This yet to be named game is a project I started after finishing "Pilars of Time" which was part of a year long assginment in year two. Using the Unreal Engine 4 practically for a full year allowed me to become fully accustomed to its tools, that was untill I found out that it also supported the development of 2D games. This opened up new ideas for me. After completing the second year, I had enough hunger to want to continue to learn and develop in my spare time. As a fan of retro and nostalgia, the project started as a mash up of objects and characters from games of my childhood: Megaman, Mario, Zelda etc.
After the first few weeks, the more I played around with it, the more serious I felt about the project. Because of this, I felt I was cheating myself by just using sprites from my favourite games (even though this project at the time was more about a learning process). The only way around this was to teach myself pixel art which is actually just as enjoyable as creating the levels.
Could almost call the picture below a "prototype". The only thing carried over to the current project is the character which is in no way infuenced by Megaman. OR Link for that matter. Everything else here is taken from Super Mario Bros.
After I worked out that my goal was to create something nostalgic, I asked myself "What if it was possible to re-create that feeling I had when I first played Super Mario World?". I then got out my dusty Super Nintendo and started some "research". After playing, sorry I mean researching, the standout aspects of the game are: the overworld, the secrets, the great controls and free flowing platform jumping. What I felt I needed in my game that Super Mario World lacks is characters (I know if I wanted to play a mario game with story and great characters, all I would have to do is play Mario RPG or any Paper Mario game).
On the next post, I plan to discuss what the game is actually about. But until then...
Peace x