Dolphin Squadron has been RELEASED!

The game still looks wonderful when played in portrait mode. Kinda looks like a long tablet. Haha! (From early demo)

We've been developing Dolphin Squadron for about three of four months now (mostly on and off development because of school), but it's finally finished! Yay!

The game is a vertical scrolling shooter where you play as a mechanized dolphin hired by the US NAVY SEALS to intercept dangerous underwater mines in order to save various coastal cities from utter devastation! 

Gameplay Description

PERFECT LAUNCH!

The game begins as your dolphin is fired out of a deep-sea submarine in an effort to catch up with an angler-like mecha that’s carrying a city-destroying mine up towards the surface. Starting at the bottom of a deep-sea trench and traveling up towards the surface, the goal of the game is to destroy the mine before it reaches the surface by first, catching up with and destroying a mechanized angler fish (a mecha) that's carrying it to the surface, and then destroying the mine with your dolphin. Sadly, to safely detonate the mines, you need to slam your flimsy dolphin into it...

YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THE GAME AT THE WEBSITE http://acpcproductions.com/ds/ !!!

DOLPHIN SQUADRON!

If you play the game and like it, show your support by visiting Jack's Extended Play (EP) page at http://blueskybleu.bandcamp.com/album/dolphin-squadron-soundtrack-ep and maybe even purchasing his music! He's made music for so many of my/our games and deserves some serious attention as a musician and composer for games. :D

Other News

Now that Dolphin Squadron is done, I will be working full-time on Orphan Adventure Game with artist, Matt Barrett and composer, Jack Yeates.

I also never got a chance to write part two of Motivated Design due to release date issues with Dolphin Squadron, but I will be getting ready to write that as SOON as possible!

Expect Greatness~
Ryan Huggins.

Summer 2013: Week 2

So, as far as game development is concerned, this week was a moot point. I didn't really do anything at all and honestly I'm not sure why. I've been feeling a TAD unmotivated I guess, but I think I can fix that through some room cleaning and willpower. I actually almost forgot that I needed to write a post this week, but here I am, scraping up stuff that I've done, but not shown and creating a post!

Anyway, the only thing I made progress on this week was Dolphin Squadron. I quickly designed and made the art for a website which will be active in a few days with a trailer that has yet to be made. >_> I still have a bit to do before the release at the end of this month/beginning of next month.

In other news

I did do a substantial amount of art (by my average output) for Project Clusterfuck (game) and Project Duo (web comic). It wasn't technically this week, but it is work that I haven't shown off yet, so I figure I'll talk about it for a little while. I might make it a goal to draw a test page a week over the summer to get into some sort of rhythm, but I've given myself way too much work I feel... I seriously need to reduce my workload so that I can focus on something and stop stressing out. :U Anyway.

Project Duo!

Project Duo is a story/game/web-comic that I've been working on for some time, but have made very little progress on. If I'm going to focus on any two things this summer (3 months now :<), it will be this and something else like Orphan Adventure Game.

Story

I don't have a very solid synopsis of the story yet, but it's a story about two young adults (Decus and Sera) leaving home and going on adventure so that Decus can become a hero. Obviously it's more intricate than that, but I find that the best stories are the ones that aren't cluttered or over-hyped. Those are the stories that end up being the most charming in my opinion. This story is primarily character-driven, so I plan for it to have a substantial amount of character development and dilemmas sprinkled throughout, but I also hope to keep it pretty simple overall.

A slightly more attractive synopsis of the story is this one.

Without his brother home to distract him anymore, Decus realizes that he's the only person in his family who hasn't saved the world. Being the type of guy he is (crazy and ridiculous) he buys a spaceship so that he can search the cosmos for a world without a hero; one that he can save! Sera tags along (as the main character) because she doesn't want to lose the only person that she really trusts. The story follows the duo on a mission to find an inhabited planet that needs to be saved. Their goal is to save whatever planet they find from utter destruction. At some point in the story, they get derailed in their mission, but the goals are always the same. Be heroes. Define justice. Save the world (universe [multiverse]).

Artwork

Here is Sera, the main character of Project Duo.

Sera is the co-lead/main character of Project Duo and in many ways is a difficult character to explain. She was born on the same planet as Decus (below) and shares a special bond of friendship with him because of some hectic events that went down in the past. She has some serious trust issues and can be extremely straight-forward at times, but ultimately just wants to be happy. She thinks that she can find happiness by attempting to becoming a hero with Decus, but she's not quite as dedicated.

Decus is arguably the real main character, but we don't tell anyone. He's a "fan" favorite.

Decus is a character that helps to drive the plot of Project Duo forward. He is absolutely and utterly dedicated to any task that will allow him to reach his goals, but because of that, he's also kind of ridiculous and dangerous. He uses his unnatural levels of charisma to get what needs to be done, done, but despite this, he is also the only member of his family that hasn't become a hero yet. 

This is Alice, our resident strange-ass character.

Alice is character that suddenly appears on the duo's ship early on in their adventure and cannot be identified by the ship's AI (MAHM). She can be severely unsettling and deranged at times, but she's also a little girl. Aww, look at her. She's playing with a butterfly. <3 

This is Charlie, a mid-game/story character. She's kind of a hipster of the future.

Charlie is Decus' brother's partner-in-crime and somehow ends up as a part of the party. Tragically she's a bit of a hipster.

I was asked to sketch some weapons for a lizard race in PD, so here is 40 minutes of sketches (I'm slow).

I have a writer on-board for Project Duo so that I can focus on the art and development. He asked me to sketch him some weapons for a lizard-like race, so I drew some stuff. I hope to slowly fall out of my comfort zone with this project and improve dramatically as an artist in the process.

This is a draft of the crew's spaceship. It's like a duck. Yay!

This is the Schietern, the Project Duo spaceship. It's pretty small, but pretty cool at the same time. At least Decus really likes it.

So, that's really all I have to say today. The next part of Motivated Design still needs to be written, so I'll post it as it's own post tomorrow probably. :D

Expect Greatness.
Ryan Huggins~

Design Process: Project Voyage (Day 4)

Here you can see the player floating behind an island. :D

DESIGN PROCESS: This is where I will be choosing a project and discussing it's design decisions over a period of time. Expect frequent updates.

Boy, is it difficult to get work done on a schedule. I'm usually so chill about getting work done on side-projects that actually trying to adhere to some kind of design schedule is mildly difficult. It's mostly because I've got SPACE working in Dolphin Squadron though, so I've been coding that. Haha.

Anywho, this morning, I took a shower (I do this occasionally) and was thinking about this whole movement system nonsense. I'm not 100% sure about the details, but I've been tinkering with the idea of traveling towards the background in my head and I don't think that I'll use that mechanic in the game. Whether or not it's possible to code isn't the issue, but the design practicality of it is. Unless I'm doing the game in full 3D (which I doubt right now), I don't think that traveling into the far background would be cool if you could just sail there uninhibited! I think having to lose sight of your destination for a while and traveling through unknown territory to get there would be cooler and ultimately feel more like an exploration. A system like this doesn't necessarily need to implement 2.5D, though we still might depending on this camera zooming thing (another day's post).

Regardless, what I'm thinking of is closer to a system where the designs of the levels make it look like you're actually making progress towards a goal that you've maybe passed recently (or not so recently) in the background. For example, let's take a look at this concept image.

Sweet Concept Image Portion

This might be posted again tomorrow for another discussion.

In this image you can see that there's something at least mildly interesting in the foreground (trees). So, let's say that your character has washed up onto this random island after being capsized by a storm (an idea I hope to exploit occasionally ;D). You wake up, and since the area is brand new, it'll probably stick in your mind for a few minutes longer than usual. So, you start exploring to the left of this new world (there's water to the right and your raft is kind of busted [maybe]), wondering what kind of new island you've ended up on, all the while thinking, "Maybe there might even be dragons here, or something!" Eventually, after a long enough trek, and maybe finding some things along the way, you'll end up at those triangular objects in the background (now as pyramids in the foreground). Then you'll suddenly see the trees that you left behind in the new background. A semi-circle of exploration! Something like this would add to the sense of scope in the game because it could be an indicator of some sort of progress.

I like this idea better than a purely 2.5 dimensional world where you can sail directly towards the background, maybe because I can simply imagine it working like this better in my head. And while a 3D-esque world might be nice, I think that something like this overall would just be a cooler experience for the player. Agree or disagree, it's currently just what I think is right for the game. I haven't discussed it with Jacques yet, but that's going to happen after this blog post.

On a less designerly note, Jacques has mocked up an example of vertical re-orchestration (which is something I plan to talk about in more detail tomorrow [along with my musical flairs system]). The gist of this system is that it'll allow us to easily do music that adapts to events in the game. After hearing it for myself, it sounds wonderful, but also sounds like it'll be pretty easy to code! Awesome! The song itself should be up on Soundcloud for everyone to hear sometime tonight or tomorrow, so check back soon!

And that ends today's Design Process.

Expect Greatness.
Ryan Huggins~

Design Process: Project Voyage (Day 1)

Voyage Concept Art.

DESIGN PROCESS: This is where I will be choosing a project and discussing it's design decisions over a period of time. Expect frequent updates.

So, I'm currently on break from the college life and my goals are very specific. First and foremost, I want to complete the alpha version of Dolphin Squadron, implementing the last of the gameplay features, adding a reasonable tutorial and getting some music done for the game. Secondarily however, I've had this new idea floating around in my head and I want to mess around with it.

Design Process: Day 1

So, I got home from college yesterday for my semester break. It turns out, that being in a car/on a bus for eleven hours really kills my desire to work on anything productive and I almost did nothing for an entire day! Bummer. I've been in that mood before though; that mood where you don't want to do anything, but know that you should be doing something productive. Usually, I lose and don't do anything, but this time I did something a little different. I decided not to fucking waste any time. So here I am, writing this Design Process entry. I will be spending about an hour every day for the next few weeks updating this design journal with what I've been doing pertaining to game design and development. Today, that focus will be on Project Voyage. 

Project Voyage is simply a side-project. Moreso than Project Fall or Dolphin Squadron where I've actively developed the games for a few weeks, I'm just messing around and designing the shit out of Voyage. It's going to be a pretty transparent design process and the goal is to end up with a pretty comprehensive guide/discussion of how a game is conceptualized. Granted, I'm still a student of game design and I'll probably do a lot of things wrong, but I think that just being able to see the process will be a good thing for anyone who is new to game design and just wants to see how it's done.

Project Voyage

Open skies, open water, open shore. What do? Explore!

Voyage is an artistic game where you play as a 40-something year-old man/woman who gives up life in society to explore the seven seas as a sailor. The core of the game would take place primarily on the surface of the ocean and be seen from either a side or angled frame of view. Throughout the course of the game, the player will explore the world, discovering a variety of different methods of “play”. These methods of play--things such as fishing, exploring, finding treasure and shipmates, discovering new things about the world and sea battling--will all be core to the gameplay and progress the metagame. The game will begin at a deliberately slow, relaxing pace and ultimately speed up as time goes on. Ultimately, your goal is simply to discover everything the world has to offer to you. I don't want to pressure the player and I don't want to have them feel a constant tinge of terror. I want them to relax and enjoy nature. Through it all, the player character (PC) will become more and more like a seafarer who gains control over the seven seas. Whether or not you’re a good or a bad person is both up to you, and determined by the rules that you set for the seas and for yourself.

So, the idea for Voyage came up while I was thinking of what kind of mood I wanted to evoke from my next projects. I liked the colors and oceanic atmosphere of Dolphin Squadron, but wanted to capture it on a different front; a deliberately slow-paced game was what I wanted. One where I would create my atmosphere primarily through music and animation. A stark contrast to what I'm doing with Dolphin Squadron (which is a fast-paced retro action arcade game). 

Just something artsy I put together to find some more of the "feels".

The "feels" as I like to call them, are core to any art game. They're the emotions evoked through play. You get them through a mix of music, pacing, graphics and gameplay. In a game like this, gameplay is very important, but it can't be overly complicated or frustrating. I'm not trying to break the trend or anything, but I'm trying to create a fun, relaxing game concept. Not a micromanagement survival simulator. Something that's parts Superbrothers: Swords & Sworcery EP, a little bit of TAG (Treasure Adventure Game) and maybe a little bit LoZ: Phantom Hourglass or Spirit Tracks. In discussing it with Jacques Yeates (the composer), he described a game where you're not pressured to be good. We agreed that a survival game Voyage was not.

Survival games are too micromanagement-y; and there are just too many things to worry about. We definitely don't want a game where the player is too scared to try and go somewhere because they'll die, lose all of their stuff, and suddenly be back to square one right after discovering something new and cool (like a sexy hat). At the same time, you never want a game that feels like there is no weight to your actions, so we're still determining how to give weight to character actions.

Art and music are pretty straightforward when you're doing shitty concept art and linear musical scores, but what happens when you have to give real life to them. I don't even know what the game itself is going to look like yet. I wonder if I should take a straight up 2D approach to the game (ala Another World [land] and Castle Crashers [sea]?) or do something 3D, which I'm completely unfamiliar with. We had considered a Zelda-style perspective, but then I made the concepts and they just felt "right". Now we know we need a horizon, so we're still working out the perspective kinks. I'll draw out something tonight, probably.

Musically, Jacques has made some stuff that I'll start showing in the next Design Process entries (maybe a new song every entry for a few days?). It's really good and definitely captures the atmosphere, but we're also looking at how we're going to implement it. Dynamic music? Oh boy, I can code, but I'm still a newbie with anything musical. 3D? What's that? 2D is my home. And don't even get me started on what I'll be doing with the art. Hopefully someone from ACPC Productions (a college "studio", to which I design, program and produce for) will help out. Otherwise this will take forever!

Anyway. As usual...

Expect Greatness (and daily updates).

Ryan Huggins~

Current Project: Dolphin Squadron

DOLPHIN SQUADRON

So, Dolphin Squadron has been in development for about a month now. Originally, it was supposed to be an arcade-inspired game for Steam's Greenlight program. Sometime during the beginning of development we realized that we liked the game beyond it just being a school project and it went from a shitty school project to a shitty personal one. 

In Dolphin Squadron, you are a dolphin hired by the US Marine Corps to intercept dangerous underwater mines that are being used to covertly destroy coastal cities around the world. The core game is a vertical scrolling shooter where you play as a weaponized dolphin fired out of a deep-sea submarine. Starting at the bottom of a trench and traveling up towards the surface, the goal of the game is to destroy a mine before it reaches the surface by first, catching up with and destroying a mechanized escort fish that's carrying it to the surface, and then destroying the mine with your dolphin's body. The hook is exploding dolphins. To destroy the mines, you have to destroy the mecha with your dolphin lasers and then slam your dolphin into the mine.

There's more than just dolphin lasers now, but this pitch was what sold the game to my class and teacher and from there we began development on a game that was pretty much about blowing up marine wildlife. Ironically, only one person was concerned about the potential for people to become offended by the game's core theme of kamikaze dolphins, but we ignored them and continued to work on the game.

These kind of things still make me happy. Haha

Presently, the game is on a smooth development course (with an February-April release window), but there are a few issues with the core design and some mechanical issues that I'll need to iron out before a release. Of these, one is establishing a clear method of level progression and another is the difficulty of creating "procedural" (read : random) obstacle generation that doesn't fuck up and create impossible gameplay at higher difficulties. I haven't heard any complaints about the enemy/obstacle locations being "dickish" (direct quotes) from the most recent versions of the game, but reaching a happy balance for difficulty (as far as concentration of obstacles goes) is getting very difficult.

Currently, the spawning of enemies and obstacles is pretty random--and that works fine for now--, but I'm wondering if there should be a more dynamic system for spawning enemies and obstacles. I figure that once I reach a middle ground for obstacle concentration, I can tone up the difficulty through other means such as providing the level boss (the mecha) with weapons and introducing mid-bosses in some levels. Weapons balance was a minor issue for awhile, but at this point, the weapons seem to be suitably balanced, though they'll definitely change a little bit before the end of development.

Our goals for the game aren't terribly crazy, but we do plan on polishing the game for at least a month or three before releasing it. Figuring that we can implement all aspects of the levels, get all of the art done and add a fun number of gameplay secrets before sometime in late January/early February, we could have the game ready for a release sometime in April. Eventually, I'll release a video or two of the gameplay and how it's progressed. :D

Expect Greatness,
Ryan Huggins~

Welcome Back, Me

Well, it's certainly been awhile since I've last updated. For the last few weeks (months?) I've just been acquainting myself with the college life. I'm now attending Champlain College for game design and so far it's been a pretty fun time. ...But no one cares about my college experience. What's important is that I've been improving my skills as a game developer and designer for the time I've been gone and here I am, returning prepared to make some games. So, let's talk about those.

Project Fall :

My previous project, Project Fall, hasn't been updated too much, though I'll potentially be releasing the prototype to the wild soon. Currently, I'm working on developing an artistic style for the game before I dive head-first back into development and turning it into either an arcade-style platformer (a murderbox as I like to call it) or a full-fledged platformer. Who knows. Maybe I'll do both! The design is solid, the testers like/love it, the controls are sexy--it's a good prototype...now to just make something with it.

Concept Art for Project Fall

Dolphin Squadron :

Here is the project that I'm currently working on. Dolphin Squadron! Dolphin Squadron is an arcade-inspired scrolling shooter where you play as a dolphin employed by the Marines/SEALS to intercept and destroy deadly, coastal-city-destroying, mines...with your flimsy dolphin body. I like to call the game Exploding Sea Battles sometimes since there are a lot of explosions, many of which are friendly sea creatures simply getting in your way.

I designed the game for my Game History and Development class here at Champlain College, but it was an idea that I had previously come up with while I was showering. Figuring that a radical game about exploding sea creatures and a weaponized dolphin would garner at least a little attention, I decided to use the concept for the game. Right now, the game is a little more than a prototype and I plan to throw up some updates and videos here to show progress as the game develops.

A friend of mine actually turned his monitor to play the game...

Dolphin Squadron was developed over 4 weeks (for class), though arguably, I coded pretty much the entire current version of the game in less than a week (the last week :P) before the game was due. We plan to finish the game and add some more crazy shit to make it sexier and overall more fun to play. Current issues include difficulty, a minor lack of understanding the goal (for new players), and a shitty tutorial.

Hanriot :

Hanriot was our (ACPC Production's) first game jam game. We formed at the game jam and have decided to stay a loose group pretty much during our time at college. Hanriot was a game designed for the theme of disavantage and our lead designer (I programmed), James Shasha, decided on an Italian Pilot who crash-lands in the Alps, behind enemy lines, during WWI. The goal of the game is to get through the Alps and reach the city at the end of the game.

We didn't manage to complete the game because of mapping bottleneck issues with Game Maker 8.1, but we did create a visually pleasing game (even though it wasn't perfect) in 48 hours, with a bunch of freshman game developers. We were very pleased with ourselves.

YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THE GAME HERE.

WELL, ACTUALLY HERE.


Project Clusterfuck :

So, I wanted to make an RPG/Adventure game and thus, Project Clusterfuck was born. Generally, I develop games under the Siifour Studios name, but this game is currently being developed under "my" side-studio ACPC Productions (you don't want to know what it stands for) and the final game will probably fall under the ACPCP and Siifour Studios production houses (Siifour's designer and musician and ACPCP's artists, testers, co-designer).

The game is literally a clusterfuck of five different RPG stories because we thought it would be cool to have the player transverse through a series of different RPG stories. Whether or not the idea will hold up is up for speculation, but based on our current designs, we're more than ready for the hurdle. I'm producing, coding, and designing the game, but with five people writing five different stories for the game, I figure that I'll be more of a mediator and balance maintainer than a full-fledged designer. :P

Project Clusterfuck is my current large-scale side-project. While I work on Clusterfuck, I'll probably develop at least 5 or 6 games of a Project Fall or Dolphin Squadron scale and hopefully they'll be just as fun as those two games are shaping up to be.

We will also have a fuck-ton of art and concept assets.

Now here are the artists:


Brook (Revocare) :

Some of Brook's OCs.

A mecha and it's rider (WIP)

Brook is our key artist. 

Megahn (Nanrie) :

Two Clusterfuck characters together. 

One of Megahn's OCs.

She can drawn with pencils too. Who does that anymore? ;D

Hunter (Totalblatherskite) :

They got infatuated by a cat in a movie. He drew a cat.

OCs from Hunter's story. 

Matt (Pseudosutra  I don't currently have any of his art, but here are his character designs) :

One of Matt's characters drawn by Brook.

An ACPCP fan favorite. Gungie (I think that's how they spell it...)

MOTH CHARACTER! :D

Ryan  (Project Duo) :

The main character of Project Duo.

I'm not a colorist. Haha

The above character's brother.

Note : All of this art (sans Hunter's) is for Project Clusterfuck. ;D

Expect Greatness.
Ryan Huggins~

Current Project: Fall

You're the horizontal thing (he's flipping).

Today is the last day that I've dedicated to official prototyping of Project Fall. Which essentially means, that I will continue to prototype the game until it feels like I want it to feel, then move on to learning Unity so I can port it to that platform (if 2D is actually feasible there). It also means that I can like, release screenshots and concepts of the prototype because it's actually pretty fun now.

Obviously, the screenshot that you have become privy to in this post represents more of my legendary placeholder artwork, but it handles the job of emulating gameplay, and it does that job extremely well.

The Early Story

So far, a few things are different with how I approached this project as compared to City Across the Sky, and yet the game followed a pretty standard stream of changes and iteration. At first, I had an idea of a game where you would have a bunch of weapons (the prototype only has 10), murder enemies, and avoid falling objects from the sky. It was going to focus on paths of motion and tight controls but be executed around the notion of avoiding this falling objects. I started on the prototype, got wall-jumping the way I wanted it, added a weapon or two, created some enemies and everything was fine and dandy. I thought the game would work out exactly as I planned it. Then I added the falling objects and the game suddenly was some shit. I realized that my original vision just wouldn't work with what I had coded (motion of objects and controls) and with that, the vision in my head fell apart. However, I liked what I had created a lot, so I kept the enemies, weapons, and movement and later moved towards and idea which I called the "murder box".

The Fall

After the idea of "Fall" had failed me, I decided to keep the name (since I have another project called Spring [more on that later]) and work on the concept of a murder box arcade game. But, for awhile, I thought the idea was much too simple and reminded me a lot of Super Crate Box, a game by Vlambeer, a studio that I really like and would ideally, like to emulate, but not copy. I was at a complete loss for what to do with the game, and let it sit for about 5 or 6 days. I hadn't abandoned it, but I didn't have an idea for what to do with the game. The simplicity of the gameplay is inspired somewhat by Super Crate Box and to a lesser extent Super Meat Boy, but I'm working hard to make it feel like a different game entirely.

I believe that it's very important to come up with your own ideas, but at the same time, I don't think that borrowing ideas that work from other games to supplement your own individual visions is necessarily a bad thing. As long as you're not ripping off another game, I feel like similarities between games should only serve to honor the original inventor of the idea.

The Inspiration

For awhile, I had trouble finding something that could work as a goal for the gamer; one that didn't tread too closely to Super Crate Box or the notion of solely trying to acquire a higher score (but that would ultimately be the goal of course). In SCB, getting the crates and finding new weapons was the major goal. It served the purpose of randomizing gameplay and acted as the scoring mechanism which was a great design choice because it fostered simplicity. For a while, I wondered what I could use as my scoring mechanism. For a while, I couldn't think of anything.

But, I asked my girlfriend (who is by no means a gamer of any kind) to make a list of things she thought I could put into the game to make it better. She made a list of ten things, and initially, I thought the list was a pile of crap, so I was frustrated by her naivety within the discipline of game design. I was serious, and her suggestions were...well they were not serious. So at first I disregarded the list and stopped development for a day or two. But eventually I came back and looked at the list and something clicked with two entries on the list.

1. Triangles that spin and cut you.
2. Squares that shoot you.
3. Keep the basic shape thing you have.
4. If there is something good falling from the sky, give it a rainbow trail or something.
5. Zooming cars.
6. Raining guns that you have to avoid.
7. Mermaids.
8. Catch the gun and it kills everything on the screen. Call it the "Silver Star Gun".
9. Bubbles. Toxic bubbles or happy bubbles.
10. Sound effects.

Raining guns and the "Silver Star Gun". From these ideas, I created the Gunstar. 

The GUN STARRR.

A weapon that, if the player is doing very well for a certain period of time, will fall from the sky and offer you ultimate power for a short time span and allow you to murder the crap out of everything on the map (if you're skilled). This idea, spawned from a list of what I considered terrible ideas at first, inspired me to work on the game as a murder box and helped me move away from the idea that the game was too inspired by Super Crate Box.

What you should take from this is, ideas can come from ANYWHERE, not just yourself. Outside ideas are extremely important and even if you don't think that whoever is giving you the ideas is qualified to give you ideas (probably because you don't think they know about games or fun and you do because you're a "game designer" and they're a regular person). You have to remember--and I have learned to remember--that game designers aren't usually your target audience, just because they MIGHT be the most vocal audience or offer the most criticisms, you don't tailor your game to them, you tailor it to the people you want to play your game. In the case of Fall, it was casual gamers and the indie hardcore.

The Murder Box

So, by mixing ideas from other games and adding a few of my own, I've managed to make Fall feel more like an action-arcade game inspired by the elemets of Super Crate Box (spawning weapons to keep you on your toes), rather than a copy. By adding elements from Team Fortress 2 (rocket jumping), Cave Story (where certain weapons affect how you move), Galaga (power-ups which are not implemented into the prototype yet), Super Meat Boy (simple motion, but with my own arcade "feel") and my own design elements (usually inspired by friends and family) such as the Gunstar (a power-up) and the leveling (leading to bosses), difficulty (based on a tier system) and scoring mechanics (which encourage the player to beat their own high scores to encourage player improvement), I managed to make Fall a completely different game and in the end I hope others think so as well.

Concept Artwork

By Jacques Yeates. He thinks it's too cutesy. You can see how the Gunstar
 has influenced the theme of the game.

By Ryan Huggins. I thought the shades (reference to Gurren Lagann) made this
one of the greatest things ever.

Early Prototype Videos

Expect greatness. Ryan Huggins~