I'm Sam Marshall and I run DOSMan Games, I work for a publisher in the industry and spend my free time learning game dev and putting out bite-sized boomer shooters!
Skarab is a first-person hack and slash/FPS game with combat, platforming, traps and exploration. It's heavily inspired by the music of the band Nile, so much so that Karl Sanders from the band actually lent his likeness to one of the bosses! The idea came about after playing through Powerslave Exhumed and Pharaonic, and then delving deep into mythology podcasts!
The development journey has been full of trials - we use an engine that is notoriously a bit janky due to its infancy!
Easy FPS Editor CE. We ended up having to cut certain ideas and rework some aspects to stay in line with the engine. I love a good challenge in gamedev though, so although it was sometimes a struggle, the rewarding nature of fixing these things made me very happy!
The engine - a lot of Skarab's development was spent experimenting with features in the engine, and these would sadly often lead to wasted time rather than implemented features or mechanics. Originally there were plans for boulders chasing the player - I have an old proof of concept video of this if you want to see it - it's quite hilarious, but we could not animate it due to how the engine handles moving decorations (it was programmed as a projectile in order to give it velocity).
Try things out, even if you waste your time on something, there's almost always a lesson involved - and don't be afraid to ask for help - indie game development is a community, and pretty much everyone in it was in your shoes once. You'll be surprised how much asking someone for help nicely can help you progress.
Thanks so much Rob!
-Sam
❤️
