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Freeze-E Frosty's : Developer Commentary - Level 1

8/19/2014

Welcome to the first installment of Freeze-E Frosty's - Developer Commentary. In this video series I will go behind the scenes of Freeze-E Frosty and share with you my design process.

Freeze-E Frosty's Developer Commentary - Main Menu and Level 1 from Danny Quesada on Vimeo.

Further Notes: Level 1

- The main menu was originally part of the third level but was discarded. Toward the end of development it was salvaged and turned into the main menu.

- There are almost one hundred dynamic lights in the first half of the level. Once the player reaches the second floor (where the workstation is) there is a trigger that completely deletes all of the lights. This was done to keep the frame rate from dipping lower than 30fps.

- We were lucky enough to record all of the voice over work in a professional studio with talented audio personnel. We did two 4 hour sessions to record all the voice work.

- This level went through many iterations before we went wit this design. This design was sketched by myself while I was stuck in traffic heading home one day.

- Danny Q
@Dannylv100

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Divercast Ep.3 : Most Disappointing Game

8/5/2014

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In this episode of Diver-cast, Brian Shimamoto and Andrew Brumder join Juan Valencia and I as we discuss what the most disappointing game from our childhood and adult life.

We talk about what made these games disappointing. Brian want's realism in his sports games, Juan breakdowns one of the biggest games of the last console generation and Andrew relives the horror of Fester's Quest.

Divercast Ep.3 - Most dissappointing Games (Re-Edit) by Divercast on Mixcloud

Do you have questions, comment or concerns? Email us at deepdigitaldesign@gmail.com
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- Danny Q
@Dannylv100

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Indie Arcade: Shot Aground

8/4/2014

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Stranger in a Strange Land

Welcome to another edition of Indie Arcade! In this month's article I will talk about a stylistic 3D Top down/3rd person game called Shot Aground.

Premise

   The basic premise of the game is, your ship has been shot down behind enemy lines.

   Using a combination of the top down and 3rd person perspective, the player must figure out a way to escape while avoiding enemies along the way.

   Shot Aground was made in two weeks for the Space Cowboy Game Jam.

Art and Design

The first thing that caught my attention about this game was it's art. The design is simple colors of geometric shapes, that evokes the feeling of paper craft. The design of the characters are also interesting. The protagonist for some reason reminds me of the Driver from the movie Drive.

The enemy characters have a very interesting uniform design. There appears to be some sort of retro-future influence involved that reminds me of old sci-fi movies.

The game is for the most part viewed from a top down perspective. The perspective switches to a behind the shoulder view/third person mode once the player takes aim of their weapon.

While in this perspective the player can aim their weapon and shoot at enemies. If the players want to take a stealthier approach, they can stay in the top down view and melee unsuspecting enemies from behind which will avoid alerting nearby enemies.

When the player takes aim with their weapon a green laser will be projected form the barrel of their gun. The player is using a revolver and every shot counts. Every enemy only requires one shot to be defeated, and in turn so does the player.

Players can not simply just snipe enemies from a safe distance. The further the enemy is from you, the less of a chance you can hit them with your bullets. At close range the player is vulnerable to being taken out, this will make shoot outs with enemies somewhat tense as you try and land a shot on them before they can get within range to fire back at you.

Cons

I would just like to preface this by saying, I understand that this was a game jam game that was made in the span of two weeks, but I did unfortunately have some issues with the game that I think should be mentioned.

There are a few things that I think are a bit rough about this game. The overall speed of the player is quite slow and this can be especially frustrating when you are try aim at enemies, or when you are trying to avoid them. They can quickly close the distance and one shot you.

The game has an emphasis on exploration, but it can be difficult to find out where you have to go and how to gauge distance. It takes a bit of trial and error and I know that will definitely frustrate some people. I will admit that I had no clue where to go or what to do when I first started.

See You Space Cowboy....

Shot Aground is a stylized game that definitely deserves a moment of your time. I would recommend this game to any designer and artist that is looking for something that combines two different concepts with stylistic visuals.

I do believe that this game has a lot of potential. Possibly as an episodic game that spans a few episodes, elaborates on the world and character. I am excited to see where this game goes in the future.