During the past couple of few weeks whilst I was working on Nameless, I decided to start working on another game. This game was the recently released ADROIT. The game was going to be a small game to sort-of celebrate a year since I started game development. I decided to make this game as I had not completed one game yet from prototype to final release (I don’t count games made during game jams).
ADROIT is an endless vertical runner where the player has to dodge spikes at high speeds. The player has full movement control and no assistance of the computer. Scrape along the sides, squeeze between spikes and dodge spikes at the last millisecond. The game is integrated with Google Play Game Services, so it has a leaderboard system and achievements to earn. The music in the game was created by Rob Cosh.
So far, the game has taken me around six weeks from implementation to final release. This includes creating marketing material. I have enjoyed this short-length development time compared to working on one project for a long time. This does not mean I will discontinue working on Nameless but it does mean I will try to do more short-length game projects.
I started the development on ADROIT by sketching the screen designs and then designing them on the computer. The sketches were originally done on paper but then I redone them on the computer. This was so that I did not have to carry around the paper designs in my bag and could instead put them on my memory stick.
The gameplay for ADROIT was very simple to program, as the player actually does not move at all. The spikes all come towards the player. This was the easiest way to implement an endless level. This allowed me to spawn random spikes at a certain interval depending on how many points the player has scored. The only thing that took some time to tweak was the player movement speed. I wanted the player to have fluid control over the movement.
The integration of ads was a little bit difficult since GameMaker (the game engine used to make ADROIT) is in a transition phase by moving ads to extensions in version 1.3. This did not take me that long since I figured it out eventually how to make it work. The last part that I had to work on for ADROIT was integrating it with Google Play Game Services. This was because I wanted ADROIT to have a leaderboard system for players. Whilst I was implementing Google Play Services, I found out that I had to have achievements in my game. This was part of the conditions to use this service. This was quite easy and I think this adds an extra challenge for players.
Before I end this post I am also going to announce that I am considering to buy Unity. This is because I want to try to develop a game in 3D. I might even try to do my next short game project in 3D if my skills improve enough in a short period. However, this all depends whether I buy Unity or not. What are your views? Should I buy Unity or just continue with 2D games in GameMaker? Leave your views in the comments below. Before I forget, ADROIT is released free, so enjoy playing it as much as I enjoyed making it!