CROSSING
CROSSING
CROSSING
MICHAEL KIRBY
PARALLEL WORLDS ON THE RUN!
Parallel Worlds on the Run! is a pixel art, endless runner game where you play as an agent travelling through parrallel worlds, armed with a dimensional beam gun and jet pack. Set off to clean up the mess left behind by bugged dimensional monsters.
This was apart of a small game jam called Pixel Art Game Jam, where you had to make a game with a pixel art style and the theme was ‘Parrallel Worlds’ We were a team of three a programmer (Jeroen Kornips), sound designer (Jess Buscema) and an artist (myself), we each worked together before on the Polterhiest game project so we were all familiar with each other's strengths and work, which was a strong benefit for this game project. All assets are created by each individual. I primarily worked on the pixel art for this project by designing characters, animations and level assets, however as a group we all contributed to the design of the game and produced a one page game design doc. Here we were inspired by the new release of 'Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time' where it has gameplay mechanics about phasing through to parrallel worlds and phasing back, this mechanic would be the key inspiration for our game.​​
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Below are links to my fellow team member's work:
- Jess Buscema: www.jessbuscema.weebly.com/
GALLERY
Below are a selection of gameplay images.
LANE DESIGNS & PLACEMENTS
For this game jam project I primarily worked on the art, UI and animations. I did however contribute to the design of the gameplay mechanics along with my team mates, I also developed a lane breakdown plan to explore how many lanes the game would have for platforms and enemies to spawn in.
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The images in the left gallery showcase two different versions of lane breakdowns and two example plans of what the levels would look like if they populated with platforms. I also showed what type of platforms would go where in each of the lanes. After making version 1 of the breakdown and example, I could see straight away that the level would become overcrowded with platforms. So I solved this problem by make second versions of the breakdown and example plan with only three lanes. This seemed to have sorted the problem and gives players more space.
Once I finished making the placement example of the platforms, I then had to expand upon that for the enemies placements within the levels and what types would go where. For this I only made one version because after showing my two other team mates the two versions of the lanes breakdown. we all agreed the three lane one was more effective for what we needed. So it made making the placement of the enemies a lot easier to explore.
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Overall this was a very useful bit of planning to design so that our programmer would have a strong idea on where the spawners should go, without wasting time constantly moving around and tweaking code to get the results we wanted.