I decided to go with the solar backpack mechanic because it fits the themes of restoration and technology working with nature, not against it. It is mainly used for opening the door to the workshop, but any of the rubble around can be made to light up as well if they player wishes to practice, and if you approach the gate from behind you will be able to open it and create a shortcut to avoid backtracking. I enjoy the sort of design where when you get the key item it allows you to create a shortcut to prevent backtracking, but also I gave the option where if you do backtrack, you still can have an enjoyable experience by being able to mess with the ruins.
This weekend Alisa and I worked together to make a NES game at the Sarasota Game Jam! We made a top-down adventure game called dragoNES, where you stop a war between humans and dragons. Since the nesmaker program doesn't work on macs, and I don't have a working PC, I mostly churned out pixel assets like a machine while Alisa edited them and made them work in the program. Then we were able to put it on an actual cartridge and play it like a real NES game. It was a super amazing opportunity. If you have an emulator that can run it, we have it on itch.io here!
And here it is! A lot of the scenes are similar to what I made for the storyboard, but the order is a bit jumbled up. 15 seconds is a hard time limit to work in!
Pokémon Snap is probably still one of my favorite N64 games to this day if I had to pick. It was, and this is a bit embarrassing, but my first Pokémon game that I've ever played. I watched the anime, read the comics, I had Pokémon storybooks, plastic figures, VHS tapes, and bedsheets. But unlike many people who started with Red, Blue, Yellow or even Silver, Gold or Crystal... My first game was Pokémon Snap and I was just absorbed into this world. I even had a small book that I taped pictures I took of my Pokémon toys into, mimicking the gameplay. I'm one of the loud but few Pokémon fans clamoring for a sequel. So far the closest we've gotten was that one 3DS dream world game where you used the 3DS's AR cameras to find Pokémon in the "real world" to capture them, and the AR photo feature in Pokémon Go, if you are being generous. So naturally, when I saw youtube's algorithms recommending me a video analysis on Pokémon Snap I click it. And I'm glad I did! It does get the fact wrong that Snap was the first game to have 3d Pokémon (Pokémon Stadium beats it by half a year but Snap got a worldwide release first). But that aside it is a very interesting look at how Snap toys with and combines both puzzle and on-rails shooter mechanics. With how the video puts it, I'm almost a bit surprised that the game wasn't more influential than it was. But I guess that just how it goes sometimes with "kiddie" stuff. Anyway here is the vid:
Gameplay footage taken from the level, the destructible cover didn't work out so I replaced them with indestructible glowsticks. I also added giant soundwave producing speakers. Here are some screenshots:
