Hey everyone! This is my first post here on the forum, and I’m using it as a way to stay accountable and track progress on a game I’ve been slowly building in Godot 4.3. It’s a 2.5D side-scroller inspired by ‘Replaced’ and ‘The Last Night’ but with no money or funding lol It will be a exploration and story focus adventure. You play as a young botanist trying find a break through in the field by discovering a new plant species. After searching in a dense jungle, a giant cave is discovered with a mysterious forest inside — jumping on tree branches, climbing trees with ropes, and more real life feel.
Right now, I’m deep into building the world. I’m new to pixel art creation but I’ve been trying to build simple leaves and things to create a jungle rain forest thing…
I also am working on a character and animation (aka paying someone on Fiverr to animate a character for me).
This pixel guy is just a copy from the game ‘The Last Night’ I found a picture online and I felt it would be good practice to try copying it on my own. I did, and it was very cool. Definitely learned a lot from doing that!
Right now inside Godot I’m laying out the structure of how I want to build the Game coding wise and laying thing out properly for me. I’m starting to layer in stamina, visual effects, and some light camera movement to give it more polish. I’ve been a Cinematographer for many years so I love composition and lighting and fog!! lol It’s still early, but I’m aiming to keep this thread updated as I go — both to share what I’m learning and to keep myself moving forward. Thanks for reading!
Here is a simple video with some movement and a small jungle.
Another small update, I’ve begun animating some plants and leaves and stuff… I also added some small flying squares which could be bugs or just atmosphere.
I think the Fiveer pixel character design will be ready today sometime. I’m kind of excited for it!
I will be animating more plants and leaving others static… I need to really place these in good spots but also not get carried away distracting with this stuff and keep working.
I need to create a kind of notebook that the player uses to keep track of plants he collects.
Here is an idea I want kind of emulate.
Okay, I got the character from Fiverr. I really like him, although the walking animation is going to need some help. I’m not completely satisfied with the legs, the walk feels like it needs something more… The knee needs adjustment! Either way here they are.
Here is a walking cycle template.
I think I can fix this… lol
Oh I also successfully created my first lil birdy! He is the first animal in the forest.
That’s the most important question, I want for the player to be able to collect plants and mushrooms in his backpack as he traverses through the jungle. He will be able to use a rope and climb some trees to get to other area with more rare plans…
Eventually (not long) this will lead him to a cave entrance. The cave entrance will have a few plants to gather and while doing so he will fall deep into the depths of the cave. This is where the bulk of the adventure begins. This cave gives enhanced abilities to any living things that falls inside. (I’m loosely basing this cave from the famous Son Doong cave, the largest in the world)
Inside the cave it’s a struggle to survive and find your way out, you will encounter animals, creatures, and be able to communicate with them. Maybe even learn new abilities from them.
Finally, I hope to create an intriguing atmosphere and at the very end reveal the true nature of the Cave.
The rope idea and jungle reminds me of the game Pitfall on Atari: Pitfall - Wikipedia! while the platform adventure side which focuses on the story and exploration reminds me of Another World: Another World (video game) - Wikipedia
Excellent good good. It may be wise to prioritize the development of those mechanics to make your game fun, rewarding, and fulfilling rather than walking animations this early in your development.
Okay I know It’s been a while… This was supposed to keep me accountable, I now know it didn’t work but I’m still here.
I did realize something very important, while talking to “zac” He’s absolutely right about the mechanics and what makes the game fun. That’s top priority and I often spend a lot of time doing other things that are easier for me more comfortable.
So I have pivoted to an idea I had before this idea, and I’ve decided to do it it in a simpler fashion. My love would still be to make it 2.5D and super cool with high pixel deal.
Although I’ve settled for a one bit art style 2D. Here’s what it looks like a little bit.
This was my original draft, I also made a walking animation with him and it looked pretty cool… But it truly wasn’t what I was hoping for initially. I kept working on it and made something a bit different and more of what I hoped. Inspired by Cowboy Bebop.
After creating the idle animation, I tried doing a walk animation and quickly realized it’s a lot harder than I thought. I don’t know why I was able to do it for the smaller character I made, but this guy was much more difficult to get right. So I’m having a super cool artist and friend help me out. (I’m paying him)
Finally, this is the interior of the ship. It will be in a 2D platformer style while inside the ship and then it will be a 2D top-down experience (like the game asteroid) navigating the ship out in outer space. Once you enter into planets it will go back into a 2D platform.
I really liked your first draft, but that one was definitely not Cowboy Bebop :-). And I am not surprised getting the walking animation looking good with those long slender legs was a tough job. Even your artist friend will find it challenging I suspect.
You seem determined to make two games at once. A 2D top down shooter/asteroid game and a 2D Platforming adventure game. My only comment would be that what you will probably end up with is 2 ok games at best rolled into one. More likely one of them will start to feel pointless or under par. My advice would be to do one of them, and given your Cowboy Bebop preference here, and interesting platform art style, perhaps the platformer would be best.
Perhaps the ship is ‘vast’, giving you tons of areas to explore, dark scary areas, safe home areas, areas that have been infested, areas to stealth around, areas to clear of invading hordes, I don’t know, on a vast ship, think interstellar generational city ship, where people spend their entire lives, you could have any platformer environments you wanted. In fact I love this idea (jotting it down in my ideas pad right now!)
Your ship art just made me think of an old school Jet Set Willy type game. Of course in a more modern Natsuiro High School type narrative adventure, in the vein of Persona 5 etc. I can just right now imagine your cool dude walking off the screen to the right and entering the dining hall, then into the corridors perhaps, down elevators to the lower levels, through different ship biomes, interacting with other characters driving a story forward. No need to insert a 2D shooter at all.
Anyway, just thought I would share that thought with you. Hope you don’t mind.
Man, thank you for your in depth thoughts. Really made me think, you are right. I need to focus on one or at least have clear goals of where the bulk of the game will live. (Preferably the most fun!) Let me share with you what I have so far and get your thoughts.
Essentially, the top-down space part of the game would be mostly for navigation from planet to planet. I thought it’d be fun to have some kind of gameplay where you could destroy some asteroids and then capture them, some kind of a laser beam or something, and guide them to a collection center where you could get some money for delivering resources. But mostly, it’s there for you to travel from planet to planet and then you would play the bulk of the game in the planet, capturing your bounty, and then you would take them to your ship. You would fly the ship to these different transfer areas where you could collect your money for the bounty.
I really like your idea too about a bigger ship to explore. That would have a lot more people and things to interact with… possibly.
Here are some clips of what I have. Trying to rapid prototype.
I am paying a friend to help animate the walk and run cycles.
I watched the entire gameplay of Another World! So amazing, such a cool game! Hopefully this new idea has the same feel.. Thanks for reaching out man, how is your game going?
That animation is looking great. Good work on that.
As for the game, of course, this is your game and I was just throwing out my own thoughts. I would just warn you that if you gamify the transition from planet to planet, the chances are that with your mix of two games, an Elite space trading and a narrative RPG, that one of them is going to drag the other down.
The bulk of the game is what you should concentrate on. Look, your idea is great, all I am suggesting is that you have thought up two very distinct and different gameplay scenarios. Some games pull this off, like No Man’s Sky or Outer Wilds, but for an indie dev, it might just be too much. That is all I am saying really.
I also really liked your 2D platform art. I really think that could go somewhere. But it might not be the type of game you want to make, so make the game you want to make of course. That is the fun of game dev, you make the game you want to play! Not everyone wants to take a break from the space shooter to RPG on a planet. Not everyone wants to interrupt an RPG with an arcade space shooter. I think one will detract from the other. But what do I know?
I myself am making a space shooter. Here is my one sentence summary from my own game design document:
A mobile-optimized top-down 2D twin-stick survival game where you collect permanent upgrades to enhance your ship’s systems and uncover special weapon abilities to overcome hostile enemy species on your long journey home.
What would your games single line summary look like?
Anyway, your cabin image really got my thoughts racing, and your animation is looking great, and I genuinely look forward to seeing (hoping you will share it) your progress on your prototype. And I sincerely wish you all the best on your journey with this game.
I appreciate your thoughts, please keep them coming. It’s in the process of iteration that things become refined.
Here is my answer to your question.
“A skip tracer begins to doubt the system that made him, his blind loyalty shattered when the cost came in blood.”
Yeah, I’ve struggled with this. I come from a filmmaking background. I’m a cinematographer by trade and have focused for many years on telling stories. It’s one of my greatest passions. I want to tell stories in a game too. I understand that if your gameplay is boring or sucks or doesn’t feel good to play no one will play your game and therefore hear your story… So I struggle making something fun that tells a story. But I feel I’m getting close.
Thanks for taking the time to chat and give me your thoughts. It’s really hard making games, and trying to tell a compelling story is even harder. But I’ve loved getting into it.
Here is the running animation BTW, and I updated the walking slightly.
Just added some dynamic grass!! I thought of this idea and executed it! I’m really happy with the way it turned out, it was actually really simple to do and add a nice touch to the world…
You know I realized something about this game. I’m creating a character that looks more real and I need to change my thought of what THIS platform will be like. I can’t justify the movement of a game like Celeste or HollowKnight because my character feels more grounded in the real world. I will need to think hard about how I can do this. I think a game like “Replaced” or “The Last Night” are more along the lines of what I need to be thinking.
Anywho, here is the dynamic grass animation in action.
Okay, I made a change to my script it wasn’t working correctly. DynamicGrass_v2
That grass is excellent BTW. And I love the running animation.
It really reminds me of an ancient game I used to play on an old MS-DOS 386 computer, Prince of Persia. I found a video of some rando playing it here:
Gameplay starts at about 2 mins.
At the time that animation just blew everybody’s mind! Had never seen anything like it before. I think it was done with rotoscoping for the first time ever. Imagine how long that took back in the day!
Replaced looked amazing! But ‘The last night’ was incredible! I had never seen that before and it simply looked stunning! Quite a high bar you set for yourself there. I do know of Lunark, but TBH this is not a game I would invest hours in, however well made or scripted. I must say though watching this again to post the link to you, really made me want to play it! I just cannot imagine how long this would take to make though, the platforming, the cut scenes, the story, the mini games, the huge maps!
The story telling part I have been pondering myself. I dabbled in a game that had branching and player agency but honestly, the tree of branches just grows so fast that even when you force bottlenecks to bring it back together again at certain places, you still have the burden of past choices affecting current gameplay. Honestly I gave up and turned it into a strictly linear story. However I have always been drawn to it.
Then of course you have the problem that nobody wants to read tons of stuff. It is all very well people saying “use visual cues, objects, behaviour and environmental changes” to tell the story, but wow, that is sooooo difficult. Your film-making background will be a massive benefit to doing this if you chose to. Voice overs can also be just as annoying when they drone on forever.
“Short, visually rich sequences can deliver key story moments with minimal or no dialogue, relying on imagery and pacing” - again, easy to say, just making one cut scene can take forever it seems. No wonder modern games have hundreds of people working on them.
But there must be a solution, and a good story can hold interest all by itself no matter the gameplay. I recall a game on mobile where it was just text, the story being a stranded distant astronaut could only reach you, and for short periods a day, and he needed your advice about what to do. I played that game for weeks, every few hours getting the next short bit of text and asking what he should do next. It literally had my skin tingling at times dwelling on what this imaginary protagonist was doing or how your advice turned out. It was genuinely compelling on first play, the second time through was less so, especially when you realised you could just change the time on my phone and get the next message lol. That kinda spoiled it TBH.
But how exactly you tell a compelling story in a game without being a triple A team I have not worked out. Hence my current game is all action, virtually no story at all. Your character and animation seems ideally suited for a cool story. Perhaps you environments could be completely abstract, the one ‘realistic’ part being you and your enemies. If you were on an alien ship, perhaps the victim of an abduction, or you wandered onto an alien ship you found in the desert, the abstract background could be almost anything. Might make an interesting contrast. Perhaps you were abducted into an alien zoo, but you found a way out of your biome, and find yourself exploring different biomes, with different creatures, some friendly, some not.
Man I grew up playing that exact game!! It was amazing, such a ground breaking game at the time. But I’m with you on a lot of what you said, it’s all easier said than done. I absolutely love visual story telling and that it something I’m familiar with in Cinematography and yet, it struggle doing it in a game.
The interesting thing is that in a film (short or long) typically you have a finished script and ideas, foreshadow and everything in between has been throughout and placed in the script. But in Games I feel like I’m in Pre-Production, Production, and Post-Production all at once!! lol
While I’m writing this I can’t help but think about the Prince of Persian game and how I could leverage that game play a lot! I will need to trim so much down to my level and abilities but hopefully if I keep pushing forward I’ll get there!!
Thank you again so very much for your thoughts and ideas and concerns.
Small update on a massive amount of work!!! I created a simple (but complex for me) dialogue system for my game! Here it is, I still need to work a lot on the UI but at least the guts are working. This will be a huge part of the game sooo I need it to work well.
its true. Thanks for the nudge in the right direction, I do tend to get carried away in the visuals.
