Automata Underground - public version

This is my final year university project which I've spent the past few months tweaking and improving. No changes have been made to the graphics, but a lot of time was spent on polish and other things that are less immediately obvious.

I think that working on this project has taught me that I'm too ambitious. Being a perfectionist is pointless when you don't have any ground to stand on. To spare a lot of time going through technical details, after a lot of work I ran into a problem that would require me to entirely redo a lot of things for the game to be perfect. Since I have other things that I want to work on and my motivation was draining which was causing work to slow down considerably, I thought it would be best to just release it as is.

Too developed to be a proof of concept but too basic to be a full game. It's kind of frustrating, but spending countless hours on things that I end up thinking aren't good enough to make public doesn't look very good for my resume and such, so I thought it was best to release it as is and move on to other things.

I included both a downloadable version and a webGL version.  Of course, the WebGL may have problems for no reason because it's WebGL. I eliminated almost all the bugs that I could find, but in case there's some that I missed I would recommend downloading the game for a better experience.

The rest of this description was copied over from the original page.

A sidescrolling action platformer with a heavy focus on combat, inspired by games like Mega Man Zero. A short game which encourages multiple playthroughs to attain a better rank. Playable using either a keyboard or a controller, controls are rebindable.

Default controls:

Move - WASD / Arrow Keys / Left Stick / D-pad.

Jump - H / A button

Dodge - J / B button

Punch - K / X button 

Kick -  L / Y button

Super mode - G / L1 button

Pause - Enter / Start

Holding up or down while pressing the attack button will cause the character to perform a different attack. The full list is displayed below. Each attack has a punch version and a kick version. Punches are much quicker (both to start and recover from) but less damaging, while kicks deal but more damage and have more knockback but are riskier to use.

Grounded: Neutral attack: 1-2-3 Combo. Up attack: Launcher. Knocks the enemy into the air. Down attack: Stinger. Dashes forwards, useful for closing distance.

In the air: Neutral attack: Same as on the ground. Up attack: Spike. Knocks the enemy back into the ground. The punch version has very low recovery, if you knock the enemy into the ground with it you can follow up with another attack. The kick version is much slower, but is very powerful. Down attack: Crash. Character crashes into the ground. Good at knocking enemies away and does a good amount of damage, but has quite high recovery. Has two different versions depending on whether you point the stick straight down or diagionally.

Other tips:  The purple bar is linked to the character's super mode. It's built up by landing attacks in normal mode. When the super mode is active, the purple bar drains but landing attacks restores green health. Going into super mode will leave your character vulnerable for a moment, but when it's complete enemies will be knocked away, so it can be worth the risk. Be sure not to press the button if you're about get attacked, but pressing it when an enemy is running towards you might be a good idea.

You can cancel out of the recovery of the first two normal attacks into another attack. This doesn't just have to be the third attack, going 1 > 2 > launcher is possible. The third attack has slow recovery and can't be cancelled out of, so if you miss your first attack it might be a better idea to wait for it to end then act rather than go all in on attacking. You don't have to destroy every enemy to get an A rank in score. Keeping your multiplier up is more important. That requires being fast and not getting hit.