Hey, I'm AJ Ordaz, I’m a game developer from Venezuela. I've been making games for over 15 years. I made A Pretty Odd Bunny, which is available everywhere. And I'm currently working on Nekopirate. I'm a big fan of Metroidvanias, Zelda and Monkey Island.
Nekopirate is a story-driven action platformer inspired by games like Shantae and Wonder Boy. Nekopirate tells the story of a young pirate named Mina who is searching for a cure to save her father from a terrible curse. The game features cute and colorful graphics, lighthearted humor, but can get pretty dark as the story progresses.
The idea of the game came both from my love for the Wonder Boy series and the limited time I have to play them anymore. I love these games where you play as a regular folk and take them on an adventure from their small town to fighting a dragon in space. But as a father I rarely have the time to play games like this anymore, so I thought wouldn’t it be cool to have a game with all the elements from an epic adventure: a good story, fun platforming, weapons, abilities, but in a bite-sized package so you can see it from start to finish without devoting too much time on it. So I decided to make it.
The story is very special to me because it is a homage to my father who passed away a few years ago. It is very emotional and deals with love and determination.
The development process has been fun and challenging. I’m having a blast working on the game, but as a solo developer it can take a lot of time. The good thing is I already have the structure of the game ready, so from now on it is all about designing levels which is my favorite part.
All my games are made in Construct 3. I come from a design background, not a lot of programming knowledge so Construct visual scripting is perfect for me.
After A Pretty Odd Bunny which was a level-based game I wanted to try something more ambitious. I knew a game like this that is closer to a Metroidvania would be challenging but I had not idea how much. There’s a lot of tricky things to do, connecting multiple areas, houses, characters, dialogues systems, lot of math involved. Doing all of this as a designer is pretty tough. I think that and balancing my development time with a day job are probably the biggest challenges.
Start! And never for a second think you can’t do it. It is important to scope your game properly, start small, but always start. Making games is all about practicing so the more games you make and finish the easier it will get and the better you’ll be at it.
- Thank you for opening a space for small developers. As the industry gets bigger it is always important to open new ways for small indie developers to show their work and share their stories.
And if anybody wants to support Nekopirate you can add it to your Steam Wishlist here:
-AJ
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2267970/Nekopirate/
❤️
