A personal pet co-project with my friend Alec Petersdorf. Our goal was to create a simple game within Godot to familiarize ourselves with the engine, and create a fun and engaging experience.

The first step in the process was deciding what kind of game that we wanted to make. We threw around a couple of ideas and eventually settled with making a game like Vampire Survivors or 20 Minutes to Dawn. This was due to our love of the genre and how simple it was to execute for our first game. We then started to narrow down what kind of theme we wanted to work under, and eventually went with a Cthulhu inspired setting due to our love for Lovecraftian horror.

The next step was creating our Game Design Doc, or in our case our Game Bible! Here we established a lot of core game mechanics & systems, player characters, enemy types, etc. We put all of the ideas and concepts that we wanted the game to include, and left room for the project to grow and change as we developed the game further.

Following that we created a GitHub repository and got to work. The first thing I did was create sprites for the first character, the Detective.

All he needed was a simple design in concept, and his sprite would more than likely be changed and adjusted down the line with more streamlined art, but it was good enough for us to begin Testing.

The next thing I did was create enemies for the player to fight. This included a cultist and a “Mind Flayer.”

After that I loaded the assets up into Godot and allowed the player to move around! We eventually got a basic game working where the Mind Flayer would follow after the player slowly.

Obviously this wouldn’t be the most engaging Game, but I was just glad that it didn’t crash upon launching!!!

The next step in the process was creating a Tile map that would decorate the background and leave it less baron for the player to walk around in. This involved creating multiple tiles and having them load into the game sporadically. I also added a simple automatic firing method for the player so that they could attack enemies. While it doesn’t interact with the cultists currently, it will be implemented further down the line.

The next step was adding a simple User Interface and allowing the player to aim where they wanted to shoot rather than auto aim. This would not give the player more agency, but give them more information to work with! This involved creating an aiming reticle that would follow the players mouse movements, and adding in an ammo counter to show the player how many bullets were left before they had to reload.

The next thing I wanted to work on was creating a better User Interface for the Ammo Counter. Rather than a simple number counter, I wanted something with a little more flare. I decided to go about this by making a a revolver barrel that would rotate and adjust the bullets as the player shoots the gun. This makes the game look more visually interesting and gives the game a unique look and feel.

I first had to create each individual frame, then create an animation loop that would rotate when the player shoot. I had to test to see how the animation would loop like this down below.

The last part was implementing it into the game so that it would rotate accordingly based on the reload and when the player shoots. We also added a Timer and level up system so that the player can get stronger as the game progresses.

While there is still plenty of work to be done, we have a strong foundation for the game and I am excited to see how things progress from here!