PLEASE START US OFF BY INTRODUCING YOURSELF:
Hello! My name is Jonathan. I'm a solo game developer from Sweden that started learning game development around 4 years ago. I've mostly created unreleased prototypes but recently I decided to try and take this more seriously. So for the past couple of months I've been working on my first commercial game, BRUTAL KATANA!
TELL US ABOUT BRUTAL KATANA.
BRUTAL KATANA is a first-person parkour action game where you slice statues in half while trying to make your way through each level as fast as possible.
The game was originally supposed to be a small prototype where I tried recreating the parkour controller from Mirrors Edge as closely as possible. But after playing a game called Refunct I got the idea of creating a similarly scoped game but with the parkour mechanics from Mirrors Edge. After that I just kept on adding or removing things from the original idea. An example of this being that I added some basic combat to try and make the game-loop more engaging.
HOW HAS THE DEVELOPMENT JOURNEY BEEN
The development of the game has, for the most part, gone smoothly. There has of course been periods where motivation was low and I started doubting if the game was actually worth pursuing, but after pushing through those parts of development my motivation would be higher than ever and the game had improved a lot!
WHICH GAME ENGINE DID YOU CHOOSE AND WHY?
I chose the Godot game engine for this game. I started my game development journey with Unity, but after the Runtime Fee debacle I switched over to Godot mainly because it was open source but also since it seemed to have good 3D-development capabilities.
WHAT'S BEEN YOUR BIGGEST DEVELOPMENT HURDLE SO FAR?
Planning and properly scoping the game. This game started off as a messy prototype and I had no concrete idea of what the game would actually be like when I started full production on the game. Which resulted in the first 2 months being spent on constantly changing the game's core concept.
ADVICE FOR FELLOW DEVS?
Make sure to properly prototype your idea before starting production on it! Also prototype different disciplines separately; don't prototype both the gameplay and visuals at the same time. First make a prototype of the core gameplay-loop of the game, use programmer art and try to get it done as quick as possible. Is it fun? If not then move on to the next idea or try to make it fun. What I did wrong with this project is that I spent a bunch of time making my prototypes look pretty, instead of just solely focusing on nailing down the core gameplay-loop. This resulted in a ton of lost time that I could have spent exploring more mechanics and ideas for the game.
ANY FINAL THOUGHTS?
Thanks for reading! If you want to follow the development of the game or chat with me you can check out my Twitter: https://x.com/softbushware
and if the game looks/sounds interesting then please wishlist it
-Jonathan
❤️
