I've been working on a sequel to Nova the Squirrel 1 since April. I've been mostly detailing progress at http://forums.nesdev.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=19067 and elsewhere but figured people might be interested in hearing about it here. I have a (slightly old) build people can play around with here if anyone wants to, and the code is over on GitHub as always.

Gameplay's intended to be mostly the same, with Mario-style platforming and Kirby-style copy abilities. There'll probably be a smaller amount of emphasis on puzzle platforming this time, at least for mandatory stuff. There's also an (in my opinion) much bettery story I'm figuring out, using almost entirely my own characters this time.


I'm trying to put a lot of emphasis on cute and smooth animations, like the attack doing a cute little twirl, or being able to roll down hills.


It's going to have a mode 7 section that's more puzzley, that takes a strong hint from Sonic 3's Blue Sphere minigame.
 

Looks cool!

Just don't miss the opportunity to title it Super-Nova...

Looks nice!

I've loved following your progress on Twitter  

Keep up the great work!!

I've also enjoyed following your posts on Twitter and seeing this project come together through your sheer love of development!  

Do you think you will take this and Nova the Squirrel 1 to Kickstarter for cartridge releases?

I definitely intend to get both of them cartridge releases. I dunno what a Kickstarter would fund, though; can't you just publish through a publisher? I already reached out to InfiniteNESLives and got the impression that that was really all I needed, just that summers were typically busy and that it would have to come later, or something.

Nova the Squirrel 2 is going to be a standard LoROM cartridge which should be really easy to produce, and I want to support flash saves (if the game doesn't detect save RAM) so it should be super easy to make carts of.

You certainly don’t need to go through Kickstarter, but given the success of several recent homebrews there, it might be worth considering if you’re interested.

 

Looks great, I really enjoyed Nova the Squirrel on the nes.

Here's a lot of gifs showing later progress: I've been working on implementing copy abilities, starting with burgers (which don't currently require you to touch the ground again before using them again, which I need to implement), gliders and a new bubble ability inspired by Cave Story's bubble gun. I started implementing the ice block but haven't gotten it to work fully. There's also a water bottle ability (with arcs I've since adjusted) with a random selection of four water bottle graphics.



I also have most of an overworld engine. Or at least everything that doesn't involve actually moving around on the map. All the decorations like trees and stuff are sprites, and I figured I'd use them to help me bypass the grid.

Nova, your game is looking amazing! I usually don't see homebrew for the snes on this level. All I ask is that you make the code and tools available and user friendly so that others can create SNES homebrews too.

Keep it up, you are doing amazing work.

https://github.com/NovaSquirrel/N...

Yup, it's been open source the whole time, and the level editor has been available (even available pre-compiled for Windows). That's unfortunately as good as it's going to get unless someone else is interested, because working on tools sounds like the sort of thing that's going to burn me out and make game dev not fun anymore. Even the overworld map code started to make me feel like that, which is why I'm saving the rest of that for later and doing copy abilities now.