I am an artist and composer.
A few months ago I was looking for a new way to make art,
because I painted hundreds of pictures, I composed more than one hundred songs and I have a little bit experience in cartoon animation.
Something new was needed.
Everything is self taught, and all these skills directed me to one new project: Creating A Videogame for PC.
After careful consideration: I am here to tell you about my project which is already 70% completed after months of work every day.
I am working alone but I have someone who helps me to translate.
The name of this game will remain a secret until the development is completed.
The game will support english and german language.
Genre and Gameplay:
It will be a cross-genre: adventure, platformer, farming-simulation elements (and a kind of creature collection) with linear narrative.
Expect a peaceful cute and cozy game with unique dialogues, a few parodic pop-culture references and eastereggs.
There will be no violence, instead of enemies the player will meet friends.
A small detailed open world in top-down view with mini map to navigate. The player will be able to decorate areas.
Platformer levels are in side-scrolling view, the difficulty and variety of gameplay elements will increase depending on player progression. Different biomes can be explored.
Artstyle and music:
Expect a cute pixel artsyle game.
Most of the sprites are 32x32 px and 64x64 px.
Every sprite and animation is carefully created by myself, there is no AI involved.
For this project I created more than one thousand sprites already.
The soundtrack is already composed but there are adjustments left to made.
My project is currently 80% percent finished and today I hit the mark of more than 2000 pictures which I painted for this game.
The platformer levels are finished.
The open world and its features: like farming, buying expansions is finished.
Now I’m working on the cutscenes, polishing this game, I included even an unplanned minigame inside the game there the player has to build something: a secret (no spoilers).
Luckily everything is fine: I can easily manage to fix bugs and introduce new features with ease just with (thanks to) the awesome Gdevelops Youtube tutorials which I studied.
And… I’m here to tell you about a new feature which is planned, but this will remain our secret ok?:
Maybe: This game will support two soundtracks! (which I myself composed)
The player could choose between a Bit-Style soundtrack and an orchestra version.
If (hard work and) luck is with me, this feature can be introduced.
But for now: just expect a Bit-Style soundtrack fitting with the 2D pixel art style.
And if you are the one who is really interested, here is a morse code you could decypher for more information:
“- … . .-. . / .-- … .-… .-… / -… . / .- / - .- .-… -.- … -. --. / … . .- / -.-. — -.-. …- – -… . .-.” (Edit: Not every dot is displayed accurately, because more than three dots are displayed as three dots and two dots are displayed as three dots for some reason. This will make it harder to decypher it.)
Maybe in this post I will tell too much, but I don’t think that a lot of people will read it.
Current Main Menu Design:
Sorry, I pixelated the final main characters and the game’s name.
Current Game Design:
The heart of the game is the main map, and it works like a clockwork, because it has has 12 chapters.
Old Character Design:
At the beginning, there was the plan to create the game just in GB artstyle.
Here are the concept characters in the earliest development phase which will be not in the final game.
With these characters I studied the engine.
Posting this picture makes it clear that the game is about the story of baby animals.
Design Choices are made because:
The game is considered to be an digital interactive artwork and it is my first game which I make.
Maybe this game will be way too cute, too easy, too short, too peaceful?
I don’t have an idea how other people will react to this title when it will be finally released,
because this game is actually in development just for one special person who don’t play frequently video games.
So the game is designed to fit the taste of this person.
today is a special day: I invested more than 1k hours into the development of my first game.
And I did not used templates, I started from the scratch.
The test phase has begun.
You can choose between two self-composed soundtracks (40 Tracks in total.)
It would be to heavy to preload them all, I have to accept that they will have a small delay when playing in the browser.
At the moment, the game is only correctly working if cookies (in a restarted browser) are enabled.
This is because the save/load-system between scenes, maybe I have to add more global variables as a workarround.
I also found a browser-related issue, where the appearance of the ingame text is not accuratly displayed.
(Picture: 1. up: GDevelop Preview, Chrome and Edge, 2. down: Firefox.)
Maybe you have an idea how to solve this text issue.
Oh… and… The trailer is in production, stay tuned.
I posted this alredy on discord but I think this is worthy to read for people who are really interested to look behind the scenes:
"Actually I created a video game just for my partner… She said that more persons have to see the love behind this work of art.
So I created some posts on the forum a few months ago. There was a long period of time just working on animation and sprites, studying the engine, studying youtube tutorials, etc. Doing my best to get the best result.
The last weeks was a lot of testing on different devices and some performance optimisations, so more people can enjoy this piece of art.
In a few hours I will release “Heidi Moombootz” to the public… playable for free on gd.games.
A game which is actually developed just for her… Just for her taste, for her skill as a player… I don’t know how other people will react to this game but I have hope that it will be recognized as a high quality GDevelop game despite the fact that it is easy to play and cute… peaceful…
All the characters which I have created have a personal meaning to us, this is the reason why the characters can not die.
My actual goal: to create a game to my beloved one, so she can enjoy gaming… is finished and I’m ready to show you the result of true love."
The game “Heidi Moombootz” will be released on 24th Jan. 2024 to the public.
Of course: for her it is already be released/playable.
My art project is now finished with more content than was planned.
I composed so many songs and painted all of these pictures by myself for this game.
It took some months to create this piece of art and I hope you will recognize the polishing and contained quality.
“Heidi Moombootz” was actually produced just for my partner but I hope you will have a relaxing time and fun playing it too, like she had.
Creating this game was very educational and fun, I learned a lot. It was something new and fresh but it required hundreds of hours to finish the project.
Adding touchscreen support was a bit more challenging than expected.
There are a lot of more ideas for add-ons/additional short stories
but I think the main game with the two add-ons is enough.
Maybe I will do a sequel, maybe not.
The game is playable on gd.games and should be perceived as a work of art.
