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[zzanack]

Hi friends I'm Alex M.A (@zzanack) CEO in Crankworks Games. We are developing a new low poly game called Planet Rider:

You are a space ship pilot trapped into planets gravity in an unknown planetary system, and you have to scape from many planets as you can.
The transport between planets consists in a magical portal that it will be available collecting a determined number of energy balls. Be careful with these balls because they will make you to go faster. Every planet has its own structures, if you touch them you will lose your energy shield, and lose all energy balls that you had collected.

Technology

All planets have variations like the number of energy balls, structures, enemies, planet dimensions, colors... with random distribution and procedural execution.

We have 15 different color palettes with 5 five colors each one, then, one of them is selected randomly and every color is mixed in the same way, so every color palette selection I have a lot of combinations:

And 6 packs of structures with 3-4 models each one, these structures will be part of the landscape of each planet:

Items

In order to make this advance more easy, you could use some items which will help you to go more further:

Speed up / down

You can reduce your speed with the Speed down item. Be careful to collect the Speed up item, it will make you double speed.

Force field

In each planet there are structures where you can crash against them and lose energy shield, if your shield energy arrives to zero you will die. So get the Force field to protect yourself for 10 seconds.

Reverse

Choosing this item your controls will be reversed and you will have a different point of view of your ship.

Magnet

When you get the Magnet item all energy balls around you they will be attracted and collected, be careful because your speed will be increased considerably.

Breaker force field

Get the Breaker force field and protect yourself crashing structures that don't allow you to go forward. It will be active for 10 seconds as the Force field.

Gameplay

At the moment we have 4 planet categories and inside each one could have variations:

Speed

This is the main gameplay of the game. You have to collect a determinate number of energy balls in order to open the portal which allows you jump to next planet.

Bonus

Planets with bonus gameplay are plenty of energy balls which give you a lot of points.

Enemies

In these planets you could find any kind of enemies, I have implemented UFOs for now. You must pursuit and touch them with the Breaker force field to destroy them, be carefull because there are some type of UFOs who don't move in a straight way.

Survive

And finally the planets who will test your reflexes. It will be different types of gameplays inside this category, for now I have developed the Meteor rain. You must survive 30 seconds in this planet.

This random distribution and procedural execution brings to player a new experience every time he plays the game.

[zzanack]

Adding new gameplay elements: until now the player has 10 points of shield. We have removed these shield points and now you have to work a little bit more to get shield protection: if you collect 25 energy balls without hitting structures you can reach 3 levels of protection. But be careful, they will disapear if you crash your ship!

So, get the three protection level and survive as long as you can!

[Alex Strook]

Great idea, the game looks fun already !

I'm wondering about the real advantages/disadvantages of the "reverse" power up ?

Do you intend to push the art further, because with more polish in the art would help the game a lot I think ^^
Also the changing planet effect is the big wow moment, in Mario galaxy it was really well done ( a good camera movment + just what it needs of camera shake), it's fall a little flat here (from what I can see on the GIF at least)

[zzanack]

Hi Strkl,

The "reverse" power up has not advantages, it should be better in disavantages section instead of power ups

I'm thinking about improve the art or not. When we finish all gameplay elements I'll think about it. But it's true that if you have a good looking in your game you have more opportunities to catch more audience. But I'm a lowpoly lover, it is a hard decision to make

Regarding the planet transition, the gif has not the last version of the game, it is more accurate now, but I'll check how Mario galaxy did it.

Thanks for your advices and comments!

[jctwood]

Looking really slick! What platform are you hoping to target?

[zzanack]

Thanks JctWood!

On a first instance it will be a mobile game: Android, Amazon and iOS.

And if the gods bless the way maybe we will improve graphics and add more gameplay like multiplayer and then launch it on PC.

[zzanack]

These days I was testing different color palettes on planets. We added particles system in order to fill the space between structures and get rich inmersive atmospheres.

We want player has different experiences every time he plays, when he explores the galaxy with plenty of planets generated in randomly and procedurally way.

[zzanack]

Added another obstacle: mines, they could appear in any planet. Player has to avoid them if he doesn’t want to lose one point of life.

These mines has a force field which detonates the explosion. If the player is quick enough and he doesn’t touch the mine core, he won’t suffer damage.