I Started Making the Wrong Game
I launched my first game. It was awesome. I achieved something that I worked so hard on for over two years, and was even fortunate enough to see it launch on Nintendo Switch with a Japanese port through publisher support! The game exceeded every goal I had for it, and was a great first project. I learned so much, got to see reviews, watch playthroughs, streams, met some awesome people and really just enjoyed people playing it and talking about it.
…so now what?
After everything settled for me, I knew I wanted to start a new project. Grant joined the studio last year, and we made a small project called Big Top Tactics that we built in five weeks and launched it on itch.io. It was a ton of fun, and I’m super proud of the game. If you’re into WarioWare style games or even like circus-themed stuff, it’s definitely your style!
Grant and I toyed around with a few different ideas, we had intended to start making mini games one after another, but halfway through the second one (a cyberpunk metroidvania with deckbuilding elements called “Cyberdecktroid”) we decided to abandon the small project path for now and focus on some larger ideas.
I’m going to get into some stuff here that I haven’t shared on any socials, or hardly with anyone other than my own family. During the downtime after calling it quits on Cyberdecktroid (RIP), I went through a lot of different stages. It was almost some kind of mental game I was playing with myself. My goal for the next project was for it to be something that would outperform Attack of the Karens in terms of sales, and at the same time stretch my skills in programming and artwork, while at the same time not be a huge time commitment. I didn’t want my next project to take longer than my first, but I also wanted it to be better at the same time.
It took me a long time to figure out what to do next. I wrestled with it a lot, almost daily. I felt like I was wasting a lot of time just sitting there mulling over idea after idea. I probably have 3 dozen game ideas by now on a google sheet somewhere in my drive just waiting to be made.
I watched videos from other developers, listened to podcasts, read books, read articles and blogs, and all it did was make me wrestle even more with what I should do next. I decided I just needed to make something and get back to work.
I started looking at survivor-likes. I knew there were a ton of them out there, and wondered how I could differentiate my game from the others if I did make one. I could make it 3D, with higher-effort graphics and a unique mechanic that hadn’t been tried before. I had the idea a while ago of making a game where you drove a snow plow through hordes of endless zombies, and that idea seemed to really click with the genre! I quickly called the game “Deathdozer” and got to work.
I started straight away on planning and a prototype, even developing a custom physics system for car suspension, turning, acceleration, etc. It was actually really satisfying to create! I downloaded a 3D asset pack and started filling the game with visuals. I played with cel shading and learned all about lighting and post-processing effects that Unity can throw into the game to make it look awesome. The game had a really cool two-tone look that gave off a nightmarish, yet comic book style vibe! Development was humming and I was closing in on a playable prototype!
A screenshot of “Deathdozer” in early development
Then I got into the gritty of 3D animation and texturing and hit a brick wall.
Learning 3D modeling up to this point was fine. I spent a few weeks learning from a fantastic set of Udemy courses how to use Blender. I had a decent workflow, and even felt like I could make some pretty good models. Bear in mind though that I had been using assets in the game up to this point, thinking that I would use my own work for enemy models in the end. When it came to using my own models in the game, thing after thing just started getting in my way. Weight painting. UV mapping. Animation. Rigging. It was just rabbit hole after rabbit hole I kept having to dive into to figure out how to do stuff. I finally came away with a conclusion: 3D animation is a deep subject, and was going to take a long time to learn for this project.
I also realized that my passion for this project was slowly dying. I felt like I was making a vampire survivors-like just to cash out on a simple project rather than make something I was passionate about.
At this point, I had a decision to make. I could continue down this road and see inches of progress after miles of effort, or I could go back to my pixel art roots and change direction. I ultimately decided that I was making the wrong game, and had to change.
I decided on the latter, and shelved work on Deathdozer. A weight lifted, knowing I could start fresh with something I knew I could do, and with something I had more passion for.
Things baked for a while, more ideas came and went over the months and now I’m happy to say that we’re finally starting to emerge with the starts of two new projects I’m super excited about!
Boardwalk Builder
After launching Attack of the Karens I knew I wanted to try a different genre. After looking at survivor-likes with Deathdozer, I decided the genre was way too crowded. I decided to put some effort into some genre research to see what the numbers showed. I got a subscription to vginsights.com and started looking at genre analytics for revenue. Two genres stood out way above the others - Simulation, and Strategy - the games PC players love.
After spending a few weeks looking at games in my revenue target, I started on a concept. At first it was a mall building game, but it’s finally shaped into a boardwalk building tycoon sim where you build up a boardwalk tourist paradise and fill it full of customers! The game will return to my own pixel art style, which I know and love, and will be full of features to scratch that tycoon sim itch!
A mockup of “Boardwalk Builder” (working title)
I’m still working out all of the features and scope of the game. You can follow regular updates about the game by subscribing to my email list!
WARDEN
While I’ve been busy developing the start of a tycoon sim game, Grant has taken things in a different direction.
Grant took to Discord to share a bit about our new combined-effort project called “WARDEN”:
WARDEN Placeholder Logo
“HELLO FRIENDS. We're excited to announce that me and Joel are developing an idea that's been thrown around for over 10 years. WARDEN (working title) is a 2D adventure/survival-horror game, that is *heavily* influenced by a long-forgotten Nintendo franchise, StarTropics. Additional influences are old-school top-down Zelda (namely Link's Awakening) and Resident Evil titles.
WARDEN early concept screenshot
There's still a ton of work to do and to flesh out, but we thought it would be fun to be very transparent with this project and document/share our journey throughout all the development stages, as we lead up to big milestones like playable demos and social media campaigns. We do not have a timeline for this project yet, just that it's something that we are actively working on in our development time. Joel has some other projects he is working on solo, but this project will be the first big project that we tag-team. I'm leading the game design and programming of this one, while Joel will lead the art design. With these things in mind, this is a high-level overview of what we have planned for this game (with *everything* subject to change):
- Single player 2D adventure/survivor-horror
- Story takes place in a small college town where a science experiment gone awry on campus turns the citizens into monsters
- Blend of serious, but also light-hearted, themes and characters (think Earthbound)
- Player assumes the role of an unlikely hero, who takes it upon themselves to rescue and protect survivors amidst the chaos
- Navigate an overworld of the city, reminiscent of old-school NES RPGs
- Optional side-quests to accomplish in the overworld
- Gameplay and perspective shifts to a top-down dungeon crawler when you reach important locations
- Emphasis on puzzles
- Limited resources and inventory
- "Dungeons" can be completed in any order
- Player can end the game at any time
- Ending changes depending on who/how many survivors you've saved”
Stay Informed
We’ll be giving regular updates for both WARDEN and Boardwalk Builder via the email list. Sign up to never miss an update!
Until next time!
-Joel
