I've finally finished up my blog. I do admit that I've not been very smart with my time management, I was hoping to finish this earlier, but better late than never.
Originally, while planning this FMP, I was intending to come up with a few ideas for different games and pick which one I liked, but in the end, I only ended up writing one, and I liked it so much that I just decided to go with it right off the bat. I had seen this new game going around called Pizza Tower, which has been in development since 2018 and is inspired by Wario Land 4. A 2D sort of collect-a-thon platformer, where you go through these huge levels leaving a path of destruction, with death being of no concern, and once you reach the end, you rush back to the start under a stressful, newly established time limit. I thought this sort of gameplay was pretty interesting, and so I wanted to take a stab at it. Though I... sort of underestimated the complexity of this, and overestimated just how experienced I am. Still, I'm hoping to get this done.
As of writing this, I have planned a lot of the basics. Most of this can be found in the Miro board, (which I'll also link right here: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVMarGjeU=/?share_link_id=619905447922) but I'll be talking about this here, as well as some new bits of concept art which haven't been featured in this board.
PROTAGONIST DESIGN
The design process for the protagonist was pretty straight forward and easy, with me reaching something I was happy with almost instantly. I wanted to make the protagonist look kind of tough and rude and stocky, much like the protagonists of Wario Land and ANTONBLAST.
This design takes a lot of inspiration from the design of Foreman Spike from the NES game, Wrecking Crew, who actually made a surprising cameo in the new Super Mario Bros. movie. His design has had quite a few iterations, and I sort of took inspiration from a little bit of everything. As for our protagonist, as previously mentioned, I arrived on his final design almost instantly. Previous iterations aren't much to talk about, being incomplete, vaguely face-like sketches which were dropped before they even begun.
His idea has stayed consistent. I wanted a tough engineer spaceman type. I know he doesn't much look like the latter, but I didn't want to obscure his face with an astronaut's helmet, even if the implications of that are strange... Plus, it'd look quite plain and unmemorable if he just looked like an astronaut, so I decided to focus more on the engineer part.
PROTAGONIST ANIMATIONS
Since the Miro board, I've sketched up some concepts for how the protagonist's animations should play out. It's very rough, but I think it does the job... not like anyone else will have to use it. This concept art also showcases roughly the protagonist's moveset. I will likely have to expand this in the future, but for now, I can call it done. These animations are fairly basic, and take a lot of clear inspiration from Wario Land 4.
LEVEL DESIGN
To be more specific, I'm talking about the look of the level. This game will feature 1 level, which would be the first in the hypothetical full game. I wanted this level to be themed around sleep, using the sort of crescent moon with a face imagery, star night lights, and more. I did this this because I wanted to convey the simplicity and sort of easy-going nature of a first/tutorial level, with little going on and the most action being caused by you. Enemies won't do much but walk around trying to bump into you. I wanted to take inspiration from areas like the Cap Kingdom and the Moon Kingdoms from Super Mario Odyssey. More of my inspirations can, again, be found on the Miro board.
This last one showcases one of the changes which occurs to the level once you reach the end state, in which you'll have to rush back to the beginning under a time limit. I took inspiration from the Majora's Mask moon for the aggressive face.
ENEMY DESIGNS
Again, like the level, the enemy designs I've come up with are themed around sleep, being based on owls, sheep, etc. They're very basic both in design and in behaviour, as they mainly just move around from place to place trying to bump into you.
MISC.
Outside of that, all that has really been done is the spaceship design and a rough logo concept. The spaceship was designed to be sort of simple to make the spriting and potentially animating process easier for me.
Aside from designs, though, something I feel should be mentioned is that one of my good friends has generously offered to help out with the music and sound design in this project. They are very talented and we actually worked together before on my previous project, REPAINTED. If all goes well with that, I'll be posting some of this music in future progress logs.
That's all I have for this one, though. The next update shouldn't be too far from now. Next, I intend to get down to making the player sprites and animations.