A downloadable Smintheus

Current status!


At this moment, februrary 5 2020, beta version is closed for downloading. The game will take approximately one to two months of development and then will be released as a full version. Keep in touch with the game updates by follow the game on itch! Or..
Wishlist on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/widget/600200/

About the game

Smintheus is puzzle game where you craft gadgets to overcome obstacles, fight enemies, manipulate environment and various creatures while being chased by crazy but powerful cat whose life purpose is to capture you and kick your butt for no good reason.

Game is a hybrid of classical puzzle, adventure with RPG and survival elements including experimental twists inspired by various PC games of 90s.

You play as Gerald the mouse, a young craftsman who was forced to leave his home village due to danger emanating from the local dweller, Lanky the cat. Gerald and Lanky used to be friends, but something happened that completely changed Lanky. The cat simply became obsessed with destroying the poor mouse without giving any explanations for his hateful desire. With failed attempts to fight the cat there was nothing left to do for Gerald but to run away for his life.

Features

  • Explore the world - Submerge into wacky and bizarre world of Smintheus inspired by golden era cartoons. Your journey will cover such areas as violet sand desert, the great underground, castle dungeon, sewers, swamp, floating islands and mysterious mushroom world. All kinds of characters will be met on your way - some of them will offer quests, some will share a bit of lore about the world and some... might stand on your way.
  • Unique puzzles - Encounter classical puzzles which involves moving boxes, triggering pressure plates and toggling switches. With addition to that, you'll meet unique puzzles that will involve gadget crafting, enemy manipulation, stealth mechanics and other crafty things unique to certain levels. There are lot of abstract puzzles that draws inspiration from golden age of point and click games.
  • Craft gadgets! - Smintheus core feature is crafting. Craft different gadgets that will either aid you against hostile environment or help you solve puzzles and avoid obstacles. More than 12 gadgets are at your disposal, You can also combine two or more gadgets to achieve totally different effect or just progress the game more efficiently.
  • The Cat - watch out for the main star of the show, Lanky the cat. He's tough, dangerous and completely out of his mind. Kicking butts is in his nature and he will use every chance to kick yours. Don't let that happen!
  • Fight! - Smash enemies with the good old wrench, shoot them from far away, use traps and even bombs against them. If you wish, it's quite possible to stay hidden and simply avoid hostile creatures.
  • Get powerful! - completing side quests or picking up books will grant you experience points which can be used to unlock various perks. These perks aren't necessary to complete the game, but they will make your journey much easier.
  • Liberating controls - game can be played with mouse, touchpad, keyboard or game pad. Nothing stops you from using them all at the same time.
  • Choose your tempo - control how fast the game is. Do you prefer slow or fast paced gameplay? Game allows you to change the game speed to your needs,
  • Majestic Soundtrack - enjoy the retro music inspired by synth music of late 80s, tracker music of 90s and soundtracks of Amiga computer games as well as CD game music of same era.

Follow me!

Twitterhttps://twitter.com/neutonmouse - twitter is my primary choice of social network. I often post about game there as well as share other interesting projects and art.

Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/smintheus2D -  recently opened separate facebook page for the game. Feel free to follow game there.

Bloghttp://www.neutonmouse.com - my website. I keep development blog there and usually write big-ass articles with pictures and stuff. You can subscribe to my mailing list there.

Wishlist Smintheus!

 https://store.steampowered.com/widget/600200/

Changelog

Click here to expand changelog!


Whenever new update appears I reupload the main "smintheus-beta.rar" instantly.

5 February, 2019
[!] - updated the game page. Placed game on hold for Steam release.

26 September, 2019

[!] - updated the game page.

1 May, 2018 (+Linux)
[!] - optimized bitmap rendering a bit
[!] - saving performs faster
[+] - ported game to linux amd64/x86 

26 April, 2018
[!] - Vsync fix. Those who had VSYNC turned off in controls could experience random lagging. 
[!] - rewrote input logic. Game would cause FPS drops on some computers because it gets overwhelmed by input commands (mouse move, key press etc). Game stays independent from it now. 
[!] - rewrote one of render algorithms. The game won't have random jumps of FPS from 60 to 300 etc. It will stay fixed now.
[+] - included msvcr100.dll - those who don't have Microsoft's Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package can now play the game without installing it.

20 April, 2018 (Major Update)
[!] - Updated multimedia library to newest version. 
[!] - Optimized game, ~10% performance increase.
[!] - Inventory "Items" section can be navigated even if player has no items.
[!] - Inventory input navigation changed from key hold to key press. 
[!] - Question marks in inventory has more distinguishable colors. 
[+] - Arrows, spacebar and enter are added to the game as alternative bindings to movement and usage.
[!] - Gerald damaged state's duration is now doubled, makes gameplay a bit easier
[+] - Moving to another realm (or teleporting) will erupt circle wave around character thus notifying player about new position. These notifications are also implement for rising/lowering blocks.
[+] - Added "Danger Zone" for campfires. Burn color on Gerald is instant and more vivid.
[+] - Magical door is red now and will turn blue once all cat keys are gathered. Has extra animation and sound effect.
[!] - All levels are "casualized" and more approachable. Most tutorials are hidden now (no more texts, except where really needed)
[!] - Level 1 and 2 received extra additional room specially designed for hidden tutorials.
[!] - Level 2 now introduces inventory feature to player, before it was introduced on level 4.
[+] - Nearly all critical puzzles have reset switch nearby
[+] - Most puzzles now will show some kind of feedback (like glowing gems on walls)
[+] - All signs are isolated leaving only one way to get into it. Prevents that annoyance when you enter sign several times by accident.
[+] - Signs are animated. Easy to spot!
[!] - fixed bug with secret walls that happens when player clicks on spots while running.
[!] - Bug in level 4 is completely wiped. Before it had chance to put game into hopeless situation after "Noooo!" dialog. 
[!] - Fixed couple of minor bugs that used to happen on high speed 

10 April, 2018
[!] - Fixed bug with ambient soundscapes present in level and map screen
[!] - Fixed app crash when player wins and looses at the same time (e.g: reaches exit and gets whacked by a cat)
[!] - fixed bugged animation which used to occur when player beat the cat and was about to perform victory dance.
[+] - First level will prevent player from receiving any kind of damage.
[+] - Level two has infinite boot spawn near the ice cream Walrus.
[+] - Modified sound of key door opening - no more irritating high-pitched squeak!

1 April, 2018
[!] - fixed startup audio volume bug for ambient sounds
[!] - changed level 2 a bit
[!] - fixed lagging at level start on slow computers.
[!] - fixed rare time execution bug. Sometimes level scripts forget to trigger.

31 March, 2018 - first beta update. Main download is upgraded as well. 
[+] - more autosaves on critical parts
[+] - added quite a lot of parts that fixes level design logical mistakes. 
[+} - added friendly reminders about autosave on level 4 and interaction with passable objects on level 6 (bomb puzzle).
[+] - expanded social network links  by adding itch.io :)
[!} - pressing continue after game end lead to the black screen. fixed!
[!] - fixed volume bug on victory screen. Volume tend to ignore master volume.
[!] - Restart button in Game Over screen is now the first instead of last save.

Henrik Chukhran
StatusIn development
Publisher
Rating
Rated 4.3 out of 5 stars
(3 total ratings)
AuthorHenrik Chukhran
GenreAdventure, Action, Puzzle, Survival
Made withSDL, Audacity, Allegro, Aseprite
Tags2D, Animals, Cartoon, Crafting, linux, Pixel Art
Average sessionA few minutes
LanguagesEnglish
InputsKeyboard, Mouse, Joystick
AccessibilityConfigurable controls, Interactive tutorial
LinksTwitter, Homepage, Soundtrack

Development log

Comments

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(+1)

TAADDAAAAA!!!! Smintheus Beta Walkthrough is finished

PS: you can give me thumbnail pic if you want
(1 edit)

This is incredibly outstanding!!! Thank you very much for your dedication and effort, Coconut Mousse :)
You're my personal hero and inspiration source! :D

It's well played and good video, I've put it into game description. I'll write devlog article and talk about it pretty soon, as well as do a little promotion on social media. 

So, how was the experience overall? Any suggestions, recommendations or complaints? What did you like most and what didn't in the game? Were the puzzles difficult? 

PS: You kinda missed decent portion of level when you kited that cat on level 6. It introduced pistols and one very witty puzzle that involves combo-crafting.  Although the way you skipped the cat was great :) Didn't thought of alternative solution like that.

Again, thank you very much!!!

thanks for you compliments and the promotion :D really appreciate that

sometimes the water didnt really visible and cactus sting me a lot but its still visible :D the way you give the blueprint is really great, it just keep coming and we didnt know what to do with it.

i dont really have suggestion right now but i can still help you if you release the other version. the puzzle is difficult but i like puzzle so its not something to complain :D

well i really like the graphic as it remind me of crashland and BGM is perfect for this game. the difficulity of puzzle is fine with me(maybe its really hard for people that dont really do puzzle). the worst thing that happen to me is when you got that boot, i can hardly control the character overall this is a great game

bug: the cat wont catch you if the cat is behind you (i get this bug on wishing well level)

btw is the cockcroach walking in random track? maybe it will be a little but harder for a beginner to avoid them

this my channel goal : to help indie dev like you and other if you have them contact me

told me when the alpha released, i will gladly to help again

Thanks for the feedback, Coconut Mousse :)

The roach has a pattern, it's a bit tricky to figure it out so it gives a "random movement" feeling. The creature is very fragile and can be easily killed, to compensate that it just has that kind of "random" behavior.  Sort of superpower :D

I got all bugs and inconveniences fixed at the moment. No idea how to deal with boot. I assumed you played with keyboard or joystick? There are no problems guiding player with boots on via mouse clicks.

Actually I'm finishing the game but I won't mind a little pre-release test. You're doing pretty valuable job for the indies - these days it's much harder for all of us to get through despite how difficult gamedev already is and contributions such as yours greatly helps all of us. Keep up the good work! :)

Thanks a million!

Cheerz,
Henrik

good luck on releasing the game :D wish for the best

yep, im using keyboard. ask me if you need any help. i'll always help if i can

Ssup Coconut Mousse,

As promised,  I wrote a devlog post and mentioned your video in it. Your video had some impact on the game and it's not just bug fixes or other inconveniences but  things like I've added possibility to turn boot on and off (of course, if player has perk for it) and other little things.

Teh Link: http://www.neutonmouse.com/blog/article/the-great-underground-level-design

Best Regards,
Henrik

nice adventure

Thanks for the video, Coconut Mousse

Looks like you had the downloaded months ago. I see that a lot of helpful new gameplay features were absent and some old bugs are present  but nevertheless, should've taken the latest version :)

I'm surprised to see how relatively well you dealt with controls. You'd be best player so far of all I've seen. Thanks again, I learned something from that. It would be nice though to see more of gameplay, especially starting from level 5 where gadget crafting is involved.

Have a great weekend!

yep. i dont even remember when i downloaded it anymore :D.

hehe thanks for the compliment. if you like, i can show you the full gameplay next time with update version

I would very much like that, Coconut Mousse!

Your next level is 5 which introduces crafting mechanics as well as tool usage (which is one of main flavors of the game) and there are 3 levels after. Should be a 30 minute session. It would be very educational to watch such video and it will definitely be a material for further improvements. 

Thank you very much! :)

P.S: In case you forgot or missed - check out inventory screen ("tab" key or double mouse click or select on joystick). 

i can do that but may i request my video on your page of smintheus after? its okay if you think you cant but i'll still make that video :D

hope my video next will help for future updates (im on hiatus for a while)

Not sure If I follow this. Do you want the new video to be included in game info page together with screenshots and trailer here?
Don't worry, i'll do a little PR for video here and there.

nice adventure

Woops! Those poor 5 souls who downloaded Smintheus (Windows) recently (around 12:00 GMT on 02.05.2018) at itch - make sure you start new game and reset game speed to "default" in options. I accidentally packed the game with my own progress and options :)

(+1)

_

Hey all, Live4G4ming  made video about my game. There is no trailer yet but if you want to see some gameplay footage then go and check this out! :)


(+1)

a really good one i really enjoyed it 

(+1)

This was so fun to watch man, your style gave me some big laughs :D, great job! I seriously enjoyed your video, wish i could see more of that gameplay ;)

Thank you for being super awesome!

(+1)

The building mechanic was cool. Never seen that before in a game like this. Wrote a review about Smintheus to tell our fans.

Keep updating the game. It's unique enough to stand out on its own but just needs the right exposure to take off!

Thank you very much for such cheering words and wonderful review.
Now i got the idea how to progress the development further.

Thanks again for being so awesome! ;D

No problem! Let me know when you update the game and I'll update the review also =].

Heya, game looks cool and I'm looking forward to trying it out but it keeps crashing on launch. The error log is as follows:

[0:0:0]  - al_attach_shader_source failed: Fragment shader failed to compile with the following errors:
ERROR: 0:6: error(#132) Syntax error: "buffer" parse error
ERROR: error(#273) 1 compilation errors.  No code generated

Hope that helps a bit.

Hey CoalFire, thanks for giving it a try :)

Yeah, I just discovered this issue recently. You probably have one of Radeon video cards. Current solution is to update drivers and catalyst. Meanwhile i'll try to find the way to avoid it without the need to install drivers. 

Haha I recently had to do a reset//reinstall of windows and completely spaced on my video drivers. Thanks so much for the reminder! ^_^

All drivers updated, same errors... :/

(+1)

Oh boy... this is so embarrassing :(.
But no problem. I'll try to fix it as soon as possible. I'll leave another reply once the things are done.

Thank you for your time, CoalFire ;)

Allright, i've fixed the problem. Solution is pretty dumb, inherent to most Radeon cards,  but it works
Get the patch "smintheus-beta-patch-radeonfix.rar" from here or re-download the whole game. 

Have a great day! :)

(+1)

Up and running! Nice work!