PLEASE START US OFF BY INTRODUCING YOURSELF:
Hey there, I'm Nicholas, developer & co-founder of Hooded Traveler Games.
I started my deep dive into game development when I studied Game Art & worked on my first big project ever since I graduated in 2021.
Together with my partner Julia, I'm developing the hand-drawn metroidvania "Aestik".
TELL US ABOUT AESTIK.
Aestik is a hand-drawn metroidvania with moral decisions & branching storylines. In true metroidvania fashion, you will explore an interconnected world, navigate through platforming challenges, fight a variety of unique enemies and collect abilities & upgrades along the way.
You play as a lone traveler who came to the Realm of Aestik to fathom a mysterious corruption and uncover the world's mysteries.
The game started out as a solo project back when I was still in university. My main inspirations in terms of gameplay back then were the Dark Souls games as well as metroidvanias such as Hollow Knight & Ori and the Blind Forest. To spice things up a little, I threw a moral decision making feature into the mix that makes for a more personal journey. Those decisions lead to different outcomes in terms of story, but also gameplay (e.g. different Boss battles).
HOW HAS THE DEVELOPMENT JOURNEY BEEN
Developing Aestik has been quite a journey so far. It has been about 4 years since the project started to come to life and much has happened since. After graduating, I decided to take Aestik's prototype and make a full game out of it. Over this period, I also started a YouTube channel to document the development process and build a community around the game.
A little more than 2 years ago, Julia joined the project as marketing & communication lead and the project kept growing.
Since then, we've been to multiple conventions with Aestik and were part of quite a few Steam festivals & showcases and are now quite close to the finish line in terms of development.
WHICH GAME ENGINE DID YOU CHOOSE AND WHY?
Aestik is being developed in Unity. The reason for that is quite simple: It's the engine I've worked with the most and I accumulated some good knowledge and developed an efficient workflow with it. Unity also has some great built-in tools for 2D game development, which is a nice bonus.
WHAT'S BEEN YOUR BIGGEST DEVELOPMENT HURDLE SO FAR?
That's a tough question. There obviously have been so many bugs that needed to be fixed and some of them took quite a lot of patience. But that's just the development part - there's an elephant in the room that I, as a game dev, would often like to ignore, but it's incredibly important to look at marketing too.
Fortunately, my YouTube channel helped a lot in the beginning, and when Julia joined, that made things a lot easier for me too, but in the end, we're both doing this for the first time and are still figuring out what works best for us and the project.
ADVICE FOR FELLOW DEVS?
Keep learning! The easiest way to solve specific problems often times comes in the form of assets or copied code, but with the downside that you might keep being dependent on those things. For me personally, the most important lesson I've learned so far, is that there's no problem you can't solve on your own. It might take an hour, a day, or maybe even a week to fix seemingly small issues, but that's the only real way to level up. And you definitely will level up if you put in the work.
ANY FINAL THOUGHTS?
- To all aspiring game devs out there: I applaud you! What you're doing is one of the most exciting things you can do and it takes a lot of dedication to stick with it.
If you're interested in the game I'm working on, please check out Aestik on Steam! There's a free demo, so feel free to dive into it & add it to your wishlist if you like it! (:
- Nicholas
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2199330/Aestik/
❤️
