Aarus Awakening 2.0 (2015)

Aaru’s Awakening is a hand-drawn, fast-paced 2D action platformer. The game puts players in charge of Aaru, a mythical creature with two unique abilities teleportation and charging. He uses these abilities as he travels through the dangerous world of Lumenox to defeat an evil entity. These two abilities are at the heart of every level design throughout the game, to make for a challenging and fluid experience. The levels require players to make split second decisions whilst completing fast-paced puzzles.

Players control Aaru, tasked by his master to destroy the temples devoted to the world’s other deities. His tale, told through a storybook narration, is one about the trappings of faith, subservience, and the necessity of questioning authority. The plot is unremarkable and straightforward, serving up enough to establish the world of Lumenox and the character of Aaru, but little else.

The game presents a 2D platforming style of play with an emphasis on challenging level design. Aaru can run left or right, jump, and employ an air-dash in any direction, but what makes him truly special is his teleportation ability. This is performed by firing a ball of light into the environment, acting as a targeting beacon Aaru can instantly move to. Like the air-dash, this teleportation ball can be fired at any angle and can also be charged up to increase its velocity. The ball is also a physical object that will bounce off surfaces and be destroyed by nearly anything which would also injure or kill Aaru.

These properties of the teleport ball open up vast possibilities that the game’s environments take full advantage of. To be successful, players will have to learn to use the ball in a variety of ways, such as firing it through tiny corridors Aaru is too large to pass, using it to keep aloft over lengthy stretches of deadly spikes, even applying it as a weapon by teleporting into enemies. By the mid-point of the game, maneuvers which require precise application of all three of Aaru’s abilities become commonplace with little room for error.





Update 2.0
Our second update is up and this is a BIG one! The gameplay will be more fluid and pacy now, with the teleportation bullet starting on full charge and then decreasing as you hold down the left-mouse button. We also added checkpoints in levels to make it less frustrating to fail and added glows to breakable objects - making pathways and dangers more clear than before.

We also made a big change to the gamepad controls - making the jump and charge mechanics mapped on the same button, LT on default (Xbox 360 controller). This is in response to gamers asking for a specific jump button - and game tests have been very positive.

Below are bulletpoints of the changes, let us know how you like the changes!


* Bullet force is reversed - Starts on full power and then decreases.

* More checkpoints.

* Difficulty reduced in various places.

* Added glow to breakable objects.

Minimum:

OS: Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows XP
Processor: Intel Core Duo 1.8ghz +
Memory: 1 GB RAM
Graphics: Integrated chipset or video card
DirectX: Version 9.0c
Hard Drive: 2 GB available space
Additional Notes: Less RAM required i