Codename: Stars

Finally, a post about the game I am working on!

As I said in my previous post, I am trying to make a game from start to finish, including design, art, and engineering. I have already come up with a name and fiction for the game, but I think I will keep that under wraps until the game is in its final stages. Until that point, i'll refer to the game as Stars.

We'll start with a lone screenshot:

Stars

Stars began as a free-running game. You were going to be an animal escaping from the zoo and as the player, you would have to dodge obstacles and avoid hazards to make it through each stage. I put a lot of thought into the original idea, but decided to change it since it didn't quite hit every point that I wanted in terms of a mobile game with a certain fun factor. So Stars is no longer free-running... per se.

So after looking at the image, you're probably saying to yourself "What the hell is this?" Allow me to briefly explain. So, the character that the player has control over is the viking character in the middle of the shot. The character is constantly moving. You have some control over the character's direction, but you are not free to move around as you please. The stars and space-y backgrounds that you see are actually parallax backgrounds, so as the game scrolls, each layer moves at a different rate, giving the effect of distance and depth. 

The red circular images you see on the screen are buttons for input. The button on the left is acting as a joystick so that I can tweak my character's movement while I develop the game. The buttons on the right are no longer functional. I was originally using them as an attack and jump buttons, but after tweaking the core gameplay, those two buttons turned out to no longer be needed.

So, Stars is coming along pretty well. I want to give more information on the premise and gameplay, but I don't want to reveal everything right off the bat. As I implement more core mechanics, I'll show you more screenshots and make some videos of the action so that you guys can watch the game grow along with me =]

Thanks for reading!

DISCLAIMER: I DID NOT MAKE ANY OF THE IMAGES YOU SEE HERE! SOME OF THEM ARE TAKEN STRAIGHT FROM THE INTERNET AND OTHERS ARE TAKEN FROM THE BOOK SOURCE THAT I AM USING (cocos2dbook.com) THEY ARE ALL PLACEHOLDER AND WILL NOT BE USED IN THE FINAL VERSION OF THIS GAME.