Hyper Skater

The games development startet in 2018 as a Ludum Dare 43 prototype. Back then i wanted to make a skate platformer. The prototype had 3 different enviroments you could play.

However it was far away from my vision and final product so i thought it would be great to continue it after Balloon Girl.

After the Steam version of Balloon Girl was released and failed in so many ways i was unsure if this game would go well on Steam with the lack of experience i had.
Also Steam visibility was bad back then too.
So i decided to cancel this game for now and make some other games.

I came back last year when i remember that i had this passion idea for a game with a Skateboard.
Things has changed now: i can release this games on consoles for Nintendo Switch and Playstation.
So if steam fails it would be hurt so much :).

How to get your game back on track ?

I decided to try it simple. So i open the Unity project and first try it out to see whats wrong with the game.
Then i started by fixing small bugs and improve things like the player movement. Core stuff mostly.
Game Devs is interesting – i had put myself too much in borders so that i had a fixed vision what to do.
But it didn’t fit the game design so i decided to change what i think is bad.

That works pretty good.
For example:
In the initial game the levels where just one big level to complete with no rooms or checkpoints.
I thought this is a good idea but as often i played i felt “well this is too hard” – if the level is too long it is also not good. I thought implement a room system in this code would be too complicated.
But: i just implemented it and it took very less time than i thought.

Thats how i now develop the game. I try to find out how the player could like this kind of game.
The last games i made were smaller games – this game isn’t really big currently too.
But with the room system i have the ability to make a much bigger then the first iteration.


(This is how it looks like now).

Livestream Game Development

Another thing is that i livestreamed part of the development and creation process on twitch. Not for a fanbase of other players (most streams had not much viewers).
Just to force myself not to interupt with games or social media.
That helped a lot and was really fun.

What now ?
The plan is to release the game on October 2024 if everything is well enough and ready and when i am satisfied with it.
If not it will be shifted to Februar 2025.
It will be available for Nintendo Switch and Steam. It is also planned to be released for Playstation but since Unity does another thing for PS Devs i am not sure if i pay the license fee for Unity Pro for a year (around 2000 USD).

Beeing an Indie Gamedev means also that mostly you would not get much cash from your games. However the consoles are more worth than steam for now.

Wishlist the game now:

Breakout VR

Play the famous classic arcade Brekout Out now in Virtual Reality.

The VR version of an alltime classic brings you hours of fun and explosive gameplay in an unique atmosphere.

Story:
You are inside the space ship and can only move your ship left and right with your triggers.
Aim and destroy all the bricks to get to the next level.

The game got inspired by Alleyway’s cover image.

  • Play from inside the ship in VR
  • Mess with the world and find out who is the best VR brick breaker in the world
  • Starting with 10 Levels in Early Access and improving

Early Access on Steam : https://store.steampowered.com/app/1334080/Breakout_VR/

Oculus Quest App Lab : https://www.oculus.com/experiences/quest/3473476126114358/?locale=de_DE

Oculus Rift: https://www.oculus.com/experiences/rift/4666473216726991/

SideQuest : https://sidequestvr.com/app/3484/breakout-vr

Week19 – Brickout


First of all: Happy New Year! It is the week where 2020 started. After the end of the 2019 year (which was a great experience) i now started very slowly in this week. Again i had the idea making VR games (and i still have it) so i started on a previous idea for “Super Hero VR”. The problem with this idea or general for the VR Games is that i need much more time to explore. I was really busy try out this idea. Besides this i got my Xbox Devkit working so i played around to figure out how to port one of my games and how hard it is to make games for it (which is a little bit harder as i initial thought but overall it is not really hard at all to port existing pc game).

However – i was busy this week doing this things and thinking about in which direction i should go in the next time. As i didn’t feel to have a real game i thought i should make one really fast game. After looking a video on Youtube about a Breakout Clone made in 10 minutes for the brackeys challenge i thought “ok i will take a little bit longer but this could be great”.

So i made a breakout / alleyway / Arkanoid clone like game.

One thing to note: i am not sure if i quit Game A Week or just pause it or something but as i need some time to finish my two game ideas and to port a game to Xbox it could be that i pause this challenge. But i just decide this next week 🙂
The reason is: my last 2019 game was jam game for “mini jam 44” where i got some feedback and a result on how good i am. I am really missing this in Game A Week. I got no real feedback in most of the time (which is okay to test ideas but mostly no one really cares about this games).
I am thinking about to switch to a “often Jam participation” instead in not regular base.

What went good:

After i decided to make a breakout game everything works good and i felt good. It is a small game but it has some physics logic in it and it is still a funny concept.

What went bad:

Because i thought until saturday i make a VR Game, it worked bad until saturday as i didn’t knew what exactly i want to do. Making the breakout at the end was the best i could do.

What i learned:
It is totally okay to throw an idea away after 6 days and make a small one on day 7. I learned a lot other stuff this week which is game related too. Working with Xbox is really amazing – and making VR Worlds is a really cool experience. But this means i need more time to invest (one week is too less even if its a week after new years eve :D).

You can Play the Game here: https://www.nerdvision.net/GAW/Week19/