Flightless

''This article is for the general game. For the demo, proceed to Flightless Demo''

Flightless is an upcoming multiplayer platforming-exploration Metroidvania game set for release in the coming future. The game was first announced through a preview image on September 27, 2011, with more information revealed on October 15, 2012, over a year after the image was released on the Nitrome blog.

The game was mentioned on Aaron Steed's twitter account weeks before its October 15th announcement under the name "ladder game", and was also mentioned by Mat Annal during an interview with Gamasutra. It was on October 15, 2012 Nitrome provided much more about the game, pitching it to Steam Greenlight, the game's minisite, and trailer.

Currently, the game's demo has been released, and is available to play. The game's full version will only be plyaalbe once it passes the Greenlight phase of Steam Greenlight, although whether it will be immediately playable is not known. The game will be Nitrome's first purchasable game.

As of February 22nd 2013, Nitrome is still working on the game, as the game itself is still not completely finished.

Once released, Flightless will be immediately available for the Mac and Windows computers. Nitrome will be looking in to porting this game to other consoles, including Linux.

On August 28th 2013, Flightless was officially Greenlit.

Controls
Pressing the P button on the keyboard will bring up the pause screen, which sort of acts like a help menu. When the game is paused, fullscreen can be toggled on and off, controls for each character can be toggled, one can reset the demo, go to the game's Steam Greenlight page, and toggle the Music and Sound effect on and off.

Below lists the basic controls for each character. Controls can be changed by going to the pause menu, clicking a button that corresponds to a key, then pressing the key one wants to map that action to.

Player 1 Move left/right: ←/→ Create ladder: Space Climb ladder up/down: ↑/↓ Player 2 Move left/right: A/D Create ladder: E Climb ladder up/down: W/S

Fullscreen
Fullscreen enlarges the game's screen to a 4:3 ratio. During fullscreen, only the player who uses the keyboard keys (←↑↓→), mouse, and the space bar can play the game. This was the first Nitrome game to support fullscreen, and currently the only Nitrome game outside Nitrome Touchy compatible games to support fullscreen.

Gameplay

 * Main section: Flightless Demo

Flightless is an exploration puzzle game where the players controls a duck. The game is described by Nitrome as a Metroidvania, mixing the elements of the 2D Metroid games and elements of the 2D Castlevania games. Flightless does not have any levels, but is instead divided up into rooms. Each room somewhere has an exit to another room. As the player is a flightless, jump-disabled bird, the player relies on creating magical ladders to progress through each room.

Creating a ladder will cause to move vertically up, until it hits a platform of wall. Upon coming to a stop, the player can climb up this ladder. The player at any time can move horizontally off the ladder, or continue climbing up it. The player cannot create a ladder while still on a ladder, the player can also only have one ladder at a time, creating another ladder causing the previous one to disappear.

Ladders can be used to kill enemies and get gems, but are mainly used for climbing to higher up areas. If a duck is killed, it will respawn in front of the entrance to the room they entered. Enemies can be killed by the player's ladder, however, the full game may have certain enemies impervious to damage from the ladder.

Map

 * Main section: Flightless Demo

Flightless features a map displayed at the top right corner of the screen. This map displays nearby rooms and which room the player is in. Different rooms receive different colourations. Please note that everything described in this section is what has been seen in the demo of Flightless.

Red pixels indicate doors, a door being two red pixels high. Although 2x2 blocks of red pixels appear on the map, these blocks are actually two two pixel high bars placed beside each other.

An orange room is a room the player is currently in, where a green room is a room that contains a gem, and a brown-grey room is a room that has no gems. The game will contain rooms that do not show up on the map, these rooms being secret rooms. Secret rooms are rooms that are not accessed by usual door, but by shooting a ladder through blocks.

Blocks which lead to a secret rooms appear as 2-3 blocks that have a swirl on them, these blocks placed horizontally on a ceiling or floor. A single swirl block will not lead to a secret room, only swirl blocks placed side-by-side will lead to a secret room. Walking over two or more swirl blocks will cause the player to fall through them, while shooting a ladder in the direction of the blocks will cause the blocks to disappear.

Secret rooms are not marked on maps, even if they are entered, only two red dots will appear at the place the entrance to the room is, the map will only display the full room on the map when the room is entered. This is because the room on the map is so big, it cuts into the space of other rooms.

Demo

 * Main article: Flightless Demo

Enemies
Demo Full Game (Hypothesized)
 * Bats
 * Beetles
 * Slimes
 * Magical slimes
 * Giant beetle
 * Guards (Flightless)
 * Purple bats

Hazards

 * Spikes
 * Barrels

September 27, 2011
Nitrome released a preview image of the game they were currently working on, also announcing the artist of the game.

September 19, 2012
The game's programmer, Aaron Steed, announced on his Twitter account that he wanted play testers for it before it was pitched to Steam Greenlight. Playtesters assisted in the development of Flightless' demo.

September 28, 2012
This game has been accepted by Steam Greenlight.

October 15th, 2012
The game's name was announced and a few videos were uploaded by Nitrome. A demo of the game was released on Nitrome.com.



Advertisements
Main article: Advertisements

There are several advertisements Nitrome made in order to promote Flightless.

The first was a small advertisement placed in the "Nitrome" section of the main page. Clicking on the ad would link the player to the Flightless Greenlight page.

The second was an advertisement "banner" that was uploaded to Nitrome's Facebook page. This ad encouraged fans to vote for Flightless on Steam.

Also, another ad can be found when waiting for a distributable Nitrome game to load. After the sponsor ad, a randomly selected ad made by Nitrome will pop up- one of these being for Flightless. The ad encourages fans to vote for Flightless on Steam.

On December 12, Nitrome updated their site, adding several larger ads to their website. These ads included ones for Flightless. These advertisements encouraged fans to vote for Flightless on Steam.

Trivia

 * The main character in the game was seen climbing up a ladder out of Balloons Inc. in the Nitrome 2.0 Skin.
 * This game's preview blog post was the only blog post to specify who the artist was before the game was released.
 * If the player stretches the screen (possible by pressing CTRL and = or CTRL and moving the mouse's mouse wheel in) while on the menu, there are Credits, Highscores, and Help buttons, these buttons exactly the same as the buttons from Rubble Trouble Moscow; consequently, clicking the buttons brings up the same content as they would bring up when clicked in Rubble Trouble Moscow. However, the Highscores page contains just the words (in black) "Highscores", without any scores listed as it is not possible for the player at all to submit their score.