Piecemeal Jack - post 0

My goal for this month is to produce an art-ready game before December 1st.

Art-ready is a made-up term to describe a mostly-complete game that is missing all art assets. This approach to game creation should generally be frowned upon due to the potential of technical issues arising from the late introduction of said assets. I decided to attempt this approach with my new game for 2 reasons:

1. I recently realized, with the help of my roommate, that I really don't enjoy the process of designing and crafting art for games. I enjoy programming and game design, but the art side has always been the kind of thing that I only attempted to do on my own because of an assumption that it's the indie thing to do.
   
2. I've never attempted to hire an artist as a contractor before. I want time to ensure I have a good estimate of how many assets I'll need, which may require the whole month to work out.

 

Now, before I go over what Piecemeal Jack is, let me cover some history:

One of the first videogames I ever tried to make was based on an old series called Splatterhouse. I wanted to take the simple 2D platforming of this series and transplant it into a top-down 2D perspective. I worked on the project on and off for a year, and finally released a prototype I named Punch in the Dark. I'm not very proud of what I ended up with, but I am happy I released something as the response to it was inspiring in unexpected ways. You can play the prototype here:

https://dgalga.itch.io/punch-in-the-dark

 

The game that became Punch in the Dark went through so many iterations that almost every idea I originally had was stripped or filed down in some way. Over October, while I was brainstorming and prototyping ideas to work on for this month, those scrapped ideas came slithering back to me.

Piecemeal Jack will be a short, combat-oriented 2D platformer set in 1 large-house-sized level. I'm talking jumping, ground slams, punching, the ability to fall between floors, the ability to discover secret passages, use of 3 weapons you get from boss enemies, and a focus on enemies as your primary obstacle instead of jumping challenges. In this way, I intend to adhere much closer to my original design idea for the game. For example, I plan to featured holes in the floors of the house, which were previously challenging to design in a fun or interesting way from a top-down perspective.

I get 4 full weeks out of November, and I intend to build the full game over those 4 weeks. This first week will be focusing on building out the main character, then the 4 bosses I have planned and design of the house if there's time. Work progress will slow greatly after this first week, but I'm hoping I'll be able to come up with and implement all low-level enemies over the following 2 weeks. The final week will be for implementation of menus and the 4 difficulty levels I'm planning:

1. Easy
1. Double health
2. Double damage
3. Checkpoints
4. No unlocks
2. Medium
   
1. Normal health
2. Normal damage
3. Checkpoints
   
4. Can use unlocks
5. Get 3 unlocks whenever you beat the game
3. 1 life
   
1. Normal health
2. Normal damage
3. Can use unlocks
4. No checkpoints
5. 1 unlock on death
6. 3 unlocks on win
4. Punishing
   
1. 1 life
2. No unlocks
3. No checkpoints
4. Normal health
5. Normal damage
   

Some difficulty modes, chiefly Easy and Punishing, may be cut for time if needed.

I'm planning to post 1 new blog entry every Sunday of this month with an update on the status of the game. I don't think this will help my productivity any, but I am hoping it'll catch some interest for the game.

Until Sunday.