to minimise rage and enhance everything else that is fun and beneficial about playing games; strategic cunning, fearless gusto and cathartic triumph.
Oh, and since Magma Blast is only five minutes a game, you can play as long or as little as you want, fit it into your day and still get a good, meaty gaming experience out of it. No messing around, just a pure, genuine game in it's most straightforward form. No death, no violence, no guns, no explosions, no murder, but ALL of the thrills that gamers associate with those things.
Magma Blast shouldn't be the last game I make with Magma in the starring role, and neither should The Gate be! I have a LOT of ideas in the pipeline for Magma.
Want those ideas to reach you in finished-game form? Please go to patreon.com/lenaray - That's...
...and donate to keep my game-making career alive!
MINIMUM PC SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS TO PLAY MAGMA BLAST
OS: Windows 7/8/8.1/10
PROCESSOR: Intel Core2 Duo or better
GRAPHICS: DirectX 9/Open GL 4.1 capable GPU
MINIMUM MAC SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS TO PLAY MAGMA BLAST
OS: Mac OSX 10.10 or better
PROCESSOR: Intel Core2 Duo or better
GRAPHICS: Compatible Open GLR
HOW TO DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL WINDOWS MAGMA BLAST
1 - Click where it says DOWNLOAD MAGMA BLAST: WINDOWS VERSION at the bottom of this page.
2 - After downloading the .zip file named "Magma Blast - Windows," go to your Downloads folder, right click on the .zip file, select "Extract Files" and click OK (or "Extract All," then "Extract" if that's what your computer says).
3 - Open the extracted folder, also named "Magma Blast - Windows" and open the file inside named "Magma Blast."
4 - That's it! Enjoy the game!
HOW TO DOWNLOAD AND INSTALL MAC MAGMA BLAST
1 - Click where it says DOWNLOAD MAGMA BLAST: MAC VERSION at the bottom of this page.
2 - After downloading the .zip file named "Magma Blast - Mac," go to your Downloads folder, right click on the .zip file and select "Uncompress."
3 - Open the uncompressed folder named "Magma Blast" and open the file inside named "Game."
3 - You're done! Enjoy!
GAME CONTROLS
Arrow Keys: Move Player
Enter: Main Function Button (talk to people, select option, etc.)
Esc: Cancel Button + Pause/unpause game
D: Attack
S: Stun
F4: Turn Full-Screen On/Off
F5: RETURN IMMEDIATELY TO TITLE SCREEN (Save your game with Violet before using this key!)
NONE OF MY DOWNLOADS CONTAIN VIRUSES
I promise you from the bottom of my heart, and if I'm lying you can sue me, there are no viruses in these downloads, nothing that will hack you, no scams, nothing to worry about at all. I would never in my life upload anything unsafe to the internet. You'll just be downloading the .zip file to extract/uncompress, open and play. That's all there is to it!
WARNING: GAME CONTAINS VISUAL EFFECTS THAT MAY BE UNSUITABLE FOR PEOPLE WITH EPILEPSY.
>DOWNLOAD<
MAGMA BLAST: WINDOWS VERSION
>DOWNLOAD<
MAGMA BLAST: MAC VERSION
Any questions, confusion of compliments about Magma Blast? Leave a comment below!
- - NEXT POST - -
QUICK GUIDE TO MY PODCAST WORK - PART 2: POKEMON ANIME PODCAST
- - PREVIOUS POST - -
QUICK GUIDE TO MY GAME WORK - PART 3: THE GATE
No comments:
Post a Comment