Bold Aesthetic Creative is an Indie Game Dev Studio started by Programmer Cheema. Here, we share our games, their development process, game dev tutorials, and some talks regarding game dev.
The fact that this time (year 2021) it was remote/online, made it easy for me to participate in it.
Shredded World is short 2D side scroller post-apocalyptic shooter game with a very strange story. I put some amount of effort on the visual effects and the feel of the environment. The controls are little bit buggy but I am pretty sure that the overall experience would be decent for you.
Shredded World PrologueShredded World Start ScreenShredded World Gameplay
Controls: A and D (or right and left arrow keys) to Walk R to Reload Mouse to Aim
Game Duration: 5-15 minutes
You would have to download the game and it is Windows only.
Here are the links to both Global Game Jam submission and the itch.io game page:
Epiphany’s Developers Game Jam 2020 was a 60-hours weekend Game Jam for Pakistani Game Developers and the game jam theme was ‘Cute and Colorful.’ It was an exciting 2-weeks journey filled with amazing workshops and meetups.
I joined the game jam as an individual and then, teams of random people are formed. Fortunately, my team was such a good one and we named it, Team Gryffindors.
My Team – Team Gryffindors
We developed the game, Without Miles.
Without Miles is a 2D Side Scroller Puzzle Platformer where the focus is on the story and audio visual experience. Game Plot: Miles and Marble. A kitten with a puppy. They play with each other all day but… Let’s just say, things happen.
And guess what? We won Developers Game Jam! 1ST PRIZE!
Antons is an Orbital Tower Defense Game made by me for the game jam. Unfortunately, I couldn’t submit it on time. It was one heck of a strategic journey.
The game is so tuff and requires some decent tricks to win it. Here are some of the tips and tricks that might help you in surviving the alien waves in Antons.
1- Always keep some space
Each orbit has a capacity after which no more antons can be added in it. The first orbit only has a capacity of 4 antons. This is not enough and so, the start of the game might be rough. Basically, build 3 deb traps and 1 solar sat. Let them do their work. When anyone of them is destroyed, build moon and start transfering the deb traps onto the next orbit.
Always make sure that all orbits atleast have space for 1 anton. That way you can easily push the newly built anton to the farthest orbit.
2- Maintain Deb Traps all the time
This game is all about managing the antons. Antons are build using debris (or deb). There are only two ways to earn deb:
Deb Trap trapping the debris flying in the space.
After each level, you receive some Deb as reward.
In other words, if you don’t have any Deb Trap and debris (to build Deb Trap), your game is over. Always keep Deb Traps in such positions where it can collect as much debris as possible while ensuring minimum damage to it.
Now, here’s the fun fact. It’s not possible! You can’t have Deb Traps that collect debris and also, at the same time, are untouchable by the aliens. To collect Debris, Deb Trap must be present in the outer most orbit. That not only ensures debris collection but also makes sure that the aliens will most likely damage it.
In a nut shell, there are three things to keep in mind:
Deb Trap are the most important unit and there must be a lot of them.
Deb Traps are the Defense Line in the early game. They are the weakest unit but they are cheapest as well. In other words, quantity matters here.
Always keep backups of Deb Traps ensuring constant debris income.
3- Ensure Infinite Power
The values in this game are crazy. They come and go real fast in the later waves. In other words, having infinite (too much) power ensures consistent antons supply to the last/far orbits even when solar satellites are getting destroyed.
See the power value. Infinite!
Solar Satellites (or Sat.) are the units that provide power. Power is a requirement to push the antons in the next orbits. It doubles every next orbit for all antons.
The yellow aliens move fast and can destroy solar satellites without you noticing it and soon, you will be unable to push antons to the next orbits resulting in less space and ultimately, the game comes to an end.
When I have control over 5-6 orbits, I usually end up filling* the first 3 orbits with solar satellites. Don’t use solar sat as defense i.e having solar sat in the last/far orbits. It is a very bad move and have no advantage whatsoever.
4- Don’t rush for the next orbit
Apart from the power, moon is the also required for pushing the antons to the next orbit. Moon is pricey and requires some patience. Don’t wait for the moon before even establishing the existing orbits. Even if you built the moon and pushed it to the last orbit, having more orbits only meant more space. It does not meant that you have more stability. Infact, it’s the opposite. More orbits can lead to instability if the previous orbits are not fully established and well maintained. It is harder to maintain the far orbits considering the power expenses and orbital capacity in mind.
On the other hand, it is also quite a loss if your moon get destroyed. All of a sudden, you completely lost control over your far orbit and your sensitive orbits are now exposed.
5- The game is too easy? Don’t fall for it!
My intent is to make sure that the first 5-6 waves are for preparing. The real battle starts at wave 7 and further. Purple aliens are the real headache but there is a solution for that too.
See before and after in the pics below. It is in Hard difficulty and as you can see, the outer defence is gone. Guess what happened after that! I lost.
6- Meteor or Comet?
In the early game, one should make Metoer but late game demands Comets.
Meteor, Comet and Asteroids are the real defense power. But unlike Deb Trap, they don’t collect debris. Having them in the further most orbit decreases debris income because now, the debris will hit them and not Deb Trap.
Meteor is cheaper than Comet but Comet is double the strength as compare to Meteor. Now, here is the thing that makes comets better: Comet is 75% more expensive than a Meteor while giving 100% more strength. In other words, Comets are better.
But Meteor will occupy more space for less price. Meteors will ensure more stability in the early game.
7- Pause the game
If you have never played the game or is not good at it, play the game and pause a lot. Try to predict where the enemies will hit. Understand the health of your units. Make decisions that are supposed to make it more stable and be consistent with it.
8- Asteroids!!?
It is a useless unit. Don’t bother using it. xD
Asteroids are undestructable but only exist for 15 seconds. They are pretty expensive but they can work best under following situations:
When you are losing and you simply want to stay a bit more longer to have a better highscore.
When you are facing purple aliens!
The joy when an asteroid simply removes all the purple aliens. It is absolutely awesometacular! It is tricky but if you manage to do so and in a proper way, asteroids can prevent huge damage that purple aliens can do to all the other antons.
*Not complete filling. I always leave one space in each orbit (at first 5 orbits).
To be honest, even I don’t know everything about the game. Maybe someone can play it better than me. Just try out the game and give me some feedback so that, I can make it even better.
Save Mars from the Alien Invasion by constructing Orbital Array with units called Antons. The game is Real Time Strategy and there will be 10 waves of Aliens.
Antons Start Menu
Antons Gameplay 1
Antons Gameplay 2
It is totally your choice but the game is real fun and challenging on HARD Difficulty.
This game was supposed to be submitted forBTP Game Jam #2(Theme: Mini Planets) and later on, for Extra Credits Game Jam #3 (Theme: Cycles <- my game totally suits the theme so, why not 🙂 ).
Why I couldn’t submit on time? No particular reason. I think, it takes time to explore and develop a game based on a new/different genre.
As you guys know that I am a fan of Unity Game Engine. Therefore, I watch the video tutorials on YouTube that are related to Unity Game Engine. A few months ago, I stumbled across a YouTube Channel called BlackThornProd. He makes awesome Unity tutorial videos.
One day, he decided to do a Game Jam and he posted a video about it. I watched it and decided to join the Game Jam. The theme was beautiful. It was “Game Development”.
It was a 7-day Game Jam. Unfortunately, I was one day late when I saw the video. So, I already had one less day to make the game. In other words, there was no ‘Day 1’.
Day 2 and 3:
I immediately opened Unity but when the empty text box asking for project name appears in front of me, I just couldn’t think of the game idea. It’s not like I don’t have ideas. The problem is that I have lots of ideas.
Recently, I watched some of the games made in Unity. One of them is Inside by Playdead. I really like the art style of the game and the overall gameplay. The game’s ending is something. No spoilers. Hehe.
I wanted to make a game like Inside. Of course, it is such a big deal to create such a game. I obviously couldn’t make a game like that in a mere 6 days. But I wanted to touch its art style and environment feel. I somehow wanted to bring it in my game. And I feel like it is possible.
I named the game, DreamScreen.
Now, I need 3D models. And I am just so bad at making them. I am still bad when it comes to modeling and stuff in Blender. Thanks to Unity’s Polybuilder, it seems a little bit possible.
I made the character model in pieces. For each piece, it is just a simple cube. All I did is change the position of an edge/2 vertices. Then, I put them in a sensible hierarchy in order to animate it.
Character Model
Hierarchy of Character Model
It is not the best. But it seems okay to me. After all, it is made for the game that I have to complete in the next 5 days.
I made a very simple environment. Again used cubes only. Roof, walls, floor and some columns here and there. I added some square holes in the roof. Then, I set the directional light in such a way that the light passing through the holes in the roof, makes a pleasing angle. I added Unity’s Post Processing Stack (Version 1, not 2). With that, I added Bloom, set the Color Grading to ‘Filmic’ and tinkered around with Depth Of Field settings.
I want my lights to be volumetric. So, I added Aura – Volumetric Lighting from the Unity Asset Store, of course. But it didn’t work the way I want it to be. I settled with white square Sprites. The idea might seem odd but it looked way better than I expected it to be.
A shot during the game.
Now, I want my characters to have idle and walk animations. Thanks to my hierarchy setup, the animation seems easy and I did it pretty fine. The animation takes most of my time. There is no IK or anything like that. Unfortunately, I find it hard to fix the foot digging into the ground. But it was not that much noticeable. Programming the walk was a piece of cake. I added the step sound and the ambient sound as well.
Animating bunch of cubes to make it look like someone’s walking…
Then, I slept.
If you have already played Develomare, you might say that I am talking about some other game here. That is because there is some serious twist at the end of Day 4.
Last time, I posted a sad post. After that, I left my blog…Â again.
And now, I revisited my website and I was like, “Oh crap, that’s another big hiatus. Dang it!”.
Please forgive me for such a long and lengthy break. Come to think of it, I might have a 2-3 months break again. You can blame my upcoming exams for that.
Recently, my urge for developing a game got too much to the point that two simple words, ‘game jam‘ pushed me to develop a game. I took part in the game jam called Blackthornprod GAME JAM #1 in which the participants have to make a game in a week. The theme was “Game Development”.
I made the game named Develomare. It only works for Windows. Feel free to play the game here.
BAC Studios 