It’s already been a year and 8 months since I’ve released Project Smallbot on Desura, and currently a year and 3 months since I’ve been developing this game. It’s gone through a lot of changes and I mean A LOT of changes, but I’e finally found a true direction that I want to take this time around. If you haven’t played the first Project Smallbot game then you can find it on GameJolt and on other sites as well. I find myself still being happy that I managed to finish and release the game but at the same time I know that I could of done much better. I didn’t really know what I was doing at the time and I didn’t have a lot of resources to use when it came to the presentation so I tried my best.
So now with this sequel I’ve decided to change a lot of things so I can make the game better than the first. To top things off I’ve switched from Game Maker Studios to Clickteam Fusion 2.5. When it came to making the first game, I had a lot of trouble coding and designing levels for the game because of how limited I found the engine to be. It didn’t help that I was jumping into the engine with very little knowledge about it along with a lack of knowledge with coding and designing art. Coding and management for me was hard since the engine limited sorting things out and I flat out couldn’t even use the level editor at the time. It was very strict for me and I had trouble trying to make things look appealing. I know there’s a lot of great games made using Game Maker but really the engine isn’t for me.
Now with Clickteam, development is much faster and easier to handle thanks to the more simplified coding and expansive level editor. Because of this, I was able to add a lot of new things to Project Smallbot: Light that I couldn’t even achieve with Game Maker due to my lack of programming skills. I recommend this engine for anyone as it’s a great way to easily make games both big and small.
So now onto the elephant in the room, why did I change smallbots. Well I wanted to do something completely new for this game other than just having more of the original but with better graphics. Like it said in the description, this new smallbot will have new different abilities from red smallbot and will be able to get to more places and find more secrets with these new abilities. Not only that, it can use his energy shield for more than one purpose, adding more variety to the level design while still staying consistent. And for an added touch, this smallbot will actually have more than one facial expression. It’s not a lot of facial expressions, but it’s more than one at least. The game is still challenging too, but I’m toning done the difficulty and random spikes to make it more accessible to newcomers.
As for the story, I want to make sure it doesn’t get in the way of the game itself, so I’m making it optional. How, you may ask? Well easy, the backstory will only be told when finding collectables scattered throughout levels. There’s also going to be no alternate endings this time around too since I find it unnecessary now and it won’t really help the story I’m trying to tell.
The levels are much bigger than previous Project Smallbot levels too with more things to do as well. Some levels may require you to light torches to find hidden secrets and enemies, while other levels have you melt snow to progress through the levels. Your almost never doing the same thing in each level and it’ll tend to also change things up as well. Some levels will now even include boss battles to fight at the end in order to get the missing relics from the first game. Some enemies and obstacles will also be returning too along with new enemies that will be introduced for the first time.
Lastly I want to talk about the game’s presentation. I’m really trying my best to make sure this looks a thousand times better than the first game. The game will still have a simple art style but will also be better looking than before. I’ve been practicing pixel art lately and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to make things look more pleasing to the eye. I’ll be releasing my recent sprite models of levels and enemies as well as some early in game images sometime in my next update to show you guys how it is looking so far. As for music, I’m planning on ditching 8 bit music for more 16-32 bit like music, but this decision still isn’t final.
And that is all for this update. I hope that this one answered some questions about the game itself and what I want to do this time around. I’ll continue to update you guys as time goes on before I have a playable demo ready. Don't forget to check this out on GameJolt as well as it is the main source for the updates. But for now, I’m going to go back to work.
Be on the lookout for future updates!
