A portable arena shooter.
THE PROJECT
In Cosmos Cleaners, you are Space Border Control in a future where humanity gets Alien garbage thrown at.
Your job is to "clean" it.
You get to face many enemy waves and they evolve with each wave. Their form changes as they get sneakier.
If you score really well, you get to face a boss out of 5 different bosses.
The music, which gives a "new retrowave" feel to the game is courtesy of indie musicians (Denovomutans, DJ Pretentious, Dynatron, Python Blue and Tommy).
The game is aimed mainly at mobile devices.
HIGH LEVEL TIMELINE
- 2014 : Game Design, Writing, Development, Proof of Concept.
- 2015 : Art production, music management, level design, creation of enemy waves and bosses, balancing.
THE TEAM
- 2x Game Designer / Developer.
KEY GOAL
Refresh the arena-shooter genre on smartphones.
MY ROLE
I co-created this project with another co-founder of the company Damasius Playwyn. I worked on the Game & Level Design, programming, testing, marketing and communication.
- Created the game's rules.
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- Set the level design's basic settings.
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- Scripted the canon's basic movements.
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- Scripted 3 enemy AI behaviors.
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- Scripted the main menu.
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- Set a save/load system.
- Connected the game with the Google Play Games and Apple Gamecenter APIs.
- Worked on visual effects.
- Managed a team of 2 artists.
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- Assured the game's marketing & communication on social media.
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- Translated content to English.
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- Beta-testing sessions on Android & iOS.
BREAKING DOWN THE PROCESS
Cosmos Cleaners was the studio's most ambitious game.
As we were only 2 Game Designers on the team, we found a solution be learning scripting under Construct 2.
The team started by organizing some brainstorming sessions to find a unique game concept. The idea was to have an arena shooter on smartphones with very intuitive touch controls.
Once our concept was on paper, I learnt to use Construct 2 to develop the game. Thanks to some Game Jams on the side, I managed to learn to use it pretty fast. This is where I learnt the basics of Game Programming.
After integrating some enemy types and waves, I moved on to pick retowave songs from Soundcloud and getting permissions from the artists to use them as the game's soundtrack, mostly successfully.
Once the alpha was reached, we entered a period of extensive daily testing on Android & iOS, as we had very big issues with Construct and exporting to these platforms.
We kept trying to solve all the bugs but many of them were inherent to the Game Engine and the project was unfortunately abandoned, as my colleague went to work in another company.
Retro futuristic all the way
We wanted the game to feel "retro futuristic" up to the UIs.
We even had a version of the game with a screen filter effect imitating the older CRT TVs scanlines and VHS glitches. We felt like it corresponded to our vision since we aimed to draw from the classical shooters and hoped to refresh the genre. These effects affected the readability on smartphones small screens though.
THESE WERE SOME MAJOR LEARNINGS
Working with external providers.
As we wanted this game to star some of the best Soundcloud artists' music, it was the first time any member of the team had to contact professionnal artists to work with them.
I decided to go for it and the experience was very pleasant. We were able to get them excited about the project and build a respectful relationship with them.
Never build a whole game on tech that hasn't been tested.
Working on Construct 2, we tested our production chain pretty early on with no problems whatsoever.
What we failed to anticipate is that Construct 2 couldn't handle the complexity of the game. As it grew in size and complexity, the bugs were out of control and mainly due to the engine's poor mobile export options at the time.
Presenting the game.
This was the very first time that I professionnally had to present the game in front of an audience of professionnals.
With my main team mate, we presented the project to people from other companies and french game designer associations and gatherings.
It was scaring at first but quickly became exciting as the feedback was mostly positive.