The game's finally released! Hope you all enjoy it as much as I did making it!
Gameplay
HAKAI is a momentum based aerial fighting game that takes cues from Dragonball Z.
Win three rounds to beat your opponent. If the timer runs out, whoever has the lower amount of health wins, and if the players' health are equal it's a draw.
You can choose whatever combination of character, bullet and super type you want. All changing character does is pick your color, though if you're in Practice mode, the character of your opponent matches the AI that character would have in Arcade mode.
Arcade Mode
The 28th HAKAI Tournament has begun! Do you have what it takes to win?
In this mode you can fight four increasingly-difficult AI opponents across the four maps.
Local Versus
Fight against your friend!
The camera is set to zoom out much further to try to keep both players inside the screen at all times.
Practice
No time limit and infinite health versus a dummy.
You can use the menu to enable/disable the dummy AI and command info. You will select the dummy's character and skills after confirming yours.
Controls:
Movement and Jumps
Input left and right with the arrow keys to move on the ground. If you have some speed and input the opposite direction you will skid.
Press Z/C on the ground to jump. If you jump while skidding you will "side jump" which cancels all your horizontal speed.
Hold down before jumping to super jump, adding much more vertical speed. You can also do "super side jumps"!
Dodging
Press Z/C while airborne to dodge in the direction held with the arrow keys. If no direction is held you will dodge in whatever direction you are moving.
Hold Z/C while a direction is held to fly. This drains energy, but you can still fly when you have none left.
-Flying is a fast movement option and good for covering large distances.
Charging
Hold Z/C while no direction is held to charge energy. Charging for longer increases the speed at which energy is gained. You will also slow down and stop moving, even in midair.
Physical Attacks
Press X/V while a direction is held to do a dash.
-The dash will auto track towards the opponent, and will automatically do a strike upon reaching them.
-The direction held will choose the direction of the initial burst of speed.
Hold X/V during a dash to start a heavy dash.
-The heavy strike deals more damage and stun, and launches the opponent much farther.
-The heavy dash gives an addition speed burst and is overall faster, but doesn't track as much making it easier to dodge it.
-During a heavy dash,energy will be drained.
-You cannot start a heavy dash if your energy bar is gray.
If you press X/V while no direction is held you can cancel a dash. You cannot cancel a heavy dash!
Projectiles
Press X/V while no direction is held to shoot a projectile.
-Projectiles auto aim and track on their own. They consume some energy to fire. You cannot fire a projectile without enough energy!
-There are four kinds of projectile: Bullet, Heavy, Sniper, and Track.
-Bullet has a higher fire rate.
-Heavy has a low fire rate but is larger and deals more damage and stun.
-Sniper travels faster than the others.
-Track travels slowly but follows the opponent very well.
Supers
Hold X/V while no direction is held and your energy bar is flashing to charge a super!
-There are four kinds of super: Barrage, Nova, Beam, and Bomb.
-All supers interrupt and damage players, even during dash or heavy dash.
-While charging and firing a super you are immune to only projectiles. You are not immune to either kind of dash attack or any super.
-The exception is the Nova attack, which after charged is immune to any other attack, including supers.
-Beam will slow down a Nova.
-Only the "beam" part of Beam has a hitbox. You can flank the beam and strike the opponent's backside.
-If two beams collide they will do a beam clash. This restores energy to both players.
Stunning
All attacks stun the opponent a varying amount. The amount of stun a player has left is indicated by the combo meter.
-While stunned you cannot do anything! Stunning opponents and combo-ing them is key to doing more damage, so keep this in mind before using a heavy dash and launching the opponent far away.
-If a player hits the ground or the walls while stunned, they will receive more stun. All players bounce off the walls, but you need to hit the opponent hard into the ground to bounce them otherwise they will slide. "Bounces" deal more stun!
Blocking
All non-super projectiles and regular dashes can be blocked. This is done by holding the direction key opposite to where the attack is coming from.
-Use blocks to gain advantage on an opponent!
General Tips
-You can dodge while doing other attacks. Use this to aim the heavy attack.
-Your speed affects how far you launch an opponent upon doing a strike. Dodge into the opponent right before reaching them to launch them much further!
-The dash is invincible to projectiles. Be aggressive if the opponent is trying to zone you!
-If the opponents hit each other while both are doing a dash, they will bounce off each other.
-If they are in the heavy dash state, they will do a short clash animation before bouncing away. During the animation energy is restored to both players.
-If a player doing a heavy dash hits a player just doing a regular dash, the player doing the heavy dash will get the hit.
I like most of what you've got here, but there's a couple issues that ruin it for me. The biggest one is that the charging of energy will very often just not work. I hold the button right after doing something and then a little bit later I have to hold it again after finding out it didn't register. The second thing is that I can't tell at all what determines who gets to deal damage during a clash or when a combo is happening. The stun mechanic is completely opaque. The thing that made me stop playing though, is getting to the 4th character with the bomb special and noticing that the ai always deals more damage each bomb, even when I do exactly what the ai does, and then the ai also somehow shoots 2 bombs each full meter.
On the side of balance, it looked like the nova was allowing the ai to combo quite a bit after a strike. Given that it's an invincible attack that requires multiple dodges to avoid, that seems over-powered compared to the barrage and the beam. I can't tell how the bomb compares though, since I can't tell if it can be aimed. It just seems to go where ever it wants.
idk what you talking about kimiyoribaka i have beat the game the green girl is hard you just got to learn how to block btw there is alao a bug i guess the game well not let me move after like 4 sec in the menu i can still play its just i have to be fast what is annoying cuz i cant go to training or local because the game won't let me move after 5 seconds and the game so you hopefully you can fix that the only thing I can do is just rush to even play arcade mode the game is so cool though I figured out some stuff like blocking and clashing it's cool
LETS GOOOOOOO 4th TIME ITS SOOO HARDDDDD UGHHHH LOVE GGs
@arkhalis_king Heyyyy!!! Nice job!!! The green girl was made to be hard even for me, congratulations for getting that dub!
I can't reproduce the five second delay you're talking about on my phone or my pc. In case it's a framerate issue, I'm going to try upping the performance of the main menu, let me know if it changes anything!
@kimiyoribaka First of all thanks for playing!
In regards to the bomb attack, it doesn't track as much as the other projectiles to make it easier to dodge. As for how it aims, it's initial speed is influenced by the player's, you're able to make the bomb fly faster towards the opponent if you're already moving towards the opponent yourself. Also the AI isn't firing two at once, rather it's charging up immediately after it fires one; which I agree it is very annoying, so I'm tweaking that.
The nova super does a lot of stun but it should launch the opponent hard enough that the user can't reach them and continue a combo unless they set up some ground/wall bounces.
The one place I found where the charging doesn't work right is when landing on the ground in certain situations, I fixed that, if you still have problems with it can you let me know what circumstance you're in where it occurs? After what specific attack etc.
I found a way to get through the game now without freezing after the first five seconds I just have to keep on pressing pause unpause and then it will unfreeze for like 2 seconds that gives me enough time to move and select I guess
Wow, this is so cool!
Just one thing: I'm not sure if this is the case for all the fights, but in the last one I cheesed the fight 3 of the 5 times by immediately doing charged attacks over and over, not allowing them to do anything.
It was all down to if they flew up immediately or not, as when in the sky you can't properly trap them in a loop.
So for weaker hardware, games in 60fps in pico-8 will not do _draw() calls every frame, which in this case means the calls for the main menu weren't happening every frame.
This is completely my fault (it's bad practice to update variables in the _draw() function) and I'm going to have it fixed soon
Cool, Super awesome game. Been waiting for this. Love the backgrounds and the gameplay. Played local verses with a friend. After 3 rounds it always says player 1 wins, even if player 2 won. Also, some main menu words pop up if you select "rematch." Otherwise we had a blast, thanks for making it!
btw are there going to be new Characters and Powers or is it just the full game and this is it cuz I was wondering if we can make up our own characters that might be added to the game? :)
@arkhalis_king whoaaa nice highscore! btw your idea about creating our own character sounds good! hehe BD
@ryzorm hey, it makes me happy you're having fun with the versus mode! Can't believe I missed that bug ( @kevin20P mentioned as well), it is now fixed.
@arkhalis_king No new characters, this is the full game! If/when I make a bigger version of this it'll be in something that isn't limited like PICO-8. As far as what that'll look like and what sort of characters, it will be a a long while before I can show anything.
also man you guys are going crazy with the completion times... nice!
yo bro you should add colors that the players can change on the characters it would look really cool mite take some time just asking idk why i stillmplay it its just really fun to play
Theres a glitch where you hold down charge whilst you spam projectiles and you never run out of energy
You know how there’s a bit of space under each character’s shot/super? You could fill those spaces with 8 more alt shots/supers, 1 of each kind for each character.
This game is really fun[Please log in to post a comment]
