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A fly lives a short time, so collect poop and become a fat fly! OR Eat rotten poop and die before you are satisfied!

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In this article we cover the development and release of I AM FLY.

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i am fly indiedb header2


A fly lives a short time, so collect poop and become a fat fly!
OR
Eat rotten poop and die before you are satisfied!


PLAY NOW:

Steam


I AM FLY is one of those games that comes to you late at night, when fatigue and goofiness take over, yes
I AM FLY was born from the darkest parts of our minds, the unconscious.

I had this funny idea one night and began making a small prototype to test things out, the idea was to make a casual game anyone could play that required nothing but the mouse. Keeping it simple was the easy part, making it entertaining and challenging was the hard part.


With the first prototype i limited the movement to only left and right, which really limited the gameplay and was really only used in the first version of the prototype. However while making the movement system, i also created a free roam feature that allowed the player to move anywhere. At the time of the first prototype posting though, that feature was not fully working.

As development continued I began leaning more towards a realistic look and feel for the game over the lower quality/poly look, to give the player a more entertaining experience. Sometimes graphics really don't matter, if the gameplay is awesome but considering the simplicity of the game, I felt upping the graphics quality was a must.


With the new prototype push development had progressed to the point where it was now playable by the general public, including features such as:

- Added free movement (can move anywhere on the screen)
- Added grow feature (fly grows in size the more poop you collect)
- Added speed up feature (falling speed of poop increases as you collect more poop)
- Added player damage dealers
*Animal Tail (swings around, if hits player, deals damage)
*Frog (frog detects and attacks if within a certain distance)
- Added animal tail physics interaction with poop (pushes it around)

However at this point i was not completely satisfied with the gameplay, it was playable yes but did it feel complete? No it did not and thus began my mission to make the final touch ups and really push the game to where i wanted it to be.

Graphic touch ups, new features, complete re-work of some mechanics and the list goes on, working on all the small and major parts piece by piece, I AM FLY turned into a quiet beautiful and entertaining casual game.


What was the major difference you ask? A lot of new features, realistic graphics and environmental changes, considering the last few builds had the gameplay centered around a field and i didn't feel that was the best setting.

Completely changing the environment drastically changed the look and feel of the gameplay, from generic to dang that looks nice!

Changes:
- added death types (regular, explode, get eaten)
- added pause, options and game over UI's
- re-worked entire environment
*replaced trees
*added bushes
*removed old rocks, replaced with smaller rocks
*added buildings
*changed sky
*changed lighting
*added volumetric lighting
*added logs and cut down trees
- changed animal model (cow)
- updated poop models
- added mesh effects to poop models (glow, gas offput, etc.)

At this point i could have called it a day and pushed the game live BUT there was something still nagging at me, there should be more, more features, better presentation, etc.

It's a curse to some developers, to never truly be satisfied with their work thus leading to extended development times but i already marked the final ending point for the development process yet even with the latest changes, i still wasn't there.

And so the final push for I AM FLY had been started, the last remaining features were fun to make but i could tell the games development period was coming to an end.


Adding in a few new features like updating the tail collision with the poop, random diarrhea attacks and random invincibility pickups, gave the game that final touch i was looking for. Wait.. birds, yes we need birds flying around, done!

What could possibly be left to do? Well a main menu of course! Making this was actually a bit of a conundrum as i wanted something that would convey the focus is on the fly but not re-use the game scene to do so.

One major issue i found was finding nicely made mounds of poop, now i know, who would make that right? There is of course plenty of poop models around but generally singular pieces, not mounds as i was looking for or at least something close to conveying where flies would generally hang out, that matched the farm theme.

I went through at least 3 setups before coming up with the final version and i'm glad i kept pushing because the final version is by far the best one.


And with that I AM FLY was ready to push to the public! During development of the game i shared my progress around social media and got A LOT of positive comments, however there were plenty who did not like the idea and that's ok, it's not everyones cup of tea, toilet humor that is :P

Either way the game was fun to make, I laughed a lot and I hope the game can bring others a lot of laughs as well! If you take life too seriously, you'll never make it out alive.

Laughter can do wonders for anyone, so enjoy the game and see how long you can stay alive!

Post comment Comments
L3d
L3d

Lol love it allready, will try <3

Reply Good karma Bad karma+2 votes
darkeccho Author
darkeccho

Enjoy! ^_^

Reply Good karma+1 vote
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