Colt Canyon News

Howdy fellow gunslingers!

You've probably heard about the Colt Canyon being a very hostile place filled with dangers of various kinds! Well, today we are going to take a closer look at some of the obstacles you will face on your journey. This is just a small selection, so don't expect to be prepared for everything once you step into the canyon only because you've read this edition of Dead Man's News. But don't stop reading, because every help will be needed if you're planning on successfully saving your partner!

Keep in mind that every area in the canyon comes with it's own set of enemies and obstacles.
Some might be unique to this area but others can be seen in more than just one area.

One very classic way to die is by not paying attention to what you're whacking your knife into. Usually you destroy containers hoping of finding useful loot. But watch out, almost everywhere in the canyon you will find containers with highly explosive materials inside. So you better don't stand too close when they blow up, and I can promise you one thing: They will blow up.



Remember that you're by far not the only thing that takes damage from explosions, so a couple of explosive objects might come in handy from time to time and can easily be triggered from far away with a well-aimed bullet.

Those explosive barrels are not the only red thing in the canyon though. Plenty of other traps are waiting to get their shot at killing you. Another nasty example is the arrow trap that can be found carved in some cliffs of the more wild parts of the canyon. While it can be disabled very easily with a quick punch you gotta spot them first, and at that point it could already be too late.



But not all traps are man-made! Even some plants will try to kill you. You should not get too close or if you really need to cross them you should try to jump (aka dodge) over them to minimize your contact with them.



But of course, just like in real life the most dangerous things are not inanimate objects or plants, but living creatures. You might think something like the highly venomous scorpion might be very high on the list for the most dangerous things in the canyon. After all, it can't be hit with most guns because it's too small and its venom will hurt you even after the scorpion is already dead.



But no, the scorpion can be easily killed with your knife and the venom is not very effective if you just stop moving for a while after getting hit. The most dangerous thing in the canyon is the most dangerous thing everywhere else too. It's the human!

You will face a lot of very aggressive human enemies that all have one thing in common: They want to see you dead. In fact, most enemies in the canyon are human, but you can still find differences in their behavior, appearance, and of course weapon of choice. Very early on you will learn to fear some of them more than others. One example is the following fat dude:



Yes, he only has a very small knife, but the real danger comes from his sturdiness and of course the lasso that he will use to tie you up. This will make it difficult for you to move and aim, so you should try to avoid that. Duh.

From time to time you will also encounter some particularly talented versions of enemies that weren't a huge challenge up to this point. These elite versions are tougher to kill and more skilled, so if they spot you you should focus your fire on them. A good way to counter them is by trying to get behind them to shoot them in their back where their shield is not helping them.



Of course you will also face all kinds of other more generic gunslingers, but those are not very exciting, so I didn't list them here. Instead, I want to show you a more rare enemy. This woman might not have a gun, but she can still be very deadly.



As you can see you are not the only one with the ability to dodge and run fast. You might want to pack something that shoots fast as your secondary weapon when facing this gal.

Anyway, this was just a small peak at the dangers you will have to face in Colt Canyon. However, I don't want you to think that everything in the canyon wants to see you dead. Not only are there some people that actually need your help, but you might also find humans and animals that are not out to hunt you down and are just minding their own business. Some other folks are not even there voluntarily, unarmed and will only run away when they spot your revolver. So don't shoot everything that moves or you will be the bad guy in the end.



All the best and Gut Ziel!
Jonathan

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Join the Colt Canyon discord community:

Howdy fellow gunslingers!

Great pleasure to welcome you to our latest Dead Man’s News. Today we will speak about the Game Loop of Colt Canyon and what to expect when you start your adventure.

You start together with your partner in a remote and peaceful part of the canyon. Everything seems fine until a group of bandits from the more dubious parts of the canyon attacks. You will be knocked out and left unconscious in your own blood; your partner gets kidnapped. Once you open you eyes again you’re alone, somewhere in a canyon and without your partner. This is where your journey begins. You gotta fight your way through the hostile and gruesome parts of the canyon on your mission to get your partner back.

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The Colt Canyon consists of 3 areas with 3 levels and a boss level each. After choosing from a pool of unlocked characters and starter loadouts you start a new run in which you will cross these vast levels from left to right. You can explore the surroundings to find loot like new weapons, ammo or other helpful items like medicine. You will also get the opportunity to help other kidnapped folks that might return the favor by granting you upgrades afterwards. Before starting large shootouts you prepare yourself.

Especially in the beginning the game is not just run and gun! Reloading takes time and ammo can be rather scarce. Stealth elements and an extensive weapon arsenal allow for strategic decision making and different ways to approach the everchanging situations. Various traps and predatory wildlife need to be avoided and secrets want to be uncovered and explored. And don’t forget to prepare for the boss fights that will truly test your skills.

The hero will start in a more inhabited farming area with buildings, mines, lumber production and plantations (Stage 1) before moving on to the more remote areas and wilderness with traps, hunters and all kinds of thugs and dangerous wildlife (Stage 2). The final stage is the most notorious part of the canyon where you will encounter bandits and their camps everywhere (Stage 3). The further you get the deadlier the canyon becomes.



Once you manage to reach your partner the journey is not over. Now in the deep parts of the canyon and every bandit on high alert the second phase begins. You and your partner will have to fight your way back home, this time from right to left through all the levels you’ve already passed through. You already know the path and don’t need to spend any time exploring. This time you will get in way more shootouts and with your better equipment and your filled ammo reserves you only have to make sure that you and your partner don’t get hurt too badly.

Because when you or your partner dies you will have to restart the entire run. This is a roguelike game with permadeath after all. You'll need to get familiar with the game, the enemies, the canyon and the weapons in order to successfully rescue your partner.

Stay tuned for more detailed news and more reveals about Colt Canyon in upcoming Dead Man's News!

All the best and stay healthy!
Jonathan

Can we hit 40 likes? ːrufusjokingːːilikeː

Wishlist:
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Join the Colt Canyon discord community:

Follow: https://twitter.com/Retrific

Howdy fellow gunslingers!

Let's dive a bit deeper into how the idea of Colt Canyon came to my mind and how it became what it is today. As I already told you in the last update in my first semester at the Cologne Game Lab, in game design class everyone got two random keywords to develop a game concept from. For me it was ‘Help’ and ‘Cowboy’. I didn’t actually had to develop a prototype but write a design document. However making games is my passion, not writing documents, so I focused on making a prototype instead.

I started by creating a folder called ‘cowboy’ (which is still the name of the main development folder for Colt Canyon lol). My next thought was: What do cowboys do? They shoot revolvers and stuff, so obviously I had to make some kind of shooter. Since I had to keep it simple and didn’t had much time I started designing the game rightaway and it became clear what the game will play and look like within hours.

At that time I didn’t envision it as roguelike but just a small game experience not longer than a couple minutes and without any bigger plans. Because of my time constraints, it was also clear that I had to stick to my already somewhat developed skills of making minimalistic pixel art for the prototype. I made a concept for what I envision the game to look like. This is the actual concept I drew. It's not a screenshot, but something that I drew pixel by pixel as a mockup:



Style-wise I was inspired by my previous project Just Get Through, but also by some other games that I saw in my twitter feed. With a style and basic game concept in mind it was time to open up old trusty GameMaker Studio 1.4 and hack together the prototype. Most time was spent on the movement, enemy AI and the quite different HUD I had back then. The first prototype, known as ‘Help’, was made in just one weekend, before uploading it to itch.io I only made some basic bugfixes and small changes.

There was just a single level, no menus, no other weapons, no procedural generation or anything. Only 2 different enemy types that both looked the same and only a couple of destructible objects with no fancy particle effects. Visually the prototype also looks way more flat and far less interesting with a very basic and static environment. Despite this there are still a lot of similarities between 'Help' and Colt Canyon as it is today.

Sadly I never got graded for my small game 'Help' or received any other detailed feedback, so I decided that possibly the internet might give me some feedback instead. I published the prototype on itch.io and to my surprise with little promotion effort it was picked up by a couple smaller content creators and even got a couple articles on some websites. The feedback was great, which motivated me to make a couple more small patches to the game before calling it a day.

At the Cologne Game Lab we have to develop a small but full game experience every second half of the semester in small groups, so I didn’t have any time to work on the prototype anymore as I had to focus my game development effort on that instead. In the project phase following 'Help' I was the programmer in a group that made a game called ‘Shell Shift’, that used quite similar input and movement to my prototype. I reused parts of the code of 'Help' in 'Shell Shift' and it was quite a success as well.



After the semester was over I wanted to return to Help because after weeks of not doing anything for the game there was still traffic on the page even without getting featured on the front page of itch.io. This interest in the prototype and the fact that I had so many more ideas for the game caused me to start thinking about how I could make a full game from this prototype. In my semester break I started to brainstorm ideas on how to increase the scope of the prototype and make it a full, polished game experience.

I had two main ideas. One was more narrative, quest-based. The other one is basically the concept that is now Colt Canyon with randomly generated level, more similar to what the prototype was, but with a bigger scope, more variety and higher replayability value. Because the first idea seemed more complicated, more work and more exhausting to develop I went with the second idea. My love for roguelikes and hate for narrative focused games probably influenced this decision as well. In the end the first idea would’ve probably become more roguelike-y anyway.



At that point the hard part started, because I was still studying game programming I couldn’t focus 100% of my energy on developing the game. I had to keep it simple or else I would never be able to finish it. I wanted to finish it in a couple semesters, but I was only able to work on the game in semester breaks or sometimes in the afternoon or weekend for the first half of the semester.



The game grew and grew and so did my plans for it. I was a slave to the feature creep.
I had to redo parts of the game over and over again because I always got new ideas that didn’t work with the old implementation. Stuff that I originally didn’t plan on doing: Console versions, boss fights, coop mode, different stages, high res interface, character artworks, unlockable different characters or weapons, most of the visual effects I have now, animals, secrets and much more. Some things like the console versions or high res interface only became possible when the following happened.

One year after starting working on Colt Canyon I got the opportunity to show my game at the German Dev Days in Frankfurt. I didn’t expect it to become such an important event, but this was where I first met someone from Headup, the guys who are now helping me with publishing the game. At first I didn’t even plan on getting a publisher, I released all of my games on my own before, but I do know that nowadays it is getting more and more difficult to stand out and reach the players. And as a solo developer and student I would never have enough time to do enough promotion next to developing the game.



After a couple chats and meeting with the Headup team I was confident that working with them was the right decision! But this also meant the scope of the game grew even more. The partnership unlocked the opportunity to bring Colt Canyon to consoles, but my current engine didn’t even support console development. I had to port the game to a newer version of GameMaker which was quite some work that I ignored up to this point. Fortunately I had a practical semester that I was able to use to port the game to the new engine version.

And that’s where we are today. The scope for Colt Canyon grew bigger and bigger, but together with a couple great freelancers and my publisher I managed to get it done. Well not quite yet as there is still a couple of things left to do but I am confident that we will manage it just fine. I can’t be happier with what Colt Canyon became over the last years! And I am sure it will become even better in the future.

Stay tuned for more detailed news and more reveals about Colt Canyon in upcoming Dead Man's News!

All the best and stay healthy!
Jonathan

Wishlist:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/940710

Join the Colt Canyon discord community:

Howdy fellow gunslingers!

The release of Colt Canyon is around the corner – I will reveal the date soon! With this update I want to show you who is actually working on the game: Surprise! It’s just me. So, who is ‘me’? My name is Jonathan Mannshoven, born in 1996 in Hamm, Germany.

I first started making 'games' while still in school and fell in love with the GameMaker Engine from YoYo Games. And so, I spent a lot of time creating crappy little games that nobody played except for myself and close classmates. But at some point, I had the crazy idea that maybe other people might enjoy my stupid games too.


I was never a huge fan of narrative or story-driven games. In particular games that force the player to sit passively through endless cut scenes, scripted events or dialogs with only little action going on. I love simple but well executed games with focus on gameplay and game feel and with sandbox elements or at least a lot of freedom and options. I am trying to make games that don't need much explaining but explain themselves after playing a couple of times. Games that don't constantly take you out of the action to explain things, show dialogs or cutscenes or make you do grind for something and don't allow you to enjoy things just because you didn't spend enough time in the game yet.

It's all about the gameplay over here.

So in 2013 I created the alias Retrific to start sharing some of my games online. Over time I developed a bunch of prototypes but there weren’t many people who enjoyed playing my games as much as I enjoyed making them… Anyway, when I reached the age of 18, with Steam Greenlight still around I felt confident enough to publish my first small commercial game or at least put it in on Greenlight and see where it's going.



To my surprise, my No-Combat Roguelike Platformer “Just Get Through” was greenlit rather quickly and released 2015 on Steam with positive reviews. A couple of smaller commercial and non-commercial games followed before I decided to pursue a career in Game Development. I started studying Game Programming at the Cologne Game Lab in 2016.

In the first semester at the Cologne Game Lab, in game design class everyone got two random keywords to develop a game concept from. For me it was ‘Help’ and ‘Cowboy’. I created a small game prototype called “Help”, that I then released for free on itch.io and which later became the game you now know as Colt Canyon. At first, I had no plans to make a full game from the prototype, especially because I didn’t have much time anyway. But...



A couple of semesters and a fair share of interest in the prototype later, it became clear that I wanted to make a full game based on it. I always wanted to make a full and polished roguelike shooter anyway, just never felt confident enough. Now in the final semester and probably thousands of home office hours later Colt Canyon is getting bigger and more polished every day. Much bigger than I planned; which is why it also took longer than I expected, but it will be worth the invested time. I promise! It really is my pride and joy.

Halfway through the development I met my publisher Headup, which allowed me to think bigger, get some help from freelancers and even get a fellow student on board. And Headup also gave me the opportunity to make this the first game of mine that will also be released on consoles. (Which is a really cool thing!)



Okay, that's it for now! Keep your eyes peeled for the Colt Canyon launch date! Make sure to join the discord to discuss Colt Canyon even before release and to be one of the first to know the launch date!

Fun Fact: Yes, most if not all of the stuff you see on screenshots is designed, drawn and implemented by a single person, namely myself.

All the best and stay healthy!
Jonathan

https://store.steampowered.com/app/940710

Howdy fellow gunslingers!

I received a lot of registrations for the closed beta of Colt Canyon - thank you so much for your interest in my game! ❤️

If you aren't registered and want to get your hands on the rifles and pistols of Colt Canyon as well, this is the final call: We will close the registration today March 19th at 23:59 pm CET/15:59 pm PT. So, if you would love to be part of the closed beta fill out the short questionnaire on our Discord server:



With a handful of luck we will contact you this week with a Steam key and an invitation to a hostile canyon full of hidden treasures, weapons, obstacles and all kinds of bloodthirsty scum.

All the best and stay healthy!
Jonathan