Smoke
A long while back I started planning a rather unoriginal metroidvania game, in part because I had nothing else to do with my spare time and in part since I have always liked the genre and wanted to try doing something with it. After considering what I really had to add to the genre I put it on hold until Lyle in Cube Sector inspired me to approach it in a new way that was still very traditional; instead of moving blocks around, though, my game would revolve around using steam and gas with different properties. I had to postpone this project, but kept working on it every now and then until I just recently finished something of a playable demo.
I give you Smoke:
It is a very short demo considering the time it has been in production, less than an hour for the experienced action/exploration gamer, but hopefully it has some value.
Download OSX (Snow Leopard) version
I did everything but the sound myself, so it does not compare very well to other games in terms of visuals – on the bright side, I like to think I have learned something about painting during the time spent working with this project. Other than that, working on this game simultaneously with other projects using the FT engine has given me a lot of insight into code pragmatism; the clearer the target you have in the beginning of a project, the easier it is to write clean code quickly. No surprise there, but what did surprise me was how much easier the code written with a single purpose was to maintain – even though it was never written to be extended in the first place.
Working on Smoke takes a lot of time due to the complexity and traces of the initial lack of direction still found in the codebase, but also because the graphics took a lot more work than my earlier solo projects. Feedback on this demo and my own employment situation will determine where I take it from here, but if there is one thing I have learned it is that I need to get more people involved if this is to go much further.
Cool! Keep it up! 🙂