Monday, July 25, 2011

What I'm Working On


I've been working on a few different games lately. All of these projects are being made in Game Maker 8.0.



The first is an adventure rpg. You play as a detective solving a murder. The suspects include a Yakuza group and the violent authoritarian police force. I really like working in this sort of mix between 2d sprites and 3d environments, because I can easily make buildings with very simple walls and textures, rather than having to make sprites which take perspective and stuff like that into consideration. My main obstacle in this project is coming up with interesting gameplay, especially since I'm trying to avoid relying on combat. I've tried out a couple of combat systems, including a turn based system resembling a Final Fantasy game, and also a real time system more similar to a beat em up, but neither system really appeals to me. I enjoy the challenge of making a game which doesn't rely on violence for a change.



The next game is an ambient exploration shooter game. A combination of Knytt, Zelda, and Metal Gear Solid 3. I've been focusing on lighting, graphical effects, and sound design, and I'm quite proud of the results. The only problem is a distinct lack of any sort of gameplay or story, making it more of a tech demo than anything else at this point.


Third is a game I came up with after playing through Mega Man 2 (that game is HARD!) It's a combination of Mega Man and a metroidvania. I came up with a quick engine in a couple of days, but I've hit a roadblock in starting designing levels and powerups. Also, I suck at pixel art.


This is a weird one. It was going to be a sort of Mass Effect demake, combined with a Cactus game. I never really got farther than a basic first person engine and some 8 bit character billboards.



This is another fairly random project. All it does is generate a medieval or fantasy house, of the sort you might see in a Game of Thrones. It doesn't do much more than coming up with a basic family tree which assigns random personality traits to different family members.

Thanks for reading! Let me know if you like the look of any of these, or you want to share whatever project you're working on. I'll try and update this blog a little more often, but you can always check my twitter feed for what I've been doing.