Alawishus Pixel is in playtest and getting some great feedback. It'll be a much better game because of it. When I first thought of the idea for the game, I decided to grab a pencil and paper instead of the keyboard and mouse. Even though I'm not an artist by any stretch of the imagination, having thoughts and ideas on paper made all the difference for me. At least from the start it was clear to me the gameplay could stand as an allegory to the Sisyphus story.
Alawishus
After a couple of failed attempts I settled on a draft of the look of Alawishus. I originally wanted him 16 pixels high. Since the tiles in the game were also 16 pixels high, the plan was to let him and the block fit into those tile high small spaces. After drawing the pixel art I decided it wasn't enough detail for a character that the player will be staring at for 40 levels, so I upped the height to one and half tiles high and the width to one tile wide. It worked well since keeping the block one tile high allowed puzzle opportunities for the block to go where Alawishus couldn't.
I then drew out the main action in the game or the concept in its' simplest form. As you can see I originally wanted the character death a little more dramatic.
His skin is melting
I also, at first, thought of setting the whole game in more of a man made, science lab structure with the Sisyphean task being a lab rat type experiment run on humans. When I started drawing the levels on paper about halfway through I thought "Maybe we start off in a cave like setting and gradually turn the cave into man made metal structures." That way there leaves a little bit of mystery to the story and I could make the level assets more varied. Now I've been messing around with pixel art for a couple of years now and, like I said, I'm not an artist. I'm much more comfortable shading pixel drawings with right angles or straight lines than naturally occurring elements like rock, grass, trees, etc... I was a little intimidated but up for the challenge and in the end I think it made for a better game.
I worked out all the level design on paper before hitting the computer as well. This made it a lot easier when putting all the art assets together as I could keep my mind focused on one particular level and not worry about how the next level will be designed. Here's a sample of a few of the boards on paper.
Like I said, I'm not an artist:) But that didn't matter since the rough draft kept me focused and in the end the pixel art made the levels look nice an clean.
Much better.
Scaling everything drawn in the game by three allowed a perfect conversion for the Xbox 360's 720p native resolution with just a little excess on the side of the levels cut off when centered. After editing all the levels in Gimp (yes,Gimp) I would need a way to get the levels into the game. But that's a different story.
P.S. If I decide to make a game with pixel art again I'll put my money down on Pro Motion, but Graphics Gale is great for editing sprites.
P.S. If I decide to make a game with pixel art again I'll put my money down on Pro Motion, but Graphics Gale is great for editing sprites.
