#1 Prototyping

Idea

This game will be heavily based off of a previous idea I had for a class, which sadly did not come into fruition. A 2D pixel platformer.

You play as a thief running, jumping, climbing & ziplining across buildings. The original idea takes place in a desert town, however I wish to adapt it into a run-down, gloomy town. The player will still be able to climb, jump, zipline & maybe even more, but as the game will take a darker, more serious approach, I hope to build in storylines.

You are a thief. You must steal to survive. Enter buildings using your nimble skills & take what you must. In doing so you will encounter the residents who may tell their stories.

To add more excitement, police may recognize & start chasing you. So use the skills you have to escape.

Mechanics

Some of the basic mechanics I had already made & tested in a previous game I tried making. The 2D platformer already contains basic movement, double jumping & wall jumping.

▴ I have used these mechanics & tweaked them to fit the feel of the game. Movement is slower, for a more atmospheric, moody & heavy feel.

▴ I've also added climbing up & down poles

▴ Simple pause menu

▴ Camera following player smoothly & basic camera contraints

I spent a lot of time figuring out the shape and look of the main character you play as and the colour scheme.

Trying out different sizes. After looking at some inspiration, I would like to settle on ~20-25px tall character sprites

 This will be the temporary sprite.

While I like the blues of the character, the colour scheme for the environment would not fit. I looked for more inspiration for a gloomy city scene and know that green would give off a disgusting feeling which would be fitting. I found a nice pixel painting of a city with the perfect colour scheme. I may have to adjust the colours but they are quite fitting. I went ahead and practised drawing a pixel building with this colour scheme and learnt a few things.

It was a nice practise working on this concept art. I hope to make a parallax effect with the foreground layer being the darkest and fading into lighter shades into the background. However, I will have to be careful with not making the foreground too dark, or at least think of the colour language I would like for the characters and interactable objects in the world.

This current palette is a bit too monochromatic and I may want to change it to be more analogous. I am also thinking of adding a bright red as  a highlight colour.

What's next

▴ Fixing an infinite jumping issue

▴ Working main menu buttons

▴ Adjust movement

▴ Work on ziplining mechanic

▴ Start work on dialogue system

Feedback

Please feel free to playtest my game and give feedback!