This year someone started the #devtober game jam on Twitter, the idea being that through the month of October, you create, market, and sell a game. I generally partake in a few game jams a year, and this seemed like a good diversion from BRACE work and to try out some game theories I've been pondering.
I've had this image of an ethereal endless flyer game in my head for a while. Something moody with high contrast, heavy depth of field, bokeh particles, interesting exotic environments with floating rocks. The usual suspects.
Actually, prior to October, I had built a few small tests of a flying mechanic that was very smooth, yet responsive and agile. So these two trains collided and became project: "Lightbird".
With Lightbird, I've really tried hard to push the visuals beyond my standard fare and to create a great atmosphere with lots of colors. Game play wise it is very simple, collect glowing feathers, dodge the rocks, lose feathers if you hit rocks. The twist is that you can choose when to "bank" the feathers, and guarantee their collection by touching the glowing harp-like pots. However, the longer you hold onto feathers without banking, the higher your feather multiplier grows... and the faster you go. This all together creates a nice risk reward system.
This score system also grew from the idea that this game doesn't have to be a difficult one and you can adjust your level of engagement if desired. You can play aggressive and fly fast and it's really challenging, or you can take it easy and explore at your own pace. You don't have to collect anything if you don't want to, just sit back and relax with its zen like music and visuals.
There aren't even any enemies or such in the game. Just you and your desired level of engagement. I think some of these design choices came about due to me previously working on the still incomplete "Hyper Lava Death Squad," which you can guess what that's about (I may get back to that project someday). I wanted to get back to a more artistic vibe like Survival Chess has, but with simpler game play.
The #devtober game jam has since concluded, and I had jammed hard enough to release a playable demo at the end of October. Lightbird still has a fair amount of work to do, but I am getting really good feedback from the demo, and have built a large to-do list to finish things up, hopefully by the end of the year. We'll see.
If you're interested in the latest updates for Lightbird, or any of my other games, follow my game development Twitter here: https://twitter.com/silvervalegames
If you want to play the demo, you can download it here (Windows only): https://silvervalegames.itch.io/lightbird-alpha
