A lot of things happened in January! Most of them good, so I got that going for me at least! But I’m already very late to write this post. I swear I didn’t give up on this and I will get back into doing projects and working on stuff!!

Around January 5th I got back to the US to finish my Master’s in Game Design, and for some time I had to make an effort and focus on updating my portfolio and resume, so I can get to a good point where I can apply to jobs, I did all that, so now I have to just keep them updated and keep searching for jobs! But while making this effort, I didn’t have the best of times to work on side projects, and after I made all these efforts, I just took it easy for week, so I had a lazy week (A week where I only work on everything that is required from my Capstone and Master’s Degree). Anyway…

Defensees

Defensees is finally out! Play it on itch.io! – That’s the tower-defense with roguelike elements that I talked about last month. I had a lot of concerns with this game idea but ultimately I wanted to make something out of it and release a game. It is very basic, it contains a simple turn-based system and simple wave spawning and progression system.

The major concerns are still there, no mastery, no secondary goals, no whatsoever, it’s just you slaying some dungeon monsters trying to not die and trying to not get the door destroyed. But I didn’t want to postpone this game too much and I’m actually proud of this little project.

There are plenty of directions this game can take and there are many versions of it in my head where it is a more complex game with more roguelike elements, but unfortunately, right now, Unity and C# is not something that I want to work on and I don’t think it’s something that would push me as a Gameplay Programmer.

So… now what?

“Now what?” is a very good question right now – It’s very simple actually – I have to make things that will make me improve or showcase my skills in gameplay programming and C++, and I already talked about that in a previous post, and it would be even better if in this project I could add some interesting systems, practice some 3D math, things like that!

Here’s the options that go through my head right now:

1. Making a Gameplay Demo in Unreal Engine.
   1. This is similar to what I was previously doing, but now it would be something more serious and I would put more consistent effort and work on it longer.
   2. For this, I would buy an animation asset in Unreal Marketplace and work on making combat gameplay (Action RPG, inspired on Dark Souls or Astral Chain, there’s these two possibilities) or making something more inspired by a shooter game (Resident Evil 2 or Tomb Raider).
2. Making a full game in Unreal Engine.
   1. That’s a longer route, I would have to come up with a gameplay mechanic and a gameplay loop and make it not be too long somehow.
   2. I also would need to search extensively for 3D assets to use, probably what I found and what I can buy will dictate what I will be able to do.
   3. If I find good enough assets, maybe I can do a 3D version of Defensees!
3. Make a roguelike in pure C++.
   1. Yeah, I just love Roguelikes.
   2. They are interesting games full of systems, and I would have to code some interesting systems and create my very own small engine, which would be very interesting.

Anyway, next month I will be talking about which direction I went (there’s a high chance it’s going to be one of the first two AND a roguelike in pure C++, I just love roguelikes and I always wanted to kind of create my own engine… so…. it fits well.)

Anyway, thanks for reading until here!