Topic: Hasslevania: The Quest for Shuteye

[Del_Duio]

Hi everybody, I'm Del Duio (Black_Crusher over at GameFAQs) and I want to spread the word about my latest game I've made called Hasslevania: The Quest for Shuteye. It's an homage / spoof of Castlevania and some other great games I've enjoyed through the years and is pretty hard core in places (few save points that don't refill your life, high jumps require skill hearts, false walls and tons of secrets). It plays out a bit like an old NES game. Here's a cut n' paste from my website:



Story:

Poor Rovert Bellhump!

He has just bought a house on the cheap and the big reason why is because his new neighbors are none other than Count Dracula (tm) and the whole of Castle Hasslevania!! You see, all our hero really wants is peace and quiet. Unfortunately, tonight is the 100th year a certain you-know-who wakes up and start making big plans for world domination. Since world domination is always very loud and irritating, Rovert decides to go and tell Drac and the gang to knock it off- or else he's calling the cops!




About:

In the dead of winter 2006, I began work on my giant sequel to my Equin series. After a ton of work and realizing that it will also be one of those games that takes years to finish properly, my mind began to wander a bit. About all of those cool ideas in my head about new and interesting games. Well, this is one of them. I thought to myself, "You know, every 100 years Dracula wakes up and a Belmont comes right in, almost on cue.. What would happen if some new, less-heroric guy showed up instead and had a different reason to take Drac out?" And what we have now is the hero Rovert (Which is an homage to Castlevania: SOTN's protagonist Alucard, which is Dracula spelled backwards. Rovert is "Trevor" Belmont spelled backwards.) And of course I couldn't really call my guy Rovert Belmont, so it's Rovert Bellhump from here on out. Count Dracula is public domain from what I understand, so it's a green light to use his name, thank goodness for that!

On a side note, I've been literally barraged by the question of whether or not David Hasselhoff is / was to be the star of Hasslevania. Although that's a GREAT idea, The Hoff won't be in the game. His godliness could never be fully captured in a mere game anyhow!

EDIT: "Hoff Heads" do appear in the game and act much the same way that those annoying medusa heads did in the Castlevania games. That's all the Hasselhoff that'll be in it, though.

Hasslevania features my first-ever custom platform engine, totally original graphics and MIDI music done by me. It's an homage / spoof, but will stand alone for anyone (like Osama) who's been living in a cave and has no idea what games like Castlevania, Castlequest, and Wizards and Warriors are. The game will play out a lot like a "Del Duio" version of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, if all goes well. Look for cameos of my other creations in the game in the form of Hasslevania's statues and other characters.

Hasslevania promotes exploration above all else- there are numerous ways Rovert can achieve his ultimate goal. I'm trying my best to make multiple paths to obtain the same items, and so far it's pretty non-linear. There are 6 big bosses and that doesn't include the final showdown with Count Dracula himself. This game is a lot like the old NES Metroid as far as the "Where the heck do I go now?" feelings players might experience from time to time.

I also have similar bad B-movie voice acting that the recent Castlevanias seem to have in common. You go about the castle finding weapons and other items to help you progress. The pyro "mace" iac can burn thorny passageways. The mighty Blade of Del Duio doubles your run speed but lowers your defenses. There's even a Belmont-type whip that can kill most undead enemies in a single hit! The iron armor protects you from spikes. The shield can deflect arrows, nails, and other projectiles.

There's a little Devil you can find that will follow you and basically destroy anything in its path, but it has a hunger for Rovert's skill hearts and takes them at an alarming rate! It might be worth it to keep him around though, as I plan on having a big chunk of the comedy devoted solely to the Devil.



I hope you guys check it out as it took me forever and a day to finish and get it to where it is now. The game is pretty large at 137 MB but I have several mirrors to aid with downloads and as far as I know there haven't been any problems for end users yet.

http://del_duio.sitesled.com/Hastlevania/HasslevaniaHOME.html

Thank you and good luck!!

[Gunlord]

In Reply To #1

Cool game, man! But, uh...since it's fan-made, shouldn't it go over in the fan section of the CVD? That's where all the other CV fangames like some of Jorge's hacks and the Maria game are, so I think this one might be better suited in that section of the forums. I'm not a mod, though, so pardon me for my impertinence ^^;

[Slayer]

With a game like Hasslevania, I was expecting to play as David Hasselhoff...
...from looking at the game though, I'll give it an A...A+ if the D-man was in it...

[ringo]

What's wrong with you people. You give comments to some half arsed sprite edits but don't post a thing here where there's work with real effort gone into it?

This is a really cool title. The presentation is top notch. Everything from the menus, to the enemies, to the levels. The controls are very smooth and I really like it as a game.

As for some criticism, I am not too crazy about the voice acting. Especially since it adds a considerable amount to the overall download. Maybe a text only "lite" download might be appropriate?

[Kale]

Which one has real effort in it?

[ringo]

In Reply To #5
The game on this page...

[Del_Duio]

Thanks Ringo I appreciate you checking the game out.

I'm no master programmer by any stretch but as a longtime CV fan from the old NES titles I tried to do my best for the first title in what hopefully will be my new series of games.

I wanted to do the voiceovers ever since the beginning but figured that we'd never get them finished in time for the release. You'd think it'd be easy to just write a script and lay down some recordings but it was a lot harder than I thought it'd be back in Feburary lol. Yes they do add a lot to the size of the game, that's why I put up those suggestions of what to do while you wait for it to finish like make some food or do some push ups 

I've been answering a lot of e-mail questions lately from players who are nearly all getting stuck at the same place towards the beginning of the game just after buying the high heels from Oldie the Ripper. All I'll say is that the hint book in the 1st save room you find that says "A DRAFT!?" is very important. That should be a good enough hint to make sure that nobdy here gets hopelessly stuck in the game so early on.

Hasslevania is very big and pretty non-linear. Perfect or not I'm really glad I was able to finish this thing. If you are able to win it there's even a cheesy ending song with "real singing"!! It's not quite like "I am the Wind" but it's equally as bad lol!

[Kale]

In Reply To #6

Like....?

[thernz]

Everything.

Sucks that I can't play it on this comp seeing as I can't play anything on this comp. ._.
Stupid gfx card.

[Del_Duio]

Hmmm, are you certain? It doesn't really require a very good / fast computer to play it. I can play most of it on my very old 500MHz computer except for rooms that have a lot of big overlays like the underwater caverns, in those cases there is slowdown.

Aside from that, it's all pretty basic stuff.

[thernz]

I haven't actually d/led it yet. Does it require DX8-9? Those are kinda broken for me. ._.

[Del_Duio]

No I don't believe so. I think my old computer was running DX7 and it had no problems with MMF (which the game was developed with). Aside from the big overlays, which all has to do with your cpu's processing speed. I'd say maybe anything 800MHz or better should be more than enough to run it smoothly and thankfully every semi-recent computer comes with way more than that straight outta' the box

Here's some more screenshots from my pages:









I had a lot more screenshots before the thing was released but I'm purposely not recycling everything because I don't to spoil too much. Believe it or not there's still a lot left to see.

Oh, and it bears mentioning that there are some swears / simulated alcohol and etc. in the game so it might not be for younger players. There's nothing too harsh but I feel the obligation to state this now, days after the original post. D'oh..

[Del_Duio]

Hasslevania Version 2 has now been uploaded and is ready to go!

Some bug fixes, some slight graphical additions, but the best part of all is that there's now a new game mode that is specially for newer players. When you play it, Rovert heals up to 50% of his life whenever he saves in a coffin. Since every other game mode doesn't do this (you can only heal from finding or buying food), it's a big help to new players.

To balance it out some, you can't get the good ending if you win while playing the easy mode.