I originally made this as a tiny prototype for a 3-hour game jam at the start of the year, but I decided to expand on it this Sunday, and now you can play it!

Making a game that focuses on the narrative part is something that I'm not really used to, but I think this one turned out quite okay. Probably because it's just gags honestly and not any "serious writing". I'm definitely warming up to the idea of doing something that is more narrative driven now so I suppose that's good!

Yesterday I published Krowbar, which is an atmospheric top-down adventure game. Since it's still under judgement I thought I'd promote it here and write a bit about the process of creating it.

This is a gif of what the final game looks like and looks, I think, are the most unique thing the game has going for it. It's a product of 16ish hours of prototyping and initially it just begun as a set of sketches that I was doing while trying to break out of my creative block.

This is the original sketch that I did. I really liked the way things ended up looking, especially the transmission poles!

When drawing this stuff I was highly inspired by Ojiro's Nium and Milkbarlad's expereince that is CHUMBO.ZONE (yo milkbarjack why is this game, sorry experience, not on NG?). I think that's clear to see espeically in the character design :))

Anyhow, both of these games feature fake 3d that is created via sprite stacking so esentially creating a "hamburger" to make it seem like it's 3d. I really, really like this effect, however as opposed to Ojiro and the great milkbarlads my brain is too small to comprehend something like that and I wanted to make this in a day or two anyway. Lucky for tho, Construct 3, while a 2d game-engine, features the ability to move things towards the camera on the Z axis. I did a small trick where I moved the Z position of the object based on where it is on the screen. The closer it is to the bottom part of the screen, the higher up the Z axis it will be, making it seem closer.

Here is a gif with the effect exaggerated:

The fact that things jiggle around a little and that it adds visual noise into otherwise simple, static 2d sprites just adds extra vibe to the game in my opinion and I love it.

I wanted to make this a complete experience that I can upload to newgrounds to break my creative block so I needed to add gameplay to it because I spent around 7 hours just working on the art while having nothing to show for the gameplay.

I couldn't really think of any unique gameplay for the game, something that would make it "better" than any other top-down adventure game. I'm sure there is space in the genre to innovate, however I couldn't think of anything that I could add quickly and make fun gameplay out of. But then it hit me, if the unique part of my game is the art and the world, then I need to give the player a reason to explore this world. I decided to go for a very simple "find the thing that activates the exit" design while trying to add a bit of combat as an obstacle.

But if the game is focused on exploration I didn't think that combat should be hard. I tried to combine auto-aiming with a boomerang-esq mechanic to make something that is interesting yet easy to play. I wouldn't say that ended up being super interesting but it throws a bit of a wrench into what is expected.

Around this time is when Magran, joined me to help out with the art. He had some nice ideas for enemies and a cool way to end the game. He worked on some wonderful art while I struggled to actually design a level, he also found a great "lore" reasoning for limiting the world, you are stuck in some cloud world, and obviously you can't walk on clouds. This added a ton to the atmosphere and it was a nice excuse for making the world closed off without having to create a ton of world assets that would limit player's movement. I messaged Soren begging him to make me a song for the game, we threw in the assets, i struggeled to make the level fun, and around 6 am, we had this prototype of a game that you can play here ;)

Here is one of the last aseprite sheets we had, I think it just looks neat. Now go play the game and rate it 😡

Chicken Defense, an interactive and humorous spin on the tower defense genre is now out!

This game was developed at ITU University of Copenhagen as a part of the Making Games programme. I worked with a wonderful team and learned a lot over the past 6 weeks!

Play it here: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/773222

The team

Stojan💻Loads of programming, grass doodads advocate

Rickard 🧪 QA Guy, Level brewer

Johan 🦸‍♂️Our git merge hero, creator of spawns

Jovo 🎹 One man band, SFX critic

Yours truly 🎨 Game designer, pixel painter

Magnetizer is a magnet based platformed I worked on during the last month as a part of Indiepocalypse #7 magazine. The zine bundle will be available on August 7th but you can already play the definitive edition of the game here on NG - with high scores and medals!