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[antionio]

Hi y'all!

My name is Antti and I'm the other game developer at mobile game studio Parta Games. I've been making games longer than I remember, sometimes even with moderate success. For the last 5+ years I've been mostly developing mobile games, but for the longest time in my heart I've wanted to develop a game solely for "more traditional" platforms like the PC. Unfortunately I'm not very good at designing or finishing bigger games with enough content and depth. Anyway, because I'm kinda tired of just being depressed that I've not made a fun PC game yet, I decided that now's the time for a cool personal project (Note: this is not to be confused with Parta Games' projects). For this, I've selected a game from my prototype stash that's been haunting me since I won the runner-up prize with it in GitHub game-off 2013 https://github.com/blog/1731-github-game-off-ii-winners.

It's called 'Room for Change'. Here's the description from the original Git repository (The game's premise is currently evolving so don't read too much into it):

Room for Change is a randomly generated action RPG. You play as a chubby archeologist who is tasked to retrieve three sacred artifacts from the pyramid of the legendary Pharaohs. Your way is blocked by stone chamber doors that can't be opened unless there is also a door on the other side. To access other chambers you must change the layout of the maze by moving the chambers either vertically or horizontally. But it's not as easy as it sounds! The pyramid is full of dangerous spiders, snakes and mummies! Try to collect all three artifacts and escape the pyramid! Have fun!



The game is basically Zelda meets Labyrinth (the board game) meets Binding of Isaac meets a chubby Indiana Jones (whew!). Originally when I participated in the Jam I was working full-time at Futuremark and during the 30-day time-limit I spent approximately 7 full days working on the game at night. It turned out pretty well even though it lacks a lot of polish and doesn't really look like much. I've since gotten better at designing fun games so it's possible that this old idea of mine just won't fly. But the core idea of the theme 'Change' and the changing maze mechanic combined with Zelda-like dungeoneering just won't leave me alone.

Here's a top-down view of part of the maze. The player has the ability to move the row he/she resides in, either up, down, left or right. The brown stone doors are not yet functioning as intended as they should open every time there's an open passage.



I'm a couple of days into making the new "Room For Change 2018" prototype and there's very little to show yet. I've gotten the basic grid-like maze generation algorithm working with the ability to move the row of rooms around, like in the Labyrinth board game. The game character is also moving, swinging his sword and feeling pretty good. The graphics are still crude and I've blatantly imitated the current black&white visuals from the awesome upcoming Zeldalike "Minit" (I'm a fanboy for the Vlambeer guys and everything they do, not even mad) Anyway as the visual style will surely change at some point I'm just looking for a "good enough" style to represent my current evolving vision.

Hopefully starting this devlog this early won't jinx my enthusiasm for this project, I'm hoping it will do the opposite. Maybe you will enjoy this journey with me! Until next time

[antionio]

Hi again! I've been pretty busy crunching away in the day job and with the family but I managed to make some small improvements to RFC during the weekend. I was pretty sad that I didn't have time to partake in Global Game Jam but family-time is important!

This time I focused mainly on the player movement and how the enemies behave when they are hit with the sword. I'm not quite sure yet if the sword will even be the main weapon in the game but I like to make it feel as good as possible to move around and defeat enemies early on. Combat will be in a fairly big role, after all. I also dabbled with some new textures because my eyes grew tired of looking at the b&w background. So.. nothing much, but things are slowly starting to look like something.

[antionio]

Hi again! As a master procrastinator I managed to tinker with everything but the core twist of the game for a couple of evenings. Today I decided to do something about it and now the player can move the labyrinth room at will. I'm not yet sure how it will actually work in the final game, but most likely it will have some sort of limitations. I played around with the idea that the room movement could be triggered with an item, not unlike the staffs in the old GB Zelda games. In the original prototype every room had a joystick-like lever that allowed the player to move the room in question in any direction. It did the job but it always felt a bit clunky to me because I had to put something workable into the game because of the time limitations. Anyway, here's a sneak peek of how the Labyrinth-like stuff now looks. Until next time!

[antionio]

Hi! Things are literally moving, slowly but surely. I managed to improve the core twist a bit, although there is one nasty bug with the collisions that makes enemies and other stuff fly around while the maze is changed. I'll get to that later, because I had very, very important issues: what should the flame look like?

https://twitter.com/AnttiKole/status/965495229519450112

[antionio]

Finally managed to somewhat get the animation sequence working when switching sides with the labyrinth room. It looks a bit janky right now but works as a proof of concept. Currently the player can move during the movement and I'm not sure the long wait time is fun in the long run but currently it looks cool enough.

[antionio]

A small status update: I've been very busy and exhausted from the day job which should come to as no surprise as I also make games during the day. So nothing new content-wise but I got a gear upgrade (a new wacom etc.) so I should be able to show some cool gfx stuff soon. Been also learning Blender so I might pivot this project to 3D for learning purposes. Some cool stuff is already brewing. Until next time!