HelixFox | Games by Kyle Rodgers

I’ve missed out on the Game Prototype Challenge for quite a few months now. The last edition I took part in was the fifth and now we’re at the tenth! I feel a bit bad about not having the time to knock something together, but as it turns out I didn’t get to spend as much time as I would have liked on this entry. The themes this month were DREAMS and COLLECTIBLES.

Music for the game was generously provided by MisfitBYTE!

WASD or arrows to move. Anything else to jump.

You’re probably wondering what the game has to do with those themes. I guess I should explain my original idea for the game. Originally you were going to play as a sort of dream specter, moving across the land and discovering people who were asleep. You would be able to interact them to enter their dreams, which would present you with platformy type puzzles.

Each dream would have different puzzle requirements and a unique visual style according to the current mental state of the person whose dream you were in. Dialogue would be triggered as you progressed through the dream, explaining the internal struggles of the dreamer. Completing the dream would let the person wake up, free of whatever mental problems they were having.

There were going to be a number of dreamers scattered across the game and the collectible part was going to be finding and helping each dreamer, with the eventual aim of getting everyone to wake up.

I suppose my ideas are always a bit too ambitious, considering I only get a few hours in the week to work on the project

I do like the visual style I gave the game. The blur effect looks quite nice although, to be honest, it actually looks a lot better when the characters and environment aren’t silhouetted out (as the individual colours of objects all blur together and fade out very pleasantly).

This is also yet another platform game I’ve made for the GPC. Not to mention yet another game where I sprung on a superficial idea first and didn’t really think about how to make the game “fun” or what the player would actually be doing within the game. My resolution for the next GPC is to create something brand new without adapting one of my old engines, similar to the old week games I used to make. Hopefully I’ll come up with some amazing new innovative gameplay style! (probably not, but you never know!)

After spending so long working hard on Bread Duck and then immediately catapulting myself into this prototyping challenge, I think I’ve well and truly burnt myself out on game development. I think I need to take a break and then go back to working on smaller projects that I can pump out quickly for a while. Bread Duck ended up taking around six months, which is just a bit excessive!

I think that’s enough words written about games for now. Enjoy!

Well I think I’ve written enough words about this thing.