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Freedom Planet: 2D Sonic-Inspired Indie Platformer

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juju_for_president

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Since Skullheart is where I was first introduced to Freedom Planet, it only seems fair that I create a new thread of the game, since the first one was lost to The Great Skullheart Deletion of 2013.

Freedom Planet is a fast-paced 2D platformer in the veins of Sonic the Hedgehog, with elements of Megaman and Gunstar Heroes.

The game was successfully Kickstarted on February 14, 2013, ending at a total of $25,472 (the original goal was $2,000), and it was successfully Steam Greenlit. The current planned release date for the game is May 30.

There is a free demo available for anyone interested: http://freedomplanet.galaxytrail.com/download.htm
 
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It looks like this game has been coming along nicely, and I'm hoping they can hit that May release date. The gameplay's gone through some nice tweaks since the first demo, and the newer levels they showed looked really cool. I wasn't expecting to like the dog-girl much either, but even she looked pretty fun to play.

The only thing that's really bothered me about the game recently, is that I wasn't quite as thrilled with how they changed the Dragon Valley Stage 1 music in the last demo. That's a small gripe, but I hope they might consider switching a few things around before release. Regardless, the fact that they've offered regular updates to the demo all this time is pretty awesome.

I also hope the voice acting and cutscenes they've been working on turn out well. Even if they're bad, I doubt they'll hold the game back as much as something like Other M, but I hope they actually add to the experience. I think the more polished the whole game feels at release, the easier it'll overcome those "Sonic Fangame" hurdles.
 
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Personally, I quite liked the new version of the Dragon Valley Act 1 music, but I know a lot of people didn't care for the change. I think I read somewhere that they changed it because the original was too similar to some Final Fantasy BGM, and they didn't want to cause any conflict.

The great thing about the Story Mode cutscenes is that, according to the website, you will have the option to have fully-voiced cutscenes, text-only cutscenes (RPG-style), or "straight-to-the-point action" (no cutscenes at all, I'm guessing).
 
juju_for_president said:
I think I read somewhere that they changed it because the original was too similar to some Final Fantasy BGM, and they didn't want to cause any conflict.
Interesting! I wonder what FF song it was they were worried about. Aside from a few small changes, the melody in the new version actually didn't sound a whole lot different to me.

I mean, the new version isn't a bad song by any stretch, but I feel that some of the changes to the rhythm and instruments now put it out of sync with the "Act 2" song. It sounds more like a remix you would hear later in the game somewhere. I imagine if they took the old version, with the old instrument set, and just applied this newer melody to it, it would even out a little better.

Anyway, I guess this just shows how attached I'm already getting to the soundtrack. At least there's an actual good reason for these changes so far.
 
I totally said "I thought we had a thread for this" when I saw this.

This game is baller.
 
Glad I bought the game while I could. I can not wait to try out one of the high-speed boss battles. Plus, each different characters with their own stages and paths sounds good to me. Especially Carol's physics-defying motorbike.
 
So apparently this game went into beta some days ago.

Anyone here have access to that and wanna make me super jelly by dropping some tantalizing deets?
 
I don't have beta access, and I have been trying to avoid spoilers to some degree, but they did release that news along with an image of what I believe to be the second-to-last zone's boss fight:
072bc23fd3b445a5e31450361139ac72_large.png


It's the size of the freaking screen!!!

At first, I thought that it would be the final boss, but than I looked at the background and realized that they are at the ice level, which is the second-to-last. So the obvious question is: if that is how big this boss is... how big is the final boss gonna be???
They also said that there will be one more update to the demo, which is planned to be released as close to the full game's release as possible.
 
A teaser image was released on the FP Facebook page yesterday:
1620691_831048016909676_632446753761109959_n.png


To me, it kinda looks like Metallic Madness with a more Spring Yard Zone-y color scheme. I quite like it, even if some of the colorization is a little too weird.
 
http://fp.boards.net/thread/863/release-date-moved-june-30th

Good evening planeteers! We have an important announcement for those waiting for release.

We will have to delay the game's release by one month, so we will now be releasing on Monday, June 30th. We will need the extra time for thorough testing and to make sure that pledge rewards are properly delivered. We also feel like an extra month is necessary to help us spread word about Freedom Planet. Our sales will influence how much money we have to port the game to other platforms besides PC and Mac, so we definitely don't want to rush something this important.

We hope you understand. Thanks for supporting us guys!

Why do you do this to me, Freedom Planet?
 
Delays are always upsetting, but so long as this is giving them more time to make the game perfect, I can wait another month, which is a rather short time compared to average game delays.
 
"We hope everyone is enjoying their summer so far! That being said, we should get right to the point of this announcement.

We have decided to postpone our release by two and a half weeks. Our final release date is Saturday, July 19th. We're quite sorry about this and we understand that not everyone is going to be happy about it, but we think it's for the best considering all of the stuff that's going on in the next few weeks."

Read more: http://fp.boards.net/thread/934/final-release-date-change-july?page=1&scrollTo=4952#ixzz35HipVa1i

Another (reportedly final) delay for Freedom Planet :'(

They want to avoid releasing their game during the Steam Summer Sale, which makes perfect sense, and I can wait another two and a half weeks... but I want this game SO BAD! Please let this be the game's FINAL delay; I don't think my little heart could take another.
 
That attract sequence is awesome. Straight Treasure style thing.

good game great experience
 
Oh hey, found a glitch.

So I got a life up, and I transitioned to another part of the stage whilst the jingle was playing. After the jingle was finished, the stage music didn't come back.

Oh noooooooooooo.
 
I cannot wait to play the game. I will probably try out Lilac first.
 
SkullMan said:
Bad news: The game will be released on Monday instead of Saturday. Steam does not release games on weekends.

https://www.kickstarter.com/project...-planet-high-speed-platform-game/posts/919050
f-p.gif


Really? Really??? Did no one at GalaxyTrail realize this until now, the day it was supposed to come out???

I don't mean to be a negative nancy, I'm still more than excited for the game, but COME ON!!!

Also, I'm disappointed to hear that the initial release won't have Milia playable in Adventure Mode. They say they will add it as free DLC at some point after the game comes out.
 
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A few more hours 'til the release guys. Unfortunately, I have work tomorrow.
 
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When does the Steam store update? I want to be able to coincide my queued Tumblr post with the release.
 
Two more hours until Freedom Planet is delayed again is released!

Speaking of hours, once the game comes out, we should probably start posting our best times for each stage on Time Attack. I've spent hours and hours getting better times in Dragon Valley in the demo, so it will be fun to see what's possible on the other stages.
 
lol I'll just be happy if I can manage more than 3/4 hours to play it this week. I can't afford to lose sleep like I did for Shovel Knight, but it's gonna be really hard to hold off until the weekend.

What'll be itching me the most will be the desire to check out the final cutscenes. Even though they've released snippets on Youtube and in the last demo, I'm still curious about the overall delivery of the story. I'm really hoping those turn out strong and elevate the experience a lot. I'd also love to get a taste of the whole soundtrack in-game before the internet spoils it for me.
 
So far, I've only watched one cutscene (the one at the end of the Casino Night Zone equivalent stage), only had one stages music spoiled that wasn't in the demo (Milla's exclusive stage music), and only watched gameplay for one stage that wasn't in the demo (Milla's exclusive stage).

I have taken far more measures to avoid spoilers for this game than I do for most, so I hope it turns out to be worth getting it fresh from the game. I was initially worried that the cutscenes and dialogue would be of older-3D Sonic quality (i.e. really, really awful), but the one cutscene I watched was actually pretty good, so I'm not too worried about that.

Plus, if they are terrible, there's still the options to turn it into RPG-style textboxes or auto-skip all the cutscenes entirely.

Edit: New trailer up on the Steam page. I'm not going to watch it, but for anyone who wants to:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/248310
 
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Here's the new trailer:
 
I've played up to the boss of the fourth level of Freedom Planet, so for anyone who would care to know my first impressions, here they are:
The gameplay is exactly what I wanted, and it is incredible how much so. It's fast, creative, and each level is loaded with so many mechanics, mechanisms, springs, spring variants, and other stuff that allows for tons of variations on the general platformer formula of 'run to the right and jump', one of my personal favorite so far being the swing platform that you run into, causing it to tilt 90 degrees to become a horizontal pole you hang on to. They all flow fantastically and let the game maintain the same feeling of momentum that made me love the 2D Sonics. Every level is unique, beautiful, fun, and full of various paths to explore.

Speaking of which, the levels are freaking gorgeous. Special mention to Relic Maze Act 2 and all of Casino Night Zone Fortune Street.

In terms of story, I feel that the game is weakened by the loads and loads of characters. By the end of the second level, the game has introduced us to at least FIFTEEN characters, several of which get far too little screen time for us to know anything about them. Even the ones that do get a lot of screen time don't get as much development as they should because we need to cut to two more characters that we will learn almost nothing about.

The quality of the voice acting is rather skewed. Characters like Serpentine and Lord Brevon have fantastic voice acting, even managing to send a shiver down my spine once or twice each, whereas characters like General Gong... yeeeah, not great. None of the voice acting is horrendous so far, but the difference between the best voice acting and the worst is rather huge, and I found it mildly distracting.

The music is really
really
really
really good
I am buying the OST when it comes out. My endless complements to Woofle, Strife, and Blue Warrior for this game's soundtrack.

Overall, this game is utterly fantastic, and I am so glad to finally play it. The game has flaws, but the things it does right are the things that I have been hoping for since Sonic 3 and Knuckles, and manages to go above and beyond even that with other little touches from the creators.
I'll give my final thoughts on the game once I beat it once... or twice... or however many times it takes for me to collect all those cards.
 
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Up to level 6 in Lilac's story. Gonna stop for a bit.

Game is super good. Like, oh my goodness. I might consider buying more gift copies for people.
 
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Happy launch day guys!
 
So I did end up playing some of this last night. I lost sleep. I had fun.

But yeah, it's pretty good so far! Visually the cutscenes come across surprisingly well, but the audio is definitely hit or miss. Props to Lilac's VA for sounding very professional overall though. I hope she gets to do more work soon.

Also, screw Spade. I hate that character so much now. Sure, I already wasn't a fan of his, and I kind of expected him to be in that "smartass" trope anyway, but seeing him in action just takes it to a whole other level. I really hope I won't have to play as him to find anything important later, because I think I'd just burn all of my 1UPs trying to run him off the side of the stage. Playable Serpentine pls.

Speaking of stages, I concur to their awesomeness. I've noticed some people have already started making fun of the physics engine, but I honestly feel it was handled very well for this game. Some areas are more compact than others, so I think the ability to run up slopes and walls with little momentum is actually kinda helpful, and balances out the movement options between some of the cast. Hidden items drive me batty in these kinds of games though, so I can't wait until I've found everything. Currently I'm crawling through these stages like a darn archaeologist!

juju_for_president said:
Every level is unique, beautiful, fun, and full of various paths to explore.
Yeah, but...
did you go into the Men's Room???
 
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