hake devlog #1 news

Update 1: Introduction

We are two guys from Sweden who have been developing this game in our spare time for about two months. We have been talking about creating a game for more than two years now, and finally gotten far enough that the idea of finishing a game doesn’t seem as far fetched as it was two years ago (a combination of using the right tools and having realistic expectations was probably the most important ingredients for this to happen).

We have always loved the grappling hook game mechanic in platformers and wanted to combine this with procedurally generated levels making for, at least theoretically, endless replayability; and with that the idea for hake was born. We have more interesting game mechanics to introduce, evaluate and explore, but we want to keep the game fairly minimalistic. Fun and challenging gameplay is a given of course, but especially we strive to give the player the rewarding experience of mastering the “tactical agility” that is essential in order to beat the game. Not only must it be important to deftly navigate the enviroment but also how to tackle all the different situations that might occur. If we get it right and manage to achieve our vision of the game, all the puzzle pieces should allow for emergent gameplay where the player is rewarded for using imagination when it comes to tactical choices.

We are using Unity to develop this game, and pyxeledit and aseprite for creating the pixel art. We don’t have much experience in creating pixel art, so the graphics will most certainly change a lot during development (either from us getting better at it, or from hiring someone else to do it).