Team

Shuhuai Li: Game Design

Ding Yuan: Game Design, TA & UI 

Shuangyang Ren: Character Design & Story Illustration

Qirong Yin: Scene Art & Icon Illustration

Ziyin He: Gameplay Programming

Game Background

CthuCthu's Bizarre Adventure is a third-person octopus runner game. CthuCthu is one of the most powerful ancient gods in the world. It lost its strength and was caught by scientists in the laboratory for experiments. One day it broke the container and escaped from the laboratory. Escape from it... 

Players can stick to the wall by stretching out CthuCthu's eight tentacles to move, avoiding the laboratory's lasers during the movement. 

In the end, It found its original power and became the root of the universe.

How to Play

1. Q/W/E/A/D/Z/X/C to extend the legs. If the leg reaches objects, the player will be dragged in the direction of the leg.

2. Mouse can adjust the camera angle. However, the player facing will not change.

3. Press T to back to save point (where you collected the octopus power)

4. Press B to open/close the play guide

5. Max hp 2

6. Recover 1 hp every 5 seconds

7. Yellow laser: 1 damage

8. Red laser: 2 damage

Blockmesh to final

Design

At the early stage of designing this game, I referred to the movement system of Spider Royale (https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/spider-royale), which involved a rowing-like motion. I then designed a new movement system based on it (as mentioned above) and began to develop the game around this movement system.

Therefore, our goal can be considered confirmed: we want to create a "platformer game without jumping".

However, this is not an easy task. Taking Super Mario Odyssey as an example, platform games have gone through a long iteration, and their gameplay has been simplified and interesting, but this is based on the premise that players can jump. In the original Mario game, Mario needed to jump to stomp on enemies, and many bricks also required jumping to trigger. Even in the latest Super Mario Odyssey, jumping is still required.

Therefore, in order to recreate the three-dimensional gameplay experience of platform games, I attempted to design around the concept of "falling" and combined it with the movement of the octopus. I came up with a design that included a vertical tube with lasers, where players had to avoid the lasers while falling.