One half of the development team "Baclog". My name is Julien and this is my devlog.
I will post rants on all the different game dev work I am working on. Lots of little incites on game design and things i learn on the way to trying to be an indie dev.
I have many things i would like to post and talk about, most of it self reference so i dont forget it, other stuff will be doodles and sketches of things that may or may not ever make it into my games, but will have lots to do with my game projects.
Here is a list of all the projects i am working on at the moment along with a short synopsis.
A 2D platform game, probably my most ambitious project and the mascot of baclog was well as flagship game. This game is a product of love and will have the longest time in development as both me and scott have a passion for platform games.
the premise is a take on the nursery rhyme "jack be nimble, jack be quick, jack jump over the candle stick." the player controls Jack B. a young man who awakes in a forest with no one but ghosts haunts and wisps around him.
simple yet challenging platforming game play influenced by classic platformers like mario and sonic, simple run and jump controls with a double jump skill timed enemy jumps and hidden paths in each level. collect wisps blue wisps and try and find the one red wisp in every level. stomp on your enemies heads for fast yet challenging paths, try and keep yourself in the air as long as possible time your double jump and keep yourself from touching the ground by using your foes as steps. The longer you stay in the air the higher your score multiplier will be, each level will reward you based on your play style, avoid all the enemies and take the low road or avoid the ground and keep afloat. both paths lead to one of the 2 different game endings.
2D logic puzzle game, something I came up with on my own and worked on solo till I had something i found fun, then had scott play it and design levels for it.
A simple block logic game, you can change the flow of gravity with the arrow keys and you try and use that to get the green block to the blue block, but there are also red block that are needed to help you or hinder you on your way to the goal
The game at its core is very simple move the blocks with the arrow keys, every move you make counts so think before moving, each level has a gold silver and bronze medal you can earn, each medal is attained by getting the lowest amount of "moves" per level. for example level one can be completed in 12 moves minimum, that is the requirement for gold silver is less than 15 and bronze is 17 moves.
If insomnia and talk of dreams was a game this would be it, not because of how it plays but because of how it came to be. Let me elaborate, one night during the early days of creating Nimble scott told me about his idea for a game in great detail, even drew some examples on paper and was really excited about this simple puzzle like touch screen based game idea. I in turn stayed up all night trying to make it. at the time I lived in the same apartment as scott so when he work up the next morning i showed him the product and he was impressed with how accurate i got the game to his vision. I was impressed i got it working.
Overall this game is just a simple reflex game, the screen is split down the center and you have to "touch" either the top or bottom half and then you can touch one of 3 colors touching a color will then change the bar at the split of the screen to the corresponding color. blocks will randomly generate off screen moving towards the center bar and you have to have it set to the same color or it is counted as a miss and breaks your combo, 14 misses and it game over. every hit the moving blocks speed increases and thus the difficulty rises.
This game is based on an abandoned idea from nimble, I made an air-dash mechanic in nimble, but it did not fit the game as well as i'd liked so it got abandoned shortly after tinkering with it to try and fit it into the games design. this proved futile and we canned the idea. However I enjoyed the motion and feel of speed from it so i suggested a much simpler platform game based on the air-dash skill where it was the basis of the game. Project Speed Run has no real name as of now, I recently started calling it "Feathered", or "Syfer".
The game is set in a futuristic world with lots of black and purple tones, environments are influenced by sky scrapers and are silhouetted, not much art is done for PSR but i have some sketches of the player character which is a bi-pedal robot that changes into a plane during the aerial maneuver. I call the robot design "The Feathered" or "Syfer" either way it will have a number/serial name as well like MK1206U (pronounced; mark twelve oh six you) currently he is being represented by a triangle in the game engine.
The game play is fast platforming, no vertical scrolling for faster simpler level design the entire game scrolls only left to right. you have an EN gauge that recharges anytime you are not doing an air dash, if the gauge empties you fall out of the airdash and back to walk/run mode. holding down the run key will let you run on the floor but your EN wont recharge while you run. the levels are all time trials and the point of the game is to clear the level as fast as possible. gaps sometimes need the airdash to be cleared so saving it is a smart way to go about it and if you can jump it normally do that. running does not drain the EN gauge just stops the recharge of it so run anytime the gauge is at 100% running will also increase your base jump strength.
PSR has features that i came up with that were necessary for a plat former of this speed, like an input buffer and ledge forgiveness, by that i mean when you press jump you have a split second where it will still count even if you arent quite on the ground when moving and jumping, say you are 1-4 pixles from the ground but it looks like you are touching the ground because of how fast the character moves and you press the jump again so as soon as you hit the ground you will jump again, well the games system will read that jump rather then reading it as you are still in the air, and as soon as you touch the ground you will jump again. this helps the game feel smooth as during play tests i encountered many troubles with the feeling of not being able to jump when i should be able to.
And that is pretty much the list of projects being worked on right now. I know i have my work cut out for me as i have almost zero assets for PSR right now, SlidePark however is near completion and i hope to see it for sale in the next month or so. Saturation is also practically finished although when i made saturation i was not really sure what i was doing and used a lot of redundant coding. so we have all the assets sounds and everything, i just have to clean the code and finalize the game. I have trouble with my games never explaining themselves entirely so I might make a tutorial rather then a blurb of text that explains how to play like i have now.
Well i am done ranting for now. till next time, hopefully i will have something more interesting to see like art work or screen shots. i will take a photo of all the games title screens and post that maybe.
