How many interesting 2D side scrolling games can you name that come from homebrew developers?  Sure, we have our darker stuff with Castlevania: Spectral Interlude or Infernax but there are not many “family friendly” safe games in this category.  It is like developers automatically fall to the dark side of the game world for some reason.  Well, one homebrew developer, Ishi on the Tigsource.com forums, is working on something that is just warm hearted fun.  Leilani’s Island is a mix of the Mario games, Donkey Kong Country and Wario Land all rolled up into one.

Check out the animated GIF’s in this article, and jump to the Tigsource forums for more, of Leilani’s Island.  The developer has stated that these are at 20 frames per second GIF’s.  The full game runs at 60 frames per second and is in the 3DS resolution (just putting that there and am going to leave it be).

Leilani has a roll attack, jump abilities and can kick enemies that are in the prone position.  It is a combo system that Leilani has at her disposal.  First Leilani can jump on the enemy, then she can kick it and then finish it off with a roll attack.  This series of moves is detailed in the picture below.

Other than the graphics and attack mechanics, Leilani’s Island is clearly a friendly title.  Leilani’s Island is a throwback to the early days of the Super Nintendo, prior to Nintendo changing course with the campaign to allow mature content on their console (who knows the name of that campaign?).  Back when games were just fun and developers had to rely on the mechanics of their titles to get sales and good scores in magazines of the time (we didn’t have the Internet like now back then).

Source: Tigsource Forums and Ishisoft.com via Indie Retro News

Carl Williams

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