Suppressor Dev Log 1
Introducing… Suppressor!
Suppressor is a science fiction, shooter/platformer with mechanics inspired by games like Spelunky, Vagante, Metal Slug, and Dark Souls. The setting is currently a weird mish-mash of Ufology, conspiracy theories, Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade, and Resident Evil. We’re a two person team and we’re hoping to release by Fall 2022.
Getting to World 1–1
This is our first game we have made as a studio, so we’re trying to be extremely intentional in the way we scope out what features are going to make this game work. At present we do have a prototype of the game basics, but our current primary objective is to finish enough features and implement them in order to create a fun and playable level. This first level is our version of a minimum viable product and once it is finished we will release it as a demo on itch.io.
Where We’re At
We’re currently about 50–75% of the way to completing the features we need to finish our first iteration of World 1–1. Here’s a quick list of features that we’ve created and implemented:
- Player Movement and Collision
- Player ledge grabs and climbs
- 3 Enemies
- Pausing
- Lighting system (Courtesy of Juju Adams and his Bulb library!)
- Visual Effects- Explosions, screen shake, hit numbers, hit flash
- Jump-Through Platforms
These features have put us in a good position to accomplish our World 1–1 goal, but we’re still working on creating more enemies and obstacles before we begin the level design process. Currently, we have 3 enemies at least somewhat implemented into the game. We have a scorpion-type robot that crawls along the floor like a goomba, a flying drone with C-4 attached to it that explodes when close to the player, and a turret that shoots at the player if they walk into its range.
Where We’re Going
In order to get a sense of how many obstacles would be good to implement before we started level design I decided to think about a couple games that inspired me and how many hazards their early levels had.
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For Spelunky I listed out the following enemies for the Mines section:
- Spikes
- Arrow Trap
- Caveman
- Snake (and Cobra)
- Spider (Drop/Spinner/Giant)
- Bats
- Scorpion (From pots/chests only)
I did the same for Vagante’s first area, the Dark Caves:
- Slimes
- Eyebat
- Goblin
- Lurker
- Piranha
- Divebomber
- Rock Worm Larva
From this exercise I came up with around 6/7 being the sweet spot for the amount of hazards to introduce in our first first area. I know that other games are able to make perfectly fun levels with even less hazards (Super Mario Bros. World 1–1 only has 3 hazards, pits, Goombas, and Koopa Troopas) but I think that 6/7 would probably be best suited for Suppressor. I think less than 6 or 7 wouldn’t offer up enough variety, primarily due to the player having more ways of interacting with the enemies. Giving Mario a gun or grenade would take away all of the challenge from a goomba or koopa troopa. While increasing the amount of threats to learn in the first biome would probably be too much information to parse for new players.
Currently, we have 3 enemies implemented in various states of completion. We have a walking drone, flying drone, and gun turret. I have designed a basic soldier enemy, a grenadier type soldier enemy, and a land mine hazard. These enemies aren’t implemented yet, but the art work is done for the soldiers so we’re just going to need to code their behavior and implement. Obviously there’s going to be a lot of tuning and polishing to do as well, but I think we should be done with these obstacles pretty soon and I hope to get the game into the hands of players soon!
Anyway, thanks for reading! We’ll have another update later in April and hopefully we can talk about some new enemies and level design!
