Smintheus is a 2D puzzle adventure game with crafting and survival RPG elements
Gameplay
Hybrid of classical puzzle , adventure and old school RPG genres with some experimental gameplay twists. Smintheus involves linear exploration, fighting against enemies, talking to different characters, having quests and solving puzzles both in classical way and Smintheus way, which is all about crafting gadgets and placing them at right place and right time. Main villain, who'll appear from time to time, will provide major challenge and boost up game's stealth mechanic at certain moments.
- Explore
Submerge into wacky and bizarre world of Smintheus inspired by golden era cartoons. On your way you'll meet a lot of traps and other kinds of dangerous obstacles and meet various quirky characters that will introduce you to the game plot.
- Craft Gadgets
Smintheus core feature is crafting. You can craft different gadgets that will either aid you against hostile environment or help you solve puzzles and avoid obstacles.
- Solve Puzzles
Encounter classical puzzles with box moving, pressure plate triggering and switch toggling. 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.
- Fight
Prepare for some beating! Various tools like pipe wrench and offensive gadgets such as bear trap will be your main tactical solution against hostile creatures that inhabit the world of Smintheus.
Game is full of secrets and cultural references of past and modern times. Versatile settings will help you to adjust game however you want it. Although game offers relatively slow gameplay experience it grants
ability to change game speed. For controls, you can use
keyboard or
joystick or even
mouse. Could be used all controls at the same time if that's your wish.
Story Intro
Gerald the mouse, a young craftsman was forced to leave his home village due to danger emanating from the local dweller, Lanky the cat. 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...
Beta
This beta version is specially released for playtesting. Since it's still under development I decided to cut on game levels thus leaving first 8 introduction levels.
The rest of game works fine, at least it should. If you encounter any bugs then post them here, in itch.io commentary section. If you'll have app crash then check out "error_log.txt" in game folder and post its contents as well.
Make sure you check in-game Options. Game provides versatile customization, tweak it to your needs.
Walking through the beta should take 1 hour in average. It's possible to do speedrun in 20 minutes.
The most important thing is your feedback. The game's not ideal so I need that feedback to make it better. I really want to know what you think about this game. Post your thoughts, suggestions, critics or simply your impressions - I'll be glad to read them.
Have a nice gameplay experience! :)
Whenever new update appears I reupload the main "smintheus-beta.rar" instantly.
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.
Basically I'm planning to add more levels. Currently there are 8 levels out of 42 planned.
One of features which will be present in future is the Perk System - you can observe it in pause menu under "Perks" section. Although they are functional, they aren't practically used in beta levels.