Development Journal: Candra

 In early 2014, I was going to create a Ninja Gaiden clone called Kunoyakyuu, where you play as a girl who wields a Baseball bat. Her name was Hisoka Hosokawa. I actually wrote a dialogue script for the game that was almost complete. The prototype was included as an unlockable mini-game in the sequel to Candra. Some of the code from this unfinished game was later used to create Candra.

On June 28, 2015, I designed a character I wish I had designed during the first few years of YouTube (or at least before the Wii was discontinued), who I named "Candra" after a goddess, and also as a play on the title of the video game, Contra. She recycles Zila's 3D Model used in Skampfer Squad, Marcella's hair bow, Harumi's eyes from the Infight Kids series, and the hairstyle from an earlier design for Claudia Camasto before I changed it to differentiate her hair from Candra's hair. I can't deny that her design was partially inspired by Paula from Earthbound, Shizuka from Doraemon, and Amy Rose's design from Sonic Adventure. It was the 30th anniversary of the American Nintendo Entertainment System. Candra would go on to become THE mascot of future games I would create, making many cameo appearances. Her last name was coined on 09/11/15.

I wanted more platformers where you play as a little girl. One of the very few games I know of that fit that bill was Fushigi no Yume no Alice for the PC Engine, but its physics weren't that great and its difficulty ramps up early in the game. Earlier in 2015, I checked out the Bucky O'Hare game for the NES, which inspired a few of the stages in Candra. To those of you who are tried of females getting kidnapped, the other way around happens in this game. Candra's brother gets kidnapped by a vampire (Ghosts 'n Goblins style) who wants him to meet his wife for some reason. Miracle Girls for the Super Famicom became one of my favorite platformers, simply because of its theme and the 4th stage's music.

Unlike Mega Man, Candra can duck and aim upwards as well as downwards. However, she can't shoot through walls. Candra is also very fragile, so she goes down in only three hits.

Candra was also the time when I tried to design a decent number of background tiles of my own, especially the ones made for the grass-themed stages. They would often get reused in later games that I create. Scenery is among the aspects I have the most difficult time designing, because I have terrible depth perception, or should I say sense of depth, and attention to detail. I don't remember how I came up with the bells that, when you shoot them, they produce ring platforms of varying speeds and change color.

I feel that the difficulty in Candra is kinda lopsided. Stages 3 and 4 in particular feel more challenging than Stage 6 because those stages feature more tricky platforming. I sorta wanted to fool players into thinking that the game would be too easy.

Inspired enemies include a bird that chases you like the one from Ninja Gaiden, Star Angels who don't despawn, float up and down and fire projectiles with random trajectory every half second like one of the flying enemies from Holy Diver, and a Frog Turret like the one from Doraemon 4 (SFC). And I had the nerve to include the Giant Terminator boss from Contra III as one of the final boss' phases... I liked how its body animated, though.

To this day, I'm not sure if I want to keep the limit of only three continues (same as Skampfer Squad). Like in my previous game, Candra has a few cheat codes that can be entered at the title screen, including a code that makes you die in one hit. Try randomly pressing directions, Z and X keys, and see/hear what happens! There are three extra playable characters, each with their own endings. Alice from FYA, Doropie from Magical Doropie and Asha from Monster World IV can be chosen at the title screen. One of the endings has a complete list of enemy names!

Candra was released on the day I first legitimately beat the game, on September 22, 2015. I hope to create more Candra games in the (very) distant future. But the genre might change.