Why Play Videogames When You Can Make Them?

The quick answer is because its way easier and far less time consuming...but its certainly not impossible.  A few years ago, I wanted to create my own videogame after being inspired by artist, Dean Dodrill.  I had been following Dean's progress on his animated feature after reading about him in a book on Flash Animation.  One day, he released a trailer for a secret videogame project he had been tooling with called, Dust: An Elysian Tail.  I was instantly blown away by the art and craft of his work.  More importantly, I couldn't believe that he had achieved the whole thing himself.

It was shortly after that I decided to look into the process of making my own games and bought a couple of books on programming.  Over the next couple years, I would fill sketchbooks with gameplay ideas and slowly toil away at programming until I decided that my cro-magnon, artist brain couldn't handle the endless math and code work.

So I shelved my hobby and let it facilitate cobwebs until I found Construct 2.  What Construct 2 does is do away with all of the coding and lets you make your game using "Events".  In the most basic terms, building your events is like saying, "When the player presses the Right Key, Move the box right.  While the box is moving Right, Play the 'Run' Animation."  Gone was all of the computer jargon and semicolons that I could no longer face.  Finally, I could just import my art and let Construct 2 do all of the hard work under the hood.

The game is still very early on, but I've included sketches and assets I've created.  If you'd like to see more, head over to my personal blog at www.NeedYourDisease.com. If you'd like to play around with what I have so far, click the picture below.  Enjoy.

Some early test sprites I made when I was trying to lock down the look for the game.

Some early test sprites I made when I was trying to lock down the look for the game.

The Game is based around the protection and rescuing of the city's citizens.

Rough Cape Animation for my Animated Blog Header

Villain Sketch. 

Villain Sketch.  I hate naming these things.  I don't know...Cannon Man? No?

All of the art begins normally.  Then, everything is shrunken down and their pallets  are limited in Photoshop to give them that 16-bit look that I like.  It keeps the file sizes small and hides any mistakes that come from working fast.

And here is a quick video capture of some of the mechanics.