A game in the works [currently only a playable level] that was another attempt at making a minimum viable product of a game as efficiently as I could. I tried making this game much earlier with Godot but at the time, it was still only on 3.4ish, if I’m remembering correctly. I remember having a bit of trouble with the rigidbodies so I transitioned to using Unity for the project a while later.
Story and Game Loop
So far I only have loose dayjob doodles and sketchbook pages of this game (something I need to work on documenting on here). The Game Loop is basically an arcade-styled shmup that’s going for a gradius-esque VR experience. The player controls the player ship with their hands position. They need to be aware of dodging obstacles, enemy waves and their bullets. At the end of every level (there’s only one so far), a challenging boss that tests the players skill to survive.
The story is essentially about a colony ship of cats that use mechs as weapons against a strange shrimp-like alien enemy that hunt them down. I’ve planned on the ‘ol trello board that I could develop it either in a mario 3 world level selection or something more like ftl where you simply pick the next level node. Things to decide later…
Influences
As far as the story goes, Knights of Sidonia’s setting is just so cool to me. Gameplay wise I’m basically taking Gradius and putting my interpretation of what that could be in current VR. Although I could have gone the cockpit fighter/star fox path (which could be amazing), I just don’t have the chops or time at the moment. Definitely later.
Another strangely big influence for this is the Time Crisis-esque games. I was kind of thinking of wanting to make a rails type shooter and ended up with the solution of moving the player on a rail the whole level, which then came up with the space shooter gradius game idea.
Mission goal
With this game, I was again trying to make a playable demo as soon as I could, this one took some extra time because dayjob responsibilities started getting more attention so progress halted here. I do want to finish this up with at least like 5-7 levels. (That was enough for some shmups back then…) and If I use a more procedural generation method of level making, I could make that a reality faster than hand-crafting.
Release Date
TBD. I’ll have a link here to the playable demo once I pretty up the itch page though!
Arcanus Cella Games 