Sarah's Run

To those who dont follow any of my other social networks, I took a break from working on Phantasmal to make another short game about messing with gravity… again.

This time though it’s not BOXGAME, but Sarah’s Run: Escape from Capital Evil

you can play the 10-level preview here, you can follow my progress making the game at it’s development blog. (EDIT; you can now also track the game on IndieDB here)

Hopefully I’ll be able to offer pre-orders of the game to fund development (and stop my debt getting any worse), if you want to be notified when pre-orders are available, sign up to the mailing list.

here are some screenshots for ya:

scrns4blg

In other news, I’ll be speaking at the World of Love conference in london later this month, and then I’ll be at the love jam for the weekend. should be interesting as I’ve never been to an IRL jam before, nor have I actually met any of my fellow indies face to face either (well apart from how an other speaker Tom Betts was one of my lecturers at Uni).

If you are attending I look forward to seeing you 🙂

also I fixed up my games page a while back but haven’t mentioned it here, it’s re-organised a little and I added plenty of games that were missing, including some unfinished stuff like ZIP QUEST, ZagiZigi and A Fishing Adventure (which placed third overall in ludum dare 17 woo!) and I even included my first ‘proper’ game, Platform Lemmings


13 Comments on “Sarah's Run”

  1. wonderwhy-er says:

    Well I commented on Sarah demo on DA.
    BTW good but not good enough for me yet to donate 😛

    Hmm hmm what will you be speaking about at World Of Love? Seems interesting but I am not shore 🙂
    Also 23-27 are holidays here and I think I have a chance to try to fly to London but that’s starching to far 🙂

  2. TimViana says:

    I think you should consider releasing this one on app store and make some money with your hard work, because, now, you broke the barrier between amateur and professional.

  3. Sophie says:

    @wonderwhy-er: Tickets are sold out I’m afraid, I think there will likely be a video recrding of it put online by the organisers afterwards though 🙂

    @TimViana: I’d need a mac, and various licences I have to pay for to port it to i-devices, if I can afford all that though I may give it a shot, so long as it’s still playable. thanks for the kind words though, I appreciate it, hopefully I’ll be able to sell some copies on pc and mac 🙂

  4. staticshade says:

    just finished sarahs run latest build i guess ?? here are my thoughts listed in neat bullet points

    . Overall Good Puzzle platforming fun fun.
    .ridiculous balance issues level 10 was ridiculous took me a good 20mins while the others took an=bout 5 mins or less.
    .camera still gets a bit troublesome at certain points
    .Stronger puzzle design would be needed to hold a full game together
    . i got a glitch with the nariko costume while on the bounce tile that caused the character model to disappear and be replaced with a red texture saying bounce repeatedly. sadly i couldn’t recreate the bug

    p.s really enjoyed the 2d level.

  5. Sophie says:

    @staticshade thanks for the feedback, it’s super useful! 😀

    as for the problem with the character diappearing, I think you probably hit ‘r’ and went in to first person mode accidentally ( I really gotta move that button lol) and the bounce texture is the nariko hair right in front of the camera, I should point out the ‘heavenly sword’ version of the preview isn’t serious, I just wanted to show off my hair code lol so that doesent dissapear with the player.

    the camera continues to be the number one issue, though AFAIK there is only one ‘real’ problem left with it, and it’s just tweaking stuff until its just right now (I hope).

    as for puzzle design I promise everything will go through the most rigorous playtesting I can manage, and not just putting the game in front of my siblings and watching them play like how I playtested the preview 🙂

  6. E.L. says:

    Played it and really enjoyed it. Everyone’s already said the basic complements and criticisms I have, so I’ll say things others haven’t.

    There was one point in the hub where after switching around the orientation of the room, I slipped and fell into the already completed level 3 which meant I had to go through it again before I could get back to the hub and go for the level I hadn’t done yet (level 9) since there was no way to return to the hub otherwise.

    Plus, this game need story, it really does, the title of the game and the background setting makes it seem like the story would be a bit portal-esque. Is that what you’re going for or are you going to completely change the theme like make the game take place in someones mind (alla psychonauts) or turn it into something out of 2001 space odyssey. Or even make the story based on being trapped in a dream, a game or a computer or something.

    The mechanic itself is fun and there is so much potential in this. Though it’s a shame certain elements were only used once, the bouncy red stuff, the conveyor belts, the 2-d perspective…

    Anyway, I really can’t wait to see what this becomes.

  7. Sophie says:

    @ E.L. thanks for that stuff! I know about the falling into level 3 from the hub, in the game portals will usually be around a corner or something to avoid that, though I had to keep them visible as the hub is the first level, and so that the player can see them. just for the purposes of the preview really.

    as for the story, you can check out this post on the devblog for a quick overview:
    http://sarahsrun.sophiehoulden.com/devblog/?p=25

    and as for the stuff thats only included once, you will definitely see more of that stuff, I have some pretty cool gameplay planned for most of it 😀

  8. E.L. says:

    Want want want want want

  9. YoshieMaster says:

    Awesome game, staticshade wasn’t kidding about level 10. Finished it after about 40mins.
    @E.L. You can use ESC to open a menu. From there you can return to the hub.

  10. Embosom says:

    我英语不太好,我看你的博文有《Kliche醒来之后感到非常的湿,这一切不过是一场梦,一场春梦。 》你应该能懂汉语吧~

    Sarah’s Run 你在哪玩的?我在http://www.kongregate.com/games/SophieHoulden/sarahs-run-preview玩了试试,不过没能通关,10房间过不去了。我想问问倒数第二张截图是在那个关卡?

    另外,从第一张来看,咱们玩的应该不是一个版本,传送带部分图案不一样,所以想问问你是在哪玩的呢?

  11. Sophie says:

    @Embosom sorry, I don’t understand Chinese so I used google to translate your comment so I can answer.

    the line about “kliche waking up wet, he had a wet dream” probably doesn’t translate well, in English, “wet dream” means this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_dream
    It’s supposed to be a little bit of a joke, though it’s not a mature joke I admit.

    The version of Sarah’s Run on kongregate.com is the latest, there is no other place to play it, but when there is, it will be here: http://sarahsrun.sophiehoulden.com/

    sorry but I don’t understand your qustion about the screenshot ^_^;

    oh, the belt pattern is different because these screenshots are from an older version of sarah’s run I think 🙂

    I hope I’ve been able to answer your questions 🙂

  12. thezax101 says:

    may i suggest u add some enemies in the game? it could make the game a bit more challenging but give it some more juice so more people could play. also, would it hurt if u made a trailer for it?

  13. David says:

    I played the game, and it really entertained me for a while. The concept is so simple, yet so powerful, and you also did a very good job with the level design. The only thing that bugged me was the camera: Sometimes it was outside of the textures, which was a bit confusing. And I needed a lot of time to understand that the arrows point into the direction where the gravity currently is, and you can just change the gravity direction to where you currently are. Felt stupid when I found this out, but it explained a lot.

    Nevertheless I really enjoyed the game, although I’m not into first-person 3D games. Call me crazy, but it was like a second Portal to me. The levels were challenging, but not too frustrating (except for level 10, kept dying at the electrical surface when I didn’t see it coming, and forgot to save).

    Furthermore, I disagree with my pre-poster. The electrical fence is enemy enough, and more (moving) enemies would break the concept partially.

    Definitively a would-buy.


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