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[The Lizartian]

The Lizartian is a top-down action-adventure style game. We will embody a lizard tamer, a Lizartian, who will have to travel the vast lands of Dekotof to fulfill his revenge. Along the way, he'll face dangers like savage bandits, rugged terrain, and the legendary sandstorm.



We are Font North Studio a fourth-year group formed by students of video game design and animation. We have been putting our effort in this project for the last 3 months. Furthermore, we aim to publish it in May.
We are developing the project in Unity and working with a GitHub repository.
We are currently in the system complete phase which we will finish at the end of this month.

We intend to end up having 3 different zones where the player must move to get an ability that allows them to move to the next zone. The player moves through an rpg-style map where he will have encounters with enemies. This map also has cities, points of interest like enemy bases or hidden treasures.
In the combat phase, the player fights on the back of his lizard and will have to repel enemies using different weapons, mechanisms and abilities of his mount. In the cities we will meet blacksmiths who will improve our equipment, merchants with whom to trade and characters who will give us missions and tell us news, secrets or events that are happening.

-Website: https://thelizartian.wixsite.com/thelizartian
-Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/thelizartian/
-Twitter:https://mobile.twitter.com/thelizartian

[The Lizartian]

Hello everyone! We have made some improvements recently in The Lizartian. Now we have a new style guide, this will help a lot to our artists in order to make them work with the best visual references.

Also, we have made a style guide about every character in this story. In this moment every NPC is designed (as the merchants, the enemies that will approach us, or the different villagers that will give the player some quests). Every single character will be an antropomorphic animal!

Besides, a few time ago we have made a private playtesting for the purpose of getting objective feedback about the gameplay in order to improve the experience as much as possible.

Another important matter is that our designers have finish the game progression. Now is concretize wich differences areas the game will have, how many enemies will there be in each zone, how difficulty will improve along the game…

[mobilelast]

That red/yellow game image plus black and white company logo look good together. Have you considered integrating those styles in the game? WW1-western-lizard-fantasy-RPG would be quite a concept…

[The Lizartian]

Weekly report! During the last week our programmers have improved the game systems.

First of all, we have the combat system. Enemies can vary in different parameters: the target they must hit, the type of movement they will perform, the action they will perform on the target or if they can dodge during combat.

On the other hand, we have the naval enemies, they take up a considerable space on the screen. Once they appear, they must check the status of the lizard deck (empty or occupied). If it is empty, it will be anchored to it.

Our lizard can be approached by 4 points as explained before. It can also be managed by the player, activating a previously equipped skill, repairing the lizard, or feeding it to heal it. The lizard is also capable of having defenses or attachments and attacking using abilities or mounted weaponry. It will take damage which will cause breakdowns. Throughout the game we will be able to improve our lizard.

The weapon packs that we will have been classified into 3 categories: ranged, mixed and melee. Each weapon pack uses a semi-global scheme, light attack (basic), heavy attack (slower but stronger), reload (only ranged) and special.

The player will have two different control schemes and actions:

-In combat: we will handle the character with his pack of weapons, speed and life, in addition to his abilities (objects, dash, repair).
-On map: The lizard will consume fuel, it will have a vision range to identify cities and it will have a speed. Besides we will have the inventory, with access to fuel, first aid kits, cargo and weapons.

The map is an important part of the gameplay, therefore a system has been made. A target will be marked on the map and it will be checked if the target is navigable or not, if so it will go to that point, if not it will go to the nearest point. While advancing fuel will be spent, the character will stop if it reaches 0.

[The Lizartian]

Weekly report! This week we have created a private playtest to find out from the outside how the game is going.

Regarding combat, players have generally found combat fun, but at the same time most have found it hard. Based on written replies this is because players find the combat confusing, we'll fix this later with a tutorial and good visual feedback.

We have the most surprising answers in the section of the map. Most have seemed boring the way to navigate the map, and on the other hand, all the players have found that there have been few confrontations while traveling for this. But we have a couple of surprises in store that we think will give players everything they've been missing: quests and the pressure of a terrible weather event. We will also have more fights.

For us the user experience is very important, this section of production is improving little by little generally and until the end of production is not usually finished, therefore, we are working little by little in feeedback both visual and sound to get the best possible experience, as well as a tutorial that will guide the player in their first steps.

[The Lizartian]

For this week's post we are going to introduce you to our enemies!
On one hand, we have the humanoid enemies, characters with the size of the player:

• Melee: The Melee enemy will teach the player the basic mechanics of hand-to-hand combat, it will head towards you and attack at close range.

• Ranged: The ranged enemy will force the player to move and dodge, this will add another layer of difficulty to movement in combat. This will attack with projectiles from the distance.

• Saboteur: It will teach the player to manage the different variables during combat, and will make him rethink his strategy. This enemy will be able to destroy defenses that the player can build during combat.

• Looter: This will introduce another variable that the player has to worry about during combat, the cargo they carry. The special feature of this enemy is to steal the merchandise that the player has at that moment.

• Shield: It will force the player to be patient and wait for him to execute his attack in order to defeat him, he will also disposition him if the attack hits him. The action of this npc will be to hit the player with his shield to make him fly into the air.

It should be noted that ranged, shield and melee enemies have their elite version which we will see as we progress through the gameplay.

On the other hand, we have the enemy ships, these are much larger than the humanoids and will have special features:
• Ranged: It will force the player to use his mounted weapon to get rid of this enemy, it will damage our lizard with projectiles from a distance.

• Interceptor: The interceptor ship will be the first naval type enemy that the player will face, this will serve to teach him universal mechanics such as anchors. The action of this ship will be to anchor to the lizard to later damage it.

• Boarding Ship: It will serve to slow down the combat and teach the player that fighting is not always the right option, otherwise the boarding ship will continue spawning enemies. What sets this ship apart from others is the intermittent spawning of enemies.

• Kamikaze: It will serve as a point of tension in the middle of a fight, it will be anchored to the lizard, and a countdown will begin, once it reaches zero it will do a large amount of damage to the lizard.

• Beast: It will serve as a mini boss, since both visually and mechanically it will take center stage in combat. In addition, it will also bring enemies. Its special function is to passively damage the lizard with ballistae until the player destroys them.

[The Lizartian]

For this week we want to show you our level design. In our game the level design is especially seen on the map, is where the player will move his lizard (spending resources) to new locations while encountering enemies.

We have first designed and created a mockup of the first zone before creating it on the engine. In this we can see the different cities and outposts where we can acquire resources and advance the story. The player must advance from city to city trading with the NPCs and getting different resources while escaping from the sandstorm.

Later when we have assembled the level in unity adding the logic. In addition, everything is covered by sand dust which will not let the player see what is at long distances. The proportions of the player with respect to the elements of the map have been refined from iteration and the feedback received from the playtests.

[The Lizartian]

The art of The Lizartian could be defined as a cartoon set in the Far West with Asian touches (mostly Japan) and fantasy, as we have explained before. The color palette we use are reddish and brown tones. To this we add oriental textures to create the mix we are looking for.

Our characters are animals with a mix between cartoon and Japanese animation. An example that we can show you so that you can see the evolution of our art is the character of the bat. In this image below we can see several concepts of the character, considering the different possibilities with which we can develop it.

Later we can see the sketch of what the final version will be with the details that will define its personality during gameplay.

And finally, the final version that will appear in the game colored and finished, ready to be put into the game.

[Alain]

These owl and bat fellas are super cute!

[The Lizartian]

Hello again! For this week we want to present you our weapon packs. Weapon packs are additional abilities that the player will have equipped throughout combat. You will be able to get new weapon packs as you progress through the story.

-Hook pack: Set of weapons with which the player starts, adds an extra component of mobility with the hook. Hook is an ability that will allow you to fire a grappling hook to move or pull enemies towards you.

-Troublemaker pack: Focused on strong and wide but slow shots, effective short distances but not very versatile. We will have the jump action (jump and area damage when landing), basic attack (cone-shaped damage) and charged attack (high damage in a straight line).

-Pack enforcer: Focused on distance combat, it gives more security for players with a more leisurely style of play. We will have an automatic shot that will end when the magazine runs out, but the ammunition is infinite.

[The Lizartian]

After publishing our game, the only thing we can say is that we are very satisfied about the final result, considering that we are university students and it is our first published and finished game. What we get out of this experience is everything that we have been able to learn in this process and that we have come out of the game with a good finish.

There have been difficult moments, as in all projects. We have had to reduce the initial scope since it was too ambitious for the time we had, we have also learned that we must improve communication between the team since it is a very important point for everything to flow well.

On the other hand there have also been many positive points of this experience. We have known how to refocus our work, we have obtained resources independently such as art, which has been the product of artists who have worked with us and, above all, the experience we have obtained from all the work we have done.

For the next time we will try to improve our communication and have a more reasonable scope to have a more polished product.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1963580/The_Lizartian/