Noitu Love 2 Demo!

By: Derek Yu

On: March 28th, 2008

In case you missed it: there’s a 1.5-level demo available for Noitu Love 2, with the promise of a full game coming soon. This platformer features some of the most outrageous action sequences I’ve ever seen/played (including giant, screen-filling bosses), coupled with clever game mechanics and just insanely good pixel art. Get now (and buy later).

Posted in Platformers, Previews | Tags: JoakimSandberg

Tommunism

Totally absolutely amazingly awesome. Takes me back to the days when good games WEREN’T Yaris Racing. Seriously though, wonderful.
Sifu Peng

But the Yaris… they’re so compact and economical!
Vallen

Where is my Mina of the Pirates? :/
Zeno

Awesome game is awesome.
Fishy Boy

The controls are very good, the graphics are amazing, the music is catchy, and it feels refreshingly fast paced. Awesome!
Victo

Another awesome game for my ever-growing Indie Games folder :D
MisterX

I’m sold, anyway.

I’ve just now played through Noitu Love 1 and darn it… that last boss was nothing like the rest of the game. I can’t believe it actually took me 7 tries to finally defeat him, though 1 because of a bug and 1 because of a crash. I’m actually proud of myself, usually I wouldn’t have the patience to restart the whole level that often. Ouf.
But Noitu Love 1 just got me that much more excited about the sequel, I now know there’s nothing to worry about :) As long as the final level of NL2 is also nothing like it’s predecessor’s in terms of player frustration.

Oh and I can’t believe I didn’t get the whole “Spell the name backwards” thing sooner.. What a fabulous subtitle Noitu Love 2 got!
MrBig

Stamp this one for certification already and have it up on Xbox Live Arcade next Wednesday please! Oh wait, can’t do that, we’ll be getting yet another shitty title next Wednesday. :P

Love the demo, buying the game! Here take my money, hurry up and get the full game out! :)
failrate

Will buy; must have.
Melly

Too fucking awesome.

I might as well buy it five times when I’m able just so Konjak keeps making these wonderful gems.

I’ve played through this damn demo a dozen times and counting.
djafwe

Love this game XD It’s about fucking time!
Mr. Mr.

Good god, Xoda is -unstoppable-

There was a part during the first level where I had to force myself to move on, because my combo was getting TOO HIGH
Zeno

I thought the first one was “Decent”, but this game is fucking awesome. Everything about it is smooth and badass.

I wish the demo had Shady Hanz though…
Blueberry_pie

This is incredible! I had my doubts about the mouse controls when the first screens and videos were shown, but playing the game completely changed my mind. The combat is an absolute blast!
konjak

Thanks!

Any little bug and awkward thing, please report.
UltraJMan

When I first saw trailers I knew this game would be something amazing, and after playing the demo it’s been well worth the agonizing wait. The gameplay is fluid, pulling off insane combos is fun *I barely touched the ground in most of stage 1* the bosses are clever on hard mode, and the graphics are stunning.

I easily say this will be game of the year 2008 for me, indie or otherwise. Good job Sandberg, I eagerly await the full product soon :D
muku

Sooo. *Sexayh.*

Perfect controls, gorgeous graphics, and a welcome change in pace from all those uber-hard puzzle platformers of late; not that those can’t be neat either, but sometimes you just have the desire to burn through massive piles of badass robots.

Couldn’t help notice the 3d parallax scrolling at the end of level 1, that was awesome.
JNK

It’s like discovering a Treasure game you haven’t played before. Absolutely brilliant.
MercuryBlind

im sold already, im buying this as soon as it comes out. this shows just how brilliant indie games can be.
Mrs.Wow

Looks great, I’m not happy with the controls though.

fast mouse clicking = finger assassination.

I cannot play this thing :(

I’ll try to map Joy2Key to it and see how it goes.
contra

Among the best pixelart I’ve ever seen in my life. Definetly on par with capcom/konami/snk’s classics.
I’m not completely sold on the gameplay, the massive amount of mouseclicking is abit of a pain. Maybe you could have a diablo-style option where if you click on an enemy you will continue to attack it as long as the mousebutton is held down (I know that this is how you grab but that could be changed to E or something). Dunno how well it would actually work though, just throwing it out as a suggestion.
In any case, awesome game!
Dusty Spur

Not even a full two levels and I already love it. Radical game, konjak!
Naughty Lover

This is the new “Cave Story”!(and it isnt even a clone) Pure Gold!!!!
Untitled

This game is fucking amazing! Brings me back to the old days. Will buy!!!!!!! A++
Corpus

Three words: awesome.
deadeye

This is pretty much the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen made with MMF. Great graphics, huge sprites, tons of explosions… You’ve really pushed it to it’s limits. Awesome job.

I do have a little bit of slowdown, but it’s still quite playable. Then again, I have a crappy computer. It slows a little more noticeably on the pirate tank, but again it wasn’t that bad. I’ve seen much simpler MMF games that moved at a snail’s pace on my machine, so this is quite a feat of optimization.

I was also skeptical about the mouse control at first, but it turned out to be pretty well implemented. My one complaint about it is that I was often looking for the next place to click rather than enjoying the awesome scenery.

I only have one other complaint, and that is it’s more than a little on the easy side. I don’t know how much the difficulty ramps up in the later levels, but I hope it will be somewhat higher. I never got below losing two bolts.

Kind of ironic, I’m usually the guy who says games are too hard.
Dusty Spur

deadeye: I thought the game was pretty easy too, but I just tried playing Hard mode and maybe I just suck at the game but often I’d have around 4-6 bolts missing, and I nearly died in the Grim Reaper battle.
gustav

Seriously, what are you guys expecting from stage 1? It’s supposed to be an introduction to what’s to come. The game isn’t hard on normal but on Hard and Hardest towards the later stages it picks up quite a bit :P
Lim-Dul

Gustav’s right. I hope konjak won’t be influenced too much by all the “too easy” comments. I mean – judging a game’s difficulty by having seen a 1.5 level demo of the FIRST two levels is kinda… stupid?

I mean – getting the difficulty curve right is a major challenge for the developer and players shouldn’t hit a brick wall right at the beginning – that’s not how good games are designed (well, with the exception of I Wanna Be the Guy ^^) – especially not if they are meant to be appealing to a broader audience and konjak’s smooth and easy to learn controls are a step in that direction, right?
Radnom

I agree – if the gameplay was something we’d all seen before and wasn’t anything new, the difficulty could be ramped up.. but this is an introduction level to a game with a new and different control scheme!
konjak

Thanks guys, and yes, it is an introductory level. Once you get the side-bursting down you can just hover past the first part of level 1, basically. :)

Oh, and on Hard there are no half-bolts, which I am sure makes a difference.
deadeye

I wasn’t judging the whole games difficulty based on one and a half levels. I was merely stating that what was there was easy and *hoping* for more of a challenge in the later levels. There’s a difference.

Seriously, there’s no need to jump on me about it.
Lim-Dul

Sorry, deadeye – I wasn’t jumping on you in particular. I’m following the comments section on the IndieGames Weblog where other people pointed out that the game is too easy as well so I kind of replied to the whole argument here. =)
gustav

Sorry, deadeye didn’t mean to sound offensive <3

I just played on Hardest and got a game over on stage 3... "Pick up quite a bit" was an undestatement :U
seregrail7

Absolutely brilliant, can’t wait for the finished game. It’s great to see an Indie game with such a high level of polish on both the graphics and the gameplay. Could easily compete with anything on a handheld or PSN/Live Arcade.
rodnonymous

@Mre Wow

Insted of Joy2Key why not try xpadder? Mapping the mouse to right analog works ok at least on level one.
deadeye

“why not try xpadder? Mapping the mouse to right analog works ok at least on level one.”

I’ll have to give that a try. Seems like it might be kind of hard to grab hooks quickly though, or hit moving enemies like the Grim Reaper. But it’s worth a shot.
deadeye

PS – Fix forums plz thx
Krishh

This was simply amazing. The first stage was great fun other than the mid-boss, which felt messy, though that might just be because ir required some pretty specific use of the unique controls scheme and I screwed it up. (On hard at least, on normal he barely does anything.) But the begining of the secong stage was just incredible.

As a side note, this got me to finally finish the original Noitu Love, which crashed at the end of the 5th stage, but I can’t defeat the final boss. How are you supposed to evade the lightning attack, other than by getting hit with a weaker attack beforehand?
Xotes

I must say that this game is simply made out of TIGersauce and win.
Mischief Maker

The trick with the Omega Darn is that you hit the button BEFORE the mega-powerful lightning attack. As the fight goes on, he slowly raises his arms to give you an indication of how close he is to shooting one off.
MrBig

@deadeye & rodnonymous,

I’ve tried most of the Key2Joy emulators and game profilers out and I’ve found that the Pinnacle Game Profiler works the best so far. The only thing that might prevent people from getting it is it’s shareware, but I haven’t come across any other profilers that can be customized to the same extent or that recognizes so many different types of gamepads and controllers. I’ve purchased the full version and actually use it with most of the PC games that I have (both Indie and Mainstream) since a lot of devs don’t bother implementing gamepad or joystick support and there are very few indie games out there with good gamepad support with Aquaria being one of the exceptions to the rule. I’ve tried Noitu Love 2 with this profiler and it suits me just fine although you have to forgo the precision that a mouse provides but that goes for any profiler that you might want to use. It’s worth it just to download the trial version and check it out though since you can customize the heck out of it. Another big bonus is there are always new features and updates being added for more and more games as they come out and it works well under both WinXP and Vista (bonus).

Anyway, check it out if you’re looking to play with a gamepad and nothing else works.
dustin

that’s a whole lot of work to intentionally cripple the game controls isn’t it
Zeno

Mmmm, I wonder if I can make this work with my tablet pen…
deadeye

@ Zeno:

Hehe… *taptaptaptaptaptap* “Hey, where’s my nib?”

I have found that it’s much easier to play Joakim’s game Chalk with a tablet, though.
peshue

Fantastic, I’ll be buying it for sure. I’d love to see it on wiiware with some pointer action though XD.
ahayweh

Wow!!! Best game I’ve played since Aquaria! Anyone else think is like an updated Gunstar Heros ( albeit melee-based )? Will be buying this one for sure… Excellent work Joakim!
IndieJoJo

**FIX THE AUDIO**

I love what I *see* so far, but I’m really underwhelmed with what I’m *hearing*.

sound and music both lack that visceral, in-your-face, in-the-moment, satisfying **-kaKRAKum-** that a game of this type needs.

Metal Slug did well, but even better examples of good audio can be found in Shock Troopers (Neo-Geo):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TolJEn3EUmE&fmt=18

…and Contra: Hard Corps (Genesis):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFQQISr9mdE&fmt=18

The audio was honestly the first thing I noticed when I approached the game with a critical e– ear.

–

P.S. Not to hurt the composers feelings, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with the compositions, it’s just the instrumentation that’s lacking.
namuol

i’ve found that limiting myself to 2 bolts and playing on hard makes it pretty tough. :)

can’t wait for the full version
Ciardhubh

Initially I thought: What’s all the fuzz about yet another platformer? But yea, after playing the demo I have to admit, it’s pretty cool and I’m looking forward to the full version ;).

I like the mouse control and continuous clicking. Without it, the game would loose some of its speed, in my opinion.

I found one bug. However I was not able to reproduce it. In the first level, after you enter the tunnel (after the rocket ship mini-boss guy), there are these walls where you have to crouch to get past (with all the flying enemies around, before the lava). Somehow I managed to jump off the screen, while trying to get past the first wall. I ended up below the actual level and could move on through the level up to the lava, where I had to jump in order to die due touching it. Additionally the game locked up when I died, only showing a red screen.