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[sam_suite]

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a psychedelic-80s-themed stealth game set in a hyper-colorful, highly-policed city

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OLD ORIGINAL POST BELOW...

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PLAY THE OLD 2D VERSION (windows only for now, sorry):
DOWNLOAD

Controls (designed for gamepad):
Steer - A/D or left/right arrows (or left stick)
Accelerate - W or up arrow (or right trigger)
Brake/reverse - S or down arrow (or left trigger)
Switch cars - spacebar (or A button)

Short disclaimer: The game is super buggy. You have been warned. Also, the cop AI is not great. So... play at your own risk.
Thanks for trying it out!
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For the past two months, we've ('we' being a few overzealous college freshmen in RPI's gamedev club) been working on Radon - a 2D psychedelic-80s-themed stealth game set in a hypercolorful, highly-policed city. Our goal was to have a working version of the game ready in time for the Rensselaer Game Showcase, which is, well, a big showcase hosted by the club that presents student games (and some indie games from the area). We just barely managed to finish the game on time - and we won the Best Club Game award. It was awesome.
But we're not done.
Another even bigger game showcase is coming up in the spring (I love my school), and we want to have something really great to present - so with all of the feedback and support that we got from RGS, we're doing a remake - this time in 3D, and with a much larger scope. Maybe we're crazy. We have five months, as of the writing of this post. This is either going to be a rollicking adventure or a massive train wreck, so we thought we might as well let you watch.

Here are some shots from the old, 2D version (which we're still very proud of):

and here's a (very early days) taste of what we're working on now...

let's rock.
Oh, and if you're a bad enough dude, you can follow me on twitter @sam_suite.

[sam_suite]

Alright, let's get this party started.

UPDATE #0: THE STORY SO FAR
This all started in October, when the gamedev club organized a two-month-long game jam. The idea was that at the end of the two months, we'd all get to show off what we'd been doing to the whole school at a big event called the Rennselaer Game Showcase. The jam was called Race to RGS, and the only guidance we got was a theme: arcade.
so, Radon is what we came up with: a top-down stealth-based driving game. It's influenced a lot by movies like Drive, and the surreal psycho high-octane color palettes of 80s arcades.

After a couple of very intense months, it was showtime... and it went pretty well!

hooray! Now the REAL fun begins. This is basically an entire overhaul of the game, even though we'll get to keep some old assets. Here's a broad overview of what we'll be doing:
- full 3D (this is the big one)
- heavily redesigned gameplay
- more cities
- more interesting objectives
- AND SO ON

I like to think of the 2D version as a glorified, overpolished prototype. I'm also thinking about posting the 2D version up here to see if I can get some feedback, so let me know if you'd be interested in that.

We're using unity, so the move from 2D to 3D should be pretty smooth (code-wise, anyway). so far, we haven't had any problems, but that never lasts long. We have the basic driving functionality down, but nothing super interesting, so I'll take the opportunity to show off a handful of sketches I've made. The thing about 3D is that it requires the existence of walls, and walls require the existence of fun stuff like doors and windows. I spent a little while doodling ideas for different kinds of set dressing for the cities. Check it out:

so artsy...

[PXLForce]

Sounds like a great concept! I look forward to seeing the progress!

I'd be willing to give some feedback on the original 2D version if you wish.

[sam_suite]

Sounds like a great concept! I look forward to seeing the progress!

I'd be willing to give some feedback on the original 2D version if you wish.

Thank you! I haven't forgotten about uploading the 2D version - I think I'll do it quite soon. Just need to work out a few kinks. It would be fantastic to hear what more people think.

UPDATE #1: A TALE OF TRAILS
Been a little while since I posted the last (first) update! Sorry about that. The holidays have been a bit hectic. Hopefully as we get back into the swing of things, I can make this into something weekly. we've been working on a lot of stuff, actually, but most of it isn't worth showing off in its current state, so I'll just give you something sweet-looking to chew on while those other things keep brewing.

One of the game's major mechanics is the ability to instantly switch into new cars. For that to work nicely, we need a little reticle to show up over cars that are nearby enough to jump to. Here's how that looked in the 2D version:

Not bad. there wasn't anything particularly wrong with this. However, it is a little boring, and it doesn't really convey exactly what the circle means. So here's the new (hopefully improved) version:

There we go! This is way more dynamic, and not just in a juicy polish way - the trail moves from you to cars when you can move to cars, and moves back to you when you go out of range. Hopefully, this will be much more interesting, and also make the purpose of the thing more apparent.

cheers!

[Netsu]

Awesome effect, this the level of detail that makes a good game

[bdsowers]

Digging those colors. And that 'death' (crash?) animation from your first post. Looking good!

[sam_suite]

Okay, guys! A download link to the 2D version of the game been added to the original post.
Give it a shot!

Also, thanks very much for the kind words. I hope we can make this the best game it can be.

[sam_suite]

UPDATE #2: NEW NEW NEW
Phew! Last update, I mentioned that we had a lot of stuff in the works...

a spotlight for police helicopters! new car models! new buildings!

a minimap! functional car-switching!

a new map concept (in progress)!

and the new map in-game (very low res right now) - as well as some neat lampposts and traffic cones!

I can go much more in-depth on any of these things if people are interested, but that's the overview. Neat, right?

[pmprog]

Oooh, like the look of this

[MAVW]

really digging that "funny" cartoon looking artstyle. kinda feels like everything is made out of candy 
also, dat death animation

[sam_suite]

Oooh, like the look of this

really digging that "funny" cartoon looking artstyle. kinda feels like everything is made out of candy  
also, dat death animation

Thank you guys both so much! It really means a lot to me to see that people think this is cool.

UPDATE #3: NEW NEW NEW NEW NEW NEW

It's been a very productive couple of months... so much for weekly, updates, huh? 2 months left 'til GameFest (our deadline). I think we'll be done in time, but it's gonna be pretty close.

I updated to Unity 5 the other day, which has given me access to a whole sweet of sick new stuff. Very nice antialiasing, for example, and some extremely subtle bloom.
Get ready for a huge influx of huge gifs... bear with me.


The 3D version of the game is going to have some real story elements, so I needed some kind of mission-dispensing interface. This is what I came up with. You wouldn't believe how tricky it was to make sure that the mission bubble is exactly the right size to fit the text (without awkward stretching). Also, isn't that a nice tree? I think so.

Lots of new signs, telephone poles, streetlights, and (mostly) temporary buildings. The gif compression makes them a little hard to see, but trust me, it's all gorgeous. Also, those phone lines are all placed programmatically. Those babies have some nice (bezier) curves.

Cops are now terrifying. They'll go to the last place any of them saw you, so in order to lose them you have to round at least 2 corners - or round 1 corner and shut your car off, like I did here. Those signs from before are destructible, by the way.

Lots of changes to the map! There's a compass that always points north, lines can be easily drawn to minimap icons (the cops here, for debugging purposes), and a giant version of the map can be brought up and panned around. Oh maaaann, those trees, too, right? Goddamn.

In case you didn't believe just how scary the cops are now, take a look at this. They can get anywhere. ANYWHERE. Nothing is safe. Look at how smoothly they round corners. Go buy a bunker.

The road textures are placeholder in all of those gifs, obviously - something higher-res will replace it soon-ish.

In other news, RADON was selected to be presented at the RPI (my school) booth at GDC! I was so excited about this that I made  a bunch of postcards for them to hand out (unfortunately, I couldn't be there myself). Take a look!

Maybe I went a little overboard with "find your destiny."
Also please don't spam our emails.

[Kurtis Beaulac]

Awesome!
It reminded me of a mixture of GTA2 driving and Transistor style )
By the way, for Mac version you can use Wine, it works fine.

[sam_suite]

Awesome!
It reminded me of a mixture of GTA2 driving and Transistor style )
By the way, for Mac version you can use Wine, it works fine.

Haha, thanks! I've been getting a few comparisons to GTA recently, it's been flattering. I appreciate the tip about Wine, too. I'll give it a shot.

UPDATE #4: MAKING WAVES

New week, new stupidly large gifs:
Is there something out there in the briny depths beyond the Edge?

In this version of the game, it'll be much easier to tell if cops can hurt you - basically, if they're touching you, they can/are. Stay in contact for too long, and it's Game Over. Try not to get pinned.

Police now follow routes when not chasing you - which should let us design some interesting missions. There are also some updates to the map, and a neat new fountain (looks better up close).

Oh, and the camera doesn't clip through stuff anymore.

[bithead]

Man, this reminds me of the original GTA. I love it. Great style, totally feel the "Drive" influence in the color palette. Following.

[sam_suite]

UPDATE #5: FINAL COUNTDOWN
We're about a week out from the Gamefest submission deadline, so we've gone into pretty serious crunch mode. It's been very fun and pretty taxing. I'll spare you the gory sleepless details, but here's some of the stuff we've been getting done.

There's a lot packed into this gif:

There are shadows now (!!!), the camera has been zoomed out, and a whole bunch of minor visual tweaks have been made. Almost all of the environment art is done. Tons of buildings, trees, telephone lines, and this billboard (which just sums up what we're all thinking, really):

The helicopters are finally fully functional (and spine-chillingly persistent)!
This gif was sped up somehow, not sure why that happened:

There's a new death animation (hope it lives up to the 2D one - it's much cleaner):

That death sequence sounds just as awesome as it looks, by the way.
We've added a pause/controls screen:

Also, Ben has made a ton of great music, but that's tricky to show off because it's all systemic and changes based on what's happening. We'll have to make a trailer sometime in the next couple of weeks, so you guys can see it then.
The game's story has been pretty refined... but I don't want to spoil anything. I think you'll dig it.

Oh! I almost forgot. We've implemented the greatest vehicle of all time.

so look forward to that.

[irn]

Psychedelic stealth racing game? Awesomeee!! :D