What do we have here? A new blog post? Unbelievable!
Yep, I have finally managed to bring myself to update this blog, let you know about my little indie game development endeavor.
First, just a little update about my first game A Long Road Home. I have released my RPG Maker adventure game on December 2016 (January 2017 on Steam) and I think I got the maximum out of it. I’ve got a few good reviews and looking at all the platforms I sold it on, I managed to sell more than 330 copies. It might not seem much, but since it was a very low-budget game, it easily turned a profit. I also featured it in two separate bundles (the Indie Gala one is still going if you are interested), which also earned me a decent amount of money. I have released a few small updates for it, but right now I don’t think I will do anything else with it, since I want to use my spare time to work on my next project. A Long Road Home was a good learning process, but new adventures are waiting.
So I definitely wanted to start small, and after some thinking I decided to make a side scrolling shoot ‘em up. Have you played Jets ‘n Guns? What a cool little shmup! Now I want to go after something like that, but putting some twist into that formula. I’m not saying it will have transforming mechs, but it might have transforming mechs, just sayin’. After nailing down the basic idea, the next thing I have done is I created a design document. I think this is pretty much a must for every game, you will progress much faster and will have a smoother workflow if you write down some of the details of your game. I didn’t do this with my first game and it shows unfortunately. The design document doesn’t have to be a long one, I created a two page document for this project, detailing the basic game mechanics, the basic story, controls etc. After having this, I can expand it later when I’m doing the actual design. I have also worked out my basic workflow, which means I have my tasks laid out step by step. Things like: 1. implementing controls, 2. implementing collision system, 3. figuring out the weapon systems, 4. finalizing art, things like that. This helps me stay focused since I know what I have to do next. Without that I might want to implement a bunch of new ideas into the game each day, and I don’t want to end up with a mess.