Randy & Manilla - Two sibs in a Quantum Travel (Early Access available)

[ofihombre7]

Sooo.... how did your game got verified by YouTube and Google?

Well, because they recognized me while I invested in the promotion since 2020.

[ofihombre7]

The Super Beta from Randy & Manilla is here!:




P.D.: It's just a joke XD. Happy April Fools day .

[BlastoiseTheVGRipper]

Sooo.... how did your game got verified by YouTube and Google?

Well, because they recognized me while I invested in the promotion since 2020.

If only other developers got the same fate, they would need to have some money to advertise their game.

[ofihombre7]

While I'm still in the development of Randy & Manilla, to keep his image current and active, I just made an NES homebrew called "Randy in Sokobanland":



Randy has been trapped in the Net-Cube of Sokobanland. Beat all 48 levels by collecting the Memory Qdatas in the area by moving the boxes, collecting net-points or getting the power coins to break the cracked bricks.

This game is an spin-off from the upcoming game Randy & Manilla, and it was made in less of one day with Nes Puzzle Maker.




Nes Puzzle Maker link: https://puzzle.nes.science/home

Online play link: https://puzzle.nes.science/play/1309d53e...okobanland

itch.io: https://ofihombre.itch.io/randy-in-sokobanland

IndieDB: https://www.indiedb.com/games/randy-in-s...okobanland

[ofihombre7]

In this days, I'm in a very complicated stage for the Randy & Manilla development, the collaborations have been slower than the previous ones and with greater patience,
fewer levels and more polishing the previous ones (that's not so bad) & even the external factors that have emerged throughout 2022.
That is why I try to move it forward to make the project known by other means. And there is nothing better than creating other smaller games like Randy in Sokobanland.
This time I'm going for the second one and starring by Randy's sister:



Manilla makes an adventure in Pocket Wonder's net-cube, it's like in Wonder Race, only everything is in 2D and in a minimalist side-scroller.
Overcome the obstacles and collects the qdatas as fast as possible until reach from the goal.

This game is an experimental project made on the Pocket Platformer engine, based on the game in development Randy & Manilla.




Play online on itch.io: https://ofihombre.itch.io/manilla-in-pocket-wonder

Or download webpack on:

IndieDB: https://www.indiedb.com/games/manilla-in...er-webpack

Indiexpo: https://www.indiexpo.net/games/manilla-in-pocket-wonder


Pocket Plafformer link: https://the-l0bster.itch.io/pocket-platformer

Soundtrack by Marcus Wood: https://bandcamp.com/randymanilla

[ofihombre7]

I have bad news for all you, the Randy & Manilla project is going down a path that put at risk of a future cancellation, and this has an explanation:
Much of its development was done at the Covid-19 pandemic time, and despite having resisted, this has brought me development problems and delays in obtaining new programming techniques and assets, and for each year that passed, more situations came up that prevented me from developing the game properly.

Already in 2022, things got a little more difficult due to several factors. One of them was the devaluation of the Euro against the Dollar and its price inflation (mainly caused by a war), which can make it difficult for me for new collaborations with increasingly higher prices. But the last straw for me, was the merge of Unity with IronSource, company that was accused of distributing harmful malware on many devices, and its purchase brought developers a very bad reputation and fears that in future versions it will bring more invasive malware and ads in games (or worse yet, malware in the asset store or even the Unity engine itself).

But as always happens in purchases of this magnitude, the intermediaries begin to calm the panic of the community saying that nothing bad is going to happen and will be all advantages. And they're partly right, at the beginning of a purchase it start with a few initial advantages, only to later unleash their hidden intentions when everything is calm until their absorption.

Some developers are planning to migrate the engine for their projects, and I'm going to do the same for Randy & Manilla.
If several fears of the community are fulfilled for the next years, I will do the following:



As you can see, Since its development with prototypes began in September 2019, it was used the Unity 5.4.2 version.
At the following month, the project was migrated to Unity 2019.2.9, And to the date of this article, it is still in use, with its iconic classic UI from the 2010s.

For the 2023, I will relocate the whole project to a new engine, and later reveal which one I chose.
This is not easy. This involves recreating all the code from scratch, creating new materials, redesigning levels, characters, mechanics, etc. A reboot in other words.

Perhaps before I make the decision to leave Unity for good, I will release the last free demo of the game made on the same engine by the end of 2022 (with 3 or 4 additional levels and its new features), and then a second crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo to raise enough for a proper migration.

However, that would only happen in the worst possible scenario. A set of bad decisions by Unity after the IronSource purchase could be one of the reasons for the project cancellation.

[ofihombre7]

Just after posting the previous reply, I just tried Flax, the engine it really intended to use for Randy & Manilla after the merge scandals of Unity x IronSource and layoffs. Using it, I found that it did have some very cool features (such as instant play of the game or it's scripting language), however, it still looks like an alpha on many other features (like a store, or the animations).

Well, I will just wait until Flax has enough features to be a viable replacement for Unity or Unreal. Anyway, I have no choice but to finish the game with Unity 2019.2.9 before abandoning it permanently. Developers who use Unity and can't properly align with Unreal or Godot, shouldn't update the engine, don't buy anything else from the Asset Store, and don't use their ad services as a protest against the abusive policies of the company behind the engine.

Unity is basically the Youtube of the game engines (or worse), very popular, easy to use and bad policies and decisions that make it more and more humdrum and conformist.

[ofihombre7]

Every big franchise sells merchandising. And by that, I was created an uTip account, and the company responsible of the platform was offered me the sale of merchandising with Randy & Manilla related content.

Who wants a mug?

On sale in: https://utip.io/ofihombre/shop

[ofihombre7]

Months before, with the Early Beta, we thought it was decent enough to be the last demo.

However, after several reports with bugs regarding jumps, camera, etc. I realized that I was wrong. Although in the previous beta it polished many details, it also left many others to polish (and the worst thing is that they were even important parts)

That's why for this 2nd Beta, There has been a lot of focus on trying to polish all the details we could find and less on adding new levels. And as always, start with the first in the list with the graphic upgrade:






Again, the Net-Cubes have changed their textures a bit. Those that aren't part of the selectables, have clear edges that distinguish a little better than those that are. And also its colors are somewhat less saturated.




The same for the E-Mailer's ship, which has another slight but not insignificant model redesign and an improvement in lighting.




And even Manilla has a new hair look. She looks like more cute with that.

---

In the first Terra-Qubit levels, they had a very 3D land/world style fixed camera because that was the original idea for these levels. But there were sections that were poorly designed, such as the routes that was only shown while the character was walking directly towards the camera,which for a sidescroller platform game, hinders the gaming experience and comes to unexpected things suddenly.

That is why the camera of the first levels has been changed to a more manageable and similar to the one in the hub or in the later levels. As well as the structure that surrounds the routes was also redesigned in favor of the new camera.

---

If you go to the pause menu, you will see that the icons of the qdatas that were collected, are numbered with roman numerals to indicate the order that they were collected in each Net-Cube. They have also become buttons on the pause menu to show a preview of the qdata picture from the already obtained, and it disappears so that later it shows the other one.

---

The list of all other updates and improvements is somewhat longer than in previous articles, so it will be better to list them by numbers and order them from generals to from each specific Net-Cube:

1. 6 new soundtracks & two recompositions made by Marcus Wood, Kaaliu, Gamelody & Michael Martel
2. Added 4 more stages (include one boss)
3. Small improvements on the UI buttons
4. Ship controls for keyborad & gamepad are now by default
5. Camera drift in gamepads are now fixed (at least from Xbox One)
6. The characters has greater mobility through the air while performing the jump in 3D levels
7. Fixed harsh brakes when jumping (only if while the HP is greater than 1)
8. Redesigns in certain parts of the levels
9. The max score is slightly lower for levels that require it
10. better handling of sorting layers
11. Added a button indication for fast text in the dialogs
12. More polished details
13. Samuel Domínguez Cañete as Randy Qubit
14. The button for Randy punches can be pressed twice to perform combos
15. The checkpoints are now healing points
16. When a character into the void, it returns to the near position before the fall. But it loses one HP
17. A red fading was added if a character die
18. Buttons have been swapped between jump and fire/kick in gamepads


Terra-Qubit:
19. The net-points for the objective from level 1-4, has been changed by corrupt bricks
20. The Golembrick Boss HP reduced from 50 to 40

Gamezone Cube:
21. Both Randy and Manilla as NPCs will stop following the player for then go towards the arcade controls as they get closer

Rol & Rogue:
22. Randy can give up to 2 hits with double punch
23. The HP from many enemies it has been reduced
24. Enemies can no longer do burst attacks (specially with Manilla)
25. Manilla no longer takes damage while an enemy is spinning from very close distanse
26. To each battle, the icons of the attack buttons appear

---

With so many details added and improved for this version, maybe it can make a difference compared to the previous version.

I hope that this version, despite its problems, is good enough to consider it as the definitive demo before putting a price on the final and complete version.

It has been a great honor to develop this project since I started showing it in 2019, and also thanks to a great collaboration of people from many parts of the world.

---

If you are interested in this project, I leave the download links from the Early Beta version of the game:

itch.io: https://ofihombre.itch.io/randy-manilla
Indiexpo: https://www.indiexpo.net/es/games/randy-manilla

[ofihombre7]

It's been 3 years, and I have a bittersweet experience with the Randy & Manilla's development: On the one hand, I feel very proud that the great progress I made with the game and how more testers and streamers have accepted my idea of the game better every time (at least until the 2nd beta).
But on the other hand, I still don't feel completely satisfied with the direction the game is taking, and no matter how many bugs I fix or details I perfect, there are still plenty of bugs and things that I don't even know how to fix. This also brought a series of complaints: That if the controls, that if the camera still fails, that if Randy moves slow, that the hoops are trolling, the poor physics and hitboxes of the Gamezone Cube bosses, and even wanting me to reboot the game for a purely 2D one or another different proposal (very drastic).

I don't know if I'm really proud or disappointed with the project, I don't know if I'm really doing it for the enjoyment of the players or just doing it for myself.
And it's incredible that so far it's hard for it to be seen by many people, and it seems that it doesn't matter no matter how much marketing I invest to publicize the project, and my budget is already running out.
I don't even feel like posting more Randy & Manilla posts on Twitter because of Elon Musk.

[ofihombre7]

After the release of 2nd beta and its marketing spend, my development rhythm is slower and more constrained than ever. That's why 3 years after to the previous campaign, Randy & Manilla returns in a new and revamped campaign on Indiegogo, with all improvements applied so far.



As a curiosity If you have noticed something new in the trailer, it is that another character face has been revealed that will join the game cast:



Blue Quantáramo, the Mayor and Commander of Quantum City. He is responsible to send the alert message to E-Mailer about the threat of Cracksom Virus to Randy and Manilla.
Surely they will have seen him from behind when starting the game from the 2nd beta.

Many thanks Sk_Alkoyaj for his great work.

I also thank all the people who have followed me for all the advances and improvements of the Randy & Manilla game, and I hope that with this the final vision of my project is fulfilled.


If you like this campaign but you don't want or you can't to contribute to it, don't forget to share the next link:

Back this project on Indiegogo: https://igg.me/at/randyandmanilla/x/22731077#/

[ofihombre7]

That Randy & Manilla return to the top 100 for the third time is not a pleasant surprise, but that Manilla in Pocket Wonder also appears nominated is something that wasn't expected. We are witnessing something unprecedented, a couple of games related to the Randy & Manilla universe have reached the top 100 of the Indie of the Year 2022 (IOTY 2022).





From the case of Manilla in Pocket Wonder, that makes it the first game created with Pocket Platformer to be nominated at an IOTY (or any game awards event).
It's a double pride for me, a double nomination, I didn't expect what would happen.



I give big thanks to everyone who has watched and who has taken the project very far. Since his debut in 2019, it was always present that there is a great opportunity like this, but now it must walk the hardest path of all (complete the development of the game).

---

If you are interested in this projects, I leave a download & play links from both games:

Randy & Manilla:

itch.io: https://ofihombre.itch.io/randy-manilla
Indiexpo: https://www.indiexpo.net/games/randy-manilla

Back this game on Indiegogo: igg.me/at/randyandmanilla/x/22731077#/


Manilla in Pocket Wonder:

Play online: https://ofihombre.itch.io/manilla-in-pocket-wonder

Or download the webpack:

IndieDB: https://www.indiedb.com/games/manilla-in...ed-webpack
Indiexpo: https://www.indiexpo.net/games/manilla-in-pocket-wonder

[ofihombre7]

Again, Randy & Manilla has been selected to be featured on the Valencia Indie Summit, but from 2023.
It is on the list of the 50 finalists of that event. The presentation will take place sometime on March 2 (or 4).

(Watch in the finalists list): http://valenciaindiesummit.com/awards.html

[ofihombre7]

A new victory theme have just been leaked to confirm the appearance of Randy & Manilla for the next Super Smash Bros. coming out for the next Nintendo Switch console!.



P.D.: It's just a joke XD. Happy April Fools day .

[ofihombre7]

A strange error has occurred in Youtube. In the search results a fault has occurred in their API that almost left without any video about Randy & Manilla. Hours later, the problem in the end has already been solved so that anyone can find it up (for now...).