Another weekend game created by the friendly fivesome, ExoPlanets is a Rogue-like platformer with a classical Greek/Roman art style. It was created in Unity, the first time we had used an off-the-shelf engine.
Trailer by Filip Krynicki
The game actually plays well, but the art looks rudimentary – and I’m the one who created all the art. The main lesson? Make sure everyone understands the vision clearly before making the game, especially when working remotely (I was working from San Francisco, the rest of the team in Waterloo). I had imagined the game closer to Prince of Persia, while the others thought Rogue Legacy. This disparity led to a couple of major clashes between art and gameplay:
- Assets look good close-up, but gameplay was better from a perspective further away
- Assets built to move slower, but the game built for a faster pace (led to much foot sliding!)
In the end, we compromised on both issues, but it still looks worse than our collective experience should have made it. Ah well, not our magnum opus, but at least it’s fun to play!
Want to try it out yourself? Here’s a link to the GitHub page of the source. Note we developed it with an Xbox 360 controller in mind, so you’ll need that and a version of Unity to play it.
Created by myself, Benjamin Cassell, Filip Krynicki, Tyler Szepesi, and Alex Szlavik