Calcium Contract (my new game)

[iax]

Hello,

 

I'm a long-time (no account) lurker here and I've been working on a game that takes a lot of inspiration from Doom and Heretic, but also tries to do things its own way. I'm working towards releasing it later this year on Steam https://store.steampowered.com/app/2427960/Calcium_Contract

 

 

I wanted to go in a bit of a different direction than many other retro shooters and tried to make it more colorful and a bit weird rather than gloomy and gory. There's also a  simple story about an order of grim reaper-like order that has a problem with ending the life of a certain monster and they summon you to finish the job.

 

The game is quite fast-paced, with an emphasis on player mobility and learning enemy behaviors. I wanted to be playful with time, space, and enemy behavior so e.g. there are enemies that can teleport and reshuffle other enemies to throw a wrench in your plans, synchronize other enemies' attacks or even speed up the whole world around you. Your weapons also have interesting and fun behaviors, e.g. crowd control projectiles that multiply and split into other directions or grenades that implode rather than explode so you can bring enemies closer to you and you also freeze them at the same time.

 

Oh, and there's also a rewind feature so you don't need to bother with saving and you can jump back a few seconds on death or rewind manually (you can still use traditional saves or restart the level instead of course).

 

Check it out in on Steam https://store.steampowered.com/app/2427960/Calcium_Contract

I also started a twitter where I post some things about the game https://twitter.com/CalciumContract

[iax]

The demo is out! You can play it through Steam https://store.steampowered.com/app/2427960/Calcium_Contract

[Tetzlaff]

That looks definitely weird, but interesting. Like a game you remember from a strange dream.

 

I will try the demo.

[Lagoonatic]

Played through the demo twice, it is wonderfully weird! The weapon design and animations are fantastically creative! I am making a review video, will be sure to post it onto the Steam community hub when it is finished!

[Lagoonatic]

The demo is great! Cannot wait for the full release Igor!

 

[iax]

Awesome video! I'm really glad you liked the demo.

 

BTW it's not GZDoom, it's my custom engine, but it's not a coincidence it feels like it could be GZDoom 🙂

I'm also aware of the rewind + treasures consequences issue and will have to think about it a bit more before the release. It's a bit tricky as different options (leave it like it is, rewind removes active treasures, in-between solutions hidden behind difficulties or options etc...) have different pros and cons for different kinds of players 🤔

[Lagoonatic]

Very happy you dug the video! The game is high on my radar, it's full of charm and enjoyment.

OK! Very happy you clarified that! There were small things like fall speed that made me think it probably wasn't GZ. I will add a correction to the main video.

[Redneckerz]

@iaxI only see this now, but this is very impressive! Its a custom engine you say? What implored you to do this, an what does it support?

[iax]

Well, it kind of happened gradually. I started experimenting with generating sector-based (so bascially Doom-like) maps and then gradually realized I could make a cool game on this (and eventually ditched the procedural generation part as I wasn't happy with the results). It supports whatever it needed to support for making the game I guess 😅 One of the more unusal features is recording the game state efficiently so you can very quickly rewind your game to any earlier point within the level.

[iax]

The game is coming October 17!

 

 

[Redneckerz]

6 hours ago, iax said:

Well, it kind of happened gradually. I started experimenting with generating sector-based (so bascially Doom-like) maps and then gradually realized I could make a cool game on this (and eventually ditched the procedural generation part as I wasn't happy with the results). It supports whatever it needed to support for making the game I guess 😅 One of the more unusal features is recording the game state efficiently so you can very quickly rewind your game to any earlier point within the level.

It looks very, very similar to GZDoom, and certainly would have fooled me. Do you craft your levels using Doom Builder or do you use custom tooling?

Regarding the engine: Would this be a one off, or would you create another game with this, so far unnamed, engine? :)

[Darsycho]

oh hell yes

[iax]

20 hours ago, Redneckerz said:

It looks very, very similar to GZDoom, and certainly would have fooled me. Do you craft your levels using Doom Builder or do you use custom tooling?

Regarding the engine: Would this be a one off, or would you create another game with this, so far unnamed, engine? :)

Well, it's also a sector and sprite based game. Yes I actually do, or rather I have a converter from the UDMF map format, but it's not 1:1 with how Doom works, so I'm using it for the level geometry and many things like e.g. doors or triggers are placed as special Things, comments on sectors etc that GZDoom wouldn't know what to do with.

 

It's a bit too early to say if I'll be doing another game on that engine, but I don't think about it as a general use engine.

[Fonze]

Looks fun and I love the cartoony vibe you have going in it! The little chicken enemies are cute lol

[Redneckerz]

On 9/5/2023 at 8:28 PM, iax said:

Well, it's also a sector and sprite based game. Yes I actually do, or rather I have a converter from the UDMF map format, but it's not 1:1 with how Doom works, so I'm using it for the level geometry and many things like e.g. doors or triggers are placed as special Things, comments on sectors etc that GZDoom wouldn't know what to do with.

 

It's a bit too early to say if I'll be doing another game on that engine, but I don't think about it as a general use engine.

It really looks and feels very Doom to me, so in that aspect you nailed it. Then its just the utterly bizarre enemy roster, whose reminiscence is of the old shooter PO'ed (Which has you acting as a space chef armed with a frying pan killing walking butts).

[JoeSchmoe]

Absolutely LOVED the demo and am enjoying the SHIT out of the pre-release copy. I think the demo is an exceptionally good preview of what the game has to offer and if folks like that, they're going to like the full release.

I had no clue it was running on a custom engine, it feels SO DOOM, in a great way! Absolutely LOVE the rewind feature too - it's going to spoil me for future games

HIGHLY recommend iax's YouTube/TikTok to see some of the behind-the-scenes Devlogs. Love seeing how the enemies were mo-capped and implemented

Edited September 23, 2023 by JoeSchmoe

[JoeSchmoe]

I finished the game a few days ago and really, REALLY enjoyed it. The weapons and enemies on display are some of my favorites from any of these games - and the Clock specifically is one of my favorite new enemies in an FPS. One of the easiest recommends I could give if you enjoy playing through custom WADs.
 

 

[iax]

15 hours ago, JoeSchmoe said:

I finished the game a few days ago and really, REALLY enjoyed it. The weapons and enemies on display are some of my favorites from any of these games - and the Clock specifically is one of my favorite new enemies in an FPS. One of the easiest recommends I could give if you enjoy playing through custom WADs.

Awesome, glad you liked it! Really curious to see what people think after the full release (in 2 weeks!)

[iax]

It's out! Not sure what more to say, it was quite a journey... 😅

 

[Darsycho]

hell yea, congratulations on the release dude.

 

been doing a lets play of it, too. good stuff so far.

 

 

[Guff dotD]

I managed to get lucky as this guy fell into a flowing river as he was dying, and the result is an eternally spinning corpse which blocks the player. I could still swing through it with the Scythe.

[iax]

Interesting, there was a bug like this in the past which I fixed, maybe it's a new variant that can happen on a moving surface 🤔 I'll keep an eye out for it.

[philcul]

Thanks for uploading the soundtrack, my girlfriend and I, we both love this game, its aesthetics (visuals and audio equally) and gameplay so much! <3

 

 

 

Edited November 17, 2023 by philcul

[iax]

Thanks, that's awesome to hear! I'm a bit (and pleasantly!) surprised by the number of people saying they really like the music, I was a bit worried as I only started experimenting with making music not so long ago 😅

[iax]

It's been a while, but I just released a big update adding a whole new score attack mode with procedural levels, leaderboards, and daily challenges! There's also a new risk & reward mechanic in the form of curses which make the game harder in random ways but increase the score gain. I'm really happy with how it turned out!