Game Development Diary: May 2019

It’s been a month since I started this project and so far, I’ve spent a lot more time developing the sprites and animations for the playable character, trying to figure out different aspects of the style and feel of the entire game.

I’m not trying to create anything groundbreaking or unique… it’s not going to “rock the game world” with it’s originality, or anything like that. I just want to create a game that can stand as a successor to what I think Metroid should be, at least, in my mind.

That said, I’m also not trying to create a carbon copy of Metroid and do want to try to add something new and special to my game, at least, in the context of comparing it to Metroid itself. As the development of the game progresses, I’ll have a better understanding of how to implement these features I have in mind.

Though, that aside, I have also been thinking about the presentation of the game itself, whether I want to strictly follow the oldskool pixel art aesthetic or whether I want it to be a little more. The big reason why I’m using pixel art is because I know how to work with it to create something that looks pretty good. However, I also want things to look pixel perfect on screen and to work out the scaling of how things will appear on different resolutions, including ultrawide and super ultrawide resolutions.

Then there’s the matter of how I’m actually going to program all this to make it work. Sure, there are a lot of tutorials out there that can help me out, but making little bits of things happen based on a tutorial and making an entire game is entirely different.

This will require me to create quite a few prototypes and get better over time. So, while I’m working on creating the various iterations of sprites to work out the look of this game, I’m also going to dabble in some C# and work with Unity and Monogame to figure a few things out.

I’m doing this all in my free time so it’s going to take many years, but that’s okay… I’m in no rush. This game is being made for me and not as a way of making money.