Planning and Concept creation
The aim was to create a game with the theme of "Rising" in 5 days.
I immediately had the idea of a game that seem innocent but had a darker meaning, what initially appears as a game as about a creature evolving, is about Lucifer rising, for this I took the how he was refered as a great Dragon and how in some asian countries dragons are connected to fishes, with fishes sometimes becoming dragons, i took that to make it be so that a fish evolves and rises from the ocean to become a dragon.
Production
There was major issue at the very beginning, I was not in a group.
I tried to make the game on my own, however I immediately had problems trying to code the game and it was clear I would not be able to code the game in time; I was able to fine a coder to code the game.
During my search for a coding partner, I was able to create the artwork for the game, I made all the sprites for the player, the enemies and tile sheets for the environment and attacks.
Once we partnered up, we managed to create the game in time, the coder used Unity and he showed me how to use the program to place the tiles and other elements in the game.
At first, I decided to make the game a puzzle game, but instead I decided to make it a bullet hell type game, more akin to arcade shooters, an added difficult would be for the player’s hitbox to become bigger as the game progresses.
Blueprints and Code
Final Thoughts
Even though we did not have all the time of the game jam, we were able to make the game together within 3 days.
I felt quite satisfied with the result, the game could have been longer with more bullet hell patterns for the player to have to dodge, the game could have been a rail shooter style bullet hell.
This was my first pixel art project, it was very insightful on how to make this type of game assets, in the future I could attempt to animate the sprites to better communicate when the enemies will attack.
Link to game