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Emil the star-feeder devlog (post-mortem)

A topic by JairoCA created Jan 17, 2016 Views: 6,598 Replies: 1
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Submitted

Hi! I'm going to use this post as kind of retrospective of my development.

I spent the first week of the jam just trying to come up with a nice idea. Although at the beginning it was a bit unrealistic considering the development time that it would have needed, the basis was set up: the game would be mainly about the idea of a main character whose role would be to feed the stars so that they would light up. It was inspired by "The Little Prince" in the mind of the main character, who would need to have an alternative idea of what life is like. Also, following the inspiration of the topic of the jam, it made sense also to make this "feeding stars" as a job for the character. This way its daily life would be in the space.

During the second week the main objective was to have something playable. I succeeded to have a black box moving on the screen and being able to jump over a terrain. The main character had to be able to dig into this terrain and also to shoot whatever it had got from the ground.

The third week was about simplifying the controls and making everything be understandable. I prepared a HUD and a basic UI system for navigating through the menus. Also I crafted a system for loading the level designs from a texture.

This week has been the hardest because everything needed to be finished and that included being creative with the art (which I am not). I came up with a common approach for everything in the game: do pixels as big as possible so that everything seems more abstract and my lack of ability as an artist can be hidden. Also some bug-fixing and trying to narrate the story in the most efficient way.

I have to confess that I'm happy with the final result, but I think it will be hard for the players to pass the tutorial.

Thanks for your attention :)

Submitted

Summary of the game:

Emil is a robot that works as a star feeder. His role is to explore the stars finding energy that he can eventually use for feeding the stars.

The mechanics are very simple: Emil has 4 possible actions: moving left or right, jumping, digging and shooting. The stars have different materials in the ground, some can be dig and stored. Whenever Emil digs a material he is able to shoot it to construct platforms that he will be able to use for accessing to initially inaccessible places. The goal of every level is find the feeding hole in the star and shoot the energy material through it.