Blog Post #5, First Playable Demo

This week, we were put to the test to make a two-dimensional game with a partner. One of us would make the code work, the other would be in charge of art design. I volunteered to be the one in charge of the code, since I’m a fan of jumping headfirst into hard projects. I was partnered with artist, Krystal Deh, and we decided to make a 2D platformer.

Our game is called Morton Antivirus. The story goes that somebody got their computer infected with ransomware, so they put in a floppy with our antivirus hero on it to save the day! His name is Morton and he is fat, cute, and kickass, and he will run around your computer saving your documents and killing the nasty viruses.

So we made an incredibly short gameplay alpha test. It was missing some core mechanics but it was something that could be started and controlled and had some items. That being said, it was pretty barebones because of the time deadline. But we still got some killer feedback from our testers.

They loved the look. The cuteness combined with the retro Windows XP/AOL Instant Messenger vibe was an instant success. Everyone knew what it was supposed to be and fell in love with our little Michelin man, Morton, right away. All credit to Krystal, she’s an excellent character designer.

Things that they didn’t like were that there was no jumping yet. This was to be expected, It was my first time doing something like this, so I had trouble making it work before the deadline. But something that was controversial was that you could stick to the wall as you were falling if you held down the right or left arrow into the wall. I thought this was very fun, but it got mixed reviews. I think that I will try to keep it in as it was genuinely a 50/50 split and Krystal and I both found it to be fun. But, if it doesn’t end up working out with the jump feature, I won’t keep it in.

Based on the feedback we got, the art was a 10/10, the mechanics were lacking, so we are going to keep adding as many features as we can, and also push the cuteness to the next level. We are both excited and we’ve got a good work dynamic.