Wizbane’s Planet 53 + post mortem
LD19 was a blast! I got a decent gameplay prototype complete, and I’m really excited to take it further. I thought I’d share some my some concept sketches and what I learned from the process.
My initial concept for the game:
As you collect the items, the team of scientists your working for is assembling the pieces into some sorta device. It initially sounds like they are making something to save humanity or some noble goal. But once you have found all of the pieces, you find out what they’re really up to…”
I knew I wanted to make a platformer/metroidvania style game and I thought the mechanic of having to carry a fragile item around for a while could add interesting gameplay challenges. So I started on some basic concept sketches for my main character, enemies, and an opening level scene:
From there I dove right into Game maker, working on getting basic platformer functionality. I made sprites for all of the enemies and player right away, though not fully animated, instead of using placeholder graphics. This allowed me to get the right collision boxes and movement speeds set up right away, and when I went back to animate I knew approximately how detailed I needed to make the animations. I could get away with only 1 additional frame for the slug creature since it almost looked ok with only 1 frame.
placeholder tiles = bad
I should have taken the time to make a decent tileset early on, since I knew that time was short and that any art asset I made would most likely get used in the final game, however most of development was done using simple gray boxes. I had to scramble to make a decent looking tileset in the last hour, and I wasn’t able to create many levels, and the one I did make was just thrown together pretty randomly. I should have made a workable tileset initially, and used the playtesting during development to home in on a decent level design.
I spent a fair amount of the development time working on refining the animations, damage, and stun/bounce. I’m really glad I was able to get the separate animation state for picking up the vial completed, at least it hints at the “discovery” theme. I’m most happy with the way the visuals turned out, and when I get a little more experienced with programming I’ll be able to add some better gameplay. I achieved my goal of making a playable game for the competition, even if it is lacking a plot, or any real ending.
Give it a try and let me know what you think!