An indie game based on Winsor McCay's groundbreaking comic strip.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
January Updates
5 days ago
– Fri, Jan 31, 2025 at 02:06:34 PM
Hey there! It's Ben with a technical update. First up, thanks so much for checking out the Holiday build! We got some great feedback and have made a few small changes.
During play testing I noticed that folks were missing jumps, expecting the momentum of the jump to carry through in the air. When I enabled this in the Holiday build, I forgot to zero out the momentum when you hit the ground - this made things feel a little slidier than expected, but I just fixed it.
I've been hard at work getting in all of the upgrades and a more final flow in the game. You'll be able to collect your character upgrades, as well as health, stamina, and attack upgrades now. We're starting to sprinkle everything in and it's starting to feel like a complete adventure! I opened the house back up too, to start adding the hub world features.
Additional animations have been added for all the characters. Nemo (finally) has his combo attack in, and all the characters are being given a dash animation.
The next thing I'm working on is the Dr Pill shop as well as some other ways to use all that candy you've been collecting.
Chris and Adrian are meanwhile working on Slumberland and the game's opening on the rooftops of Nemo's town. Chris is buried under a mountain of art and animation to do, but we were able to find this archival photo of him during these busy periods:
We're going to be starting some very important sprints soon and ramping up with some development help. We're hoping to have more details why soon, but until then, we'll continue plugging away!
Cheers,
Ben and Team Nemo
Post-Holiday Holiday Demo - Santa needs your help!
about 1 month ago
– Sat, Jan 04, 2025 at 12:34:36 PM
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
November Update: Slumberland, New Music Track + More!
2 months ago
– Mon, Dec 02, 2024 at 06:10:43 AM
Hey Dreamers!
We hope you had a good Thanksgiving! While we're taking a bit of a break to spend time with our family this week, we've been hard at work this month on sketching out the opening to Slumberland. This represents a major milestone for us in that, along with our tutorial stage and the game's HUD world (Nemo's House), we'll have every level in the game walkable from beginning to end. That means we can start spending the bulk of our time filling the game world with content, NPCs, side-quests and more along the game's critical path! We want to share with you that progress (after posting , so let's get started.
Slumberland
We've mentioned in previous updates the various different areas of Slumberland Palace that the player will visit, such as Dr. Pill's Lab and the Slumberland Barracks. As we've been building the level map, we've color-coded these areas, as well as been adding notes for various hazards and other game mechanics we'll be adding to the map.
A small preview of the map as it looks now
While the map is being sketched out, Chris has been working on art assets that will fill the back and foregrounds of each area. In the screenshot, you can see an example from the first room within Dr. Pill's workshop. Here's another from a room within the barracks that will have an additional mechanic which we're excited about:
By next month, we hope to have some other excited areas, mechanics and more implemented into the game to show you!
New Music
While Slumberland is being sketched out, we're still working on content for the previous area, Jack Frost's Palace. We still have plenty to do that we'll show in the future including a new boss fight and hazards, for now we wanted to showcase a brand new track from Wayne Strange. The previous music we were using for the ice level was a great, mellow track that will be featured in the game, however was more subdued than the other active level music in our game. So Wayne fired up a new track that you'll hear throughout the ice palace:
Not to overstate it, but Wayne killed it with this track. But that's not all! Based on feedback we've received, he's also working on calmer versions of the tracks that will play during cutscenes or otherwise idle moments while you play through the level. Here's a sample from the Night Sky:
Nothing too visual here (the stuff "under the hood" usually isn't), but with all of the stages and biomes coming together, we're transitioning away from our demo setup where you select a stage from a menu at the beginning to a more fully fleshed out file save system. We're also starting to string together the different stages with Nemo's house as a "hub." When you play, you will use the house to travel to the different dream worlds. Once in a dream world, you will have a number of chances (lives) to reach a goal (beating a boss, getting a major item, etc.) before you wake up back in Nemo's house. Players will be able to choose where they enter each dream world as they unlock platforms for Nemo's bed to land at (these will later be used for quick travel via Bosco the Dragon.) Stay tuned for more as this portion comes together!
Also, we've noticed that players in our demo sessions sometimes need something to lead them along the path through the levels. For this reason, we're also starting to implement a system of hittable objects that will randomly cough up items (think the candlesticks in Castlevania games). This will help with pathfinding and directing players through the different branches of the levels.
Conclusion
That's all from us for this month. We hope you enjoyed this month's update and one more time: Happy Thanksgiving (for our American readers) from all of us at Team Nemo. We'll see you again for the Holidays!
October update! New systems, GDEX, and more!
3 months ago
– Thu, Oct 31, 2024 at 07:55:19 AM
Hey Dreamers!
We hope everyone's having a good Fall season! This month, we've been hard at work preparing Little Nemo & the Nightmare Fiends for its recent public showing at GDEX in Columbus, Ohio which we'll talk about shortly. This included implementing new systems, tuning and playtesting the first titular Nightmare Fiend you'll meet in the game, Phobetor, and of course getting to meet and chat with everyone who came out to the show! It's been a busy month and we want you to hear about it, so let's get to the updates.
GDEX
Chris with our booth at GDEX
We're once again proud to show off the latest demo of Little Nemo & the Nightmare Fiends at the GDEX in Columbus, Ohio! This was also our first time getting to playtest Jack Frost's Ice Palace level in a public setting. We got lots of great comments and feedback on the game. We're extremely grateful to everyone to everyone who stopped by.
Ben talks Little Nemo at a crowded booth at GDEX!
Ben has been working to get real game progression in place. The scripting features that allow quest lines are all working now. You can start new quests, complete them, and get rewards. You've probably seen some new UI elements in our screenshots, especially around the health UI. The player can now upgrade health and abilities, including the reflect ability: after Nemo finds this upgrade, he will be able to reflect certain projectile effects by hitting them with his sword. This will be required for a lot of the game's action, including in our new fight with the first Nightmare Fiend you meet, Phobetor!
Lives were finally added too. Previously if you lost all of your health you could continue at the last door you went though. With lives added you will be able to continue that way as long as you have extra lives. If you lose your last life you will start again in the house where you can re-enter the world (and quick travel to a Bosco station if necessary). There are a couple of gameplay reasons for this, but mostly it gives us another knob to tune for difficulty.
We've also done a lot of fine tuning of gameplay, including adding a little bit of hit stun. When a player damages an enemy there is a fraction of a second delay that adds a bit more punch to attacks. It's one of those almost imperceptible changes that just feels better.
Another very tiny change was made to the jumps, to better keep momentum in the air. In the ice level, Ben noticed our play-testers (mostly the neighborhood kids) missing some (what I thought was easy) jumps because they let go of the direction too soon. A jump buffer was also added to help avoid some missed jump inputs too. Again, a super minor change but you would miss it if it wasn't there.
A while ago, I also added in sprinting, mostly just as a test. But it ended up being a lot of fun and opens up additional advanced movement and traversal options. Which leads us to:
Sprint Animations
Also this month; Chris has been hard at work making sprint animations for each character in the game.
The ability to sprint is an early general character upgrade. It will let you jump longer and faster, and synergizes with each character's unique abilities in interesting ways. Just be sure to watch where you're running!
For Peony's sprint, we are actually going to use her current "Ninja Run", and instead create a new standard run that fits in with her largely ballet-based moveset. Stay tuned for more as we finish out that animation.
Wrapping Up
That's all from us for this month. Before we go, we'll share these perlers, put together by our community manager, Max!
Little Nemo & the Nightmare Fiends perlers by Max!
We'll see you again for our November update, Dreamers!
~ Team Nemo
September update: Engine update, Cleveland Gaming Classic, and Happy Birthday Mr. McCay!
4 months ago
– Thu, Sep 26, 2024 at 10:36:36 AM
Happy Fall Dreamers,
First thing's first, it's September 26th, which means that we need to wish a very happy birthday to Little Nemo's creator, Winsor McCay!
We could have gone for the usual photo portrait, but these different cartoon portraits also seemed like a fun option
Next, what we've been working on: so last month we had some bad news brought on by our engine, Unity, which seemed to have forgotten how to process the game's sprite artwork. It turned out that the plug-in that we use to import and process the sprites, TexturePacker, updated and was no longer fully compatible with the version of Unity that we were using.
This prompted a (honestly, long overdue) full engine upgrade on our end, which we've just completed this week. As aggravating as it's been, the game runs much smoother and continues to look great. We now also have access to some other features that will help us in our development process.
That's not all though! Even with these challenges, we've been hard at work on additional content. Last month we showed you some concept art of Slumberland, and this month, we can share some rooms where we have implemented those concepts in the engine to give you a sense of that environment.
A sample room from Dr. Pill's Lab
A sample room from the Slumberland kitchen area
Hallway styling in Slumberland
We've also been continuing work on Jack Frost's Palace. Like the Mushroom Forest, the Palace will have multiple biomes with their own unique quests and hazards. At the moment, we've been working on the engine room, the mechanical wing of the palace that ensures it stays nice and frozen all year round.
A section of the Engine Room map within Unity
Because of the chaos that Phobetor and his gang of nightmares have caused around the palace, the machinery has gone amuck and certain rooms are inaccessible due to blinding snowstorms. In order to reach Slumberland, Nemo and friends will have to take care of things themselves by finding smashing up the five snow machines hidden within the twisted maze of pipes and gears. And if that wasn't bad enough, the engines themselves won't stop shooting icicles at our heroes! It's almost like they don't want to be broken into smithereens.
Nemo stands in front of a Snow Machine, just waiting to be smashed up.
Much like the rest of the palace, elements of the engine room have been directly inspired by the original comic strip. For comparison, check out the original snow machine from the March 3rd, 1907 strip of Little Nemo in Slumberland!
Excerpt from Little Nemo in Slumberland, March 03, 1907
Lastly, we also showcased the game at the Cleveland Gaming Classic this past weekend. As we were in the midst of the engine update, we couldn't show the latest and greatest with the ice level, but we still managed to have a good showing. We even took home the award for best characters and storytelling!
All set up!
Stickers and prototype cels and posters - we'll be getting more of these made to ship to backers soon
Chris does this every time...
Chris, Max, and Ben at the booth
A shiny award! We love the NES cartridge style.
The Little Nemo Arcade Cabinet returns!
Little Nemo superfan and YouTuber John Riggs came by to play the game and liked it a lot!
As you can see in our booth shots, we've put together a few prototypes of our Kickstarter physical rewards and will be producing them in bigger quantities to fulfill some of the physical rewards. We will also get to work on the next wave of cameo backers. This way, folks will be able to get their swag as we head towards our first Early Access release.
That's all for now. We've gotten a few backers reaching out asking if they've missed notifications about the game being released - you have not. Now that we've gotten through the big back-end update, we should be able to get things together for the demo.
As we've said before, the process is going slower than we thought based on the current state of indie publishing, but we're making consistent progress and are in a lot better shape than other projects out there. We're working to make this the best game, experience, and tribute to Winsor McCay that it can be, so we thank everyone for their patience as our small team continues our steady work.
