Retreading Old Ground

So recently I've been a very busy little boy, arranging my mama's birthday with my family for the whole of last week. Excuses, excuses. As such, I've barely been able to comprehend game playing. The playing and inner monologuing/analyzing has been put on hold.

End of the world, right.

But now that that's all over with I've been back to rekindling my yearn to get this project started. Well, started as in actual ideas and the development of these THROUGH the initial research displayed within this blog.
As such, all throughout this two WHOLE months of Masters so far, the main concept has been nostalgia. And with that, I've wanted to follow in the footsteps of the concept/character/level design-based Honors project I had spent the majority of my time on for last year.
The project was essentially a design document, but without the bulk and core assets usually seen within these such as detailed and specific information, about each and every single thing needed within the game.
It was essentially conceptual-based, with the amount of work based on idea sheets I'd sketched up, and the evolution of these through further development and design, to show the whole process of how the game's design was unfolded; like a visual story book.
In addition to this, I'd created a fully fledged level design - based on the asset, gameplay and overall visual presentation - of which unveiled a basic introduction to the game's visual and technical prowess in the form of an interactive PowerPoint presentation. The user was faced with 10 slides - 8 slides of level playthrough and 2 dedicated to the intro and outro of the level - and would animate when specific objects, characters and important assets where highlighted with the mouse cursor. This was originally intended to be built as a small puzzle-based point-and-click level, with players having to move back slides to discover alternate and essential pieces to further the level until the end.
In PowerPoint, however, this deemed improbable, and I resorted to a simple interactive storybook that instead gave the user information and intention within each piece they could animate.

A visual interpretation of the game's intended look and feel. With the addition of the character interacting with the environment - large mushroom. The game's whole design was based around light as the source of life for the character. Without it, they would eventually fade into the dark and forever become and outline like everything else in the world.

SpaceBoy

The project's title, very linear and uninspired.. sure, but it's something I clearly have to work on. Video game titles. Sue me.

Essentially, the idea was always to create a prototype. I enjoy conception, and generating ideas and design, but I wanted the whole package - a working demo.
With the constraints of time, and the fact that I was already creating the game throughout concept and design I'd established that at a later date, or within another project in the future, I wanted to further the game.

The game's protagonist - SpaceBoy - designed with 8-bit in mind. The further and original designs show the character is a slick, modern, HD-style, though I did intend, before the addition of 'black and white visual design', to have the game as a throwback to those old-school visuals, with a modern twist. Yeah, nostalgia is essentially what I've been working with for the last few years...

So, with my Masters, I've been considering retreading old ground, and essentially developing a working prototype and/or demo, as most of the game is already there, waiting to be brought to life.
Obstacles I'll encounter within the next few weeks and upcoming months will include the chosen game engine to develop it in, and how the design will fair now when compared to it's design half a year ago.
The engine I have in mind is Construct 2. Plus, with working with it for Lima I can essentially use it as a basis for early prototype builds, that implement SpaceBoy's gameplay with Lima's assets.


A small but visually impressive model of Contruct's engine capabilities is EGON; a small indie game I found while searching for Construct-based game examples.