Feature Gallery
In an effort to make the game feel pretty seamless, we wanted the start screen to smoothly transition from menu to gameplay. This meant having a system where save data reliant objects reinitialized their state upon save slot selection.
This effort also applied to transitions across scenes. Levels were structured in a way that made them small enough to load very quickly on our min spec machines, foregoing any need for a loading screen.
A tour of the C-Star. Our Map, Mod Chips Menu, and How-To’s live here. We wanted it to feel like GameBoy-like device that could actually exist in this world. To achieve that retro post-processing look we projected the UI onto a texture on the C-Star device for both the small and large screens.
A quick highlight of the core skating movement through an early level
An early prototype version of the game’s core skateboarding-inspired movement. This was one of our first attempts at making the skateboarding physics less realistic, more “game-y”. You’ll notice at one point the player slams into the ground going straight down, with more realistic physics normally this should result in a dead stop or a bounce but this felt terrible in playtesting! We stuck with the idea of preserving your speed as much as possible to keep the player moving.
A fun note: you’ll notice these two vertical bars on the top left and right of the screen. The game was originally conceived as a ship battling game and these represented the health bars of your ship on the left and the opponent on the right. We went through a ton of iteration to make to try to make this work before greatly simplifying the gameplay to focus solely on the skateboarding.
Boss Showcase: Gerald. Several features are on display here: use of Timeline tool for cutscenes, dialogue system and its integration with Timeline, Gerald AI logic, Boss Stages, Ratty Godmother AI logic, and combat interactions, and Bubble ability.
One fun idea I designed and implemented has the Ratty Godmother teleport away from the player if they get too close. This fixed two design issues: removed the chance she would “point-blank” the player with a projectile, and made it clear to the player she cannot be damaged. Also worked perfectly with her character design.