I'm Michael Gamble, a jazz musician-turned newbie game developer during the pandemic. I grew up on a farm in near Asheville, NC USA. Living near the Blue Ridge Parkway and Appalachian trial have given me a deep love for nature and solitude, which has always been a great combination with Fantasy.
Well, it's the game I'm always browsing marketplaces to find, but never seem to, haha. Behind the Kingdom is meant to bring to life (via gameplay) the kinds of fantasy media experiences that were common in the 80's when I grew up: vast kingdoms, unapologetically epic adventure, light & unforced humor, some quirkiness, some wholesomeness, not overly gritty or existential. Mechanically, parkour-flavored games have always been my thing, especially the "Ori" series, so I planned from the beginning to have a metroidvania-style game with tons of movement upgrades that take you across the map, but also "up and down" the map in areas you thought you'd already fully explored. Also, I really wanted a basically seamless world with no loading screens to really give the feeling that the places in the world truly all inter-relate, as opposed to a bunch of separate zones that happen to be linked together. I want a game you can really disappear into like a book. (but a mostly action book, haha)
I don't want to reveal too much about the story yet, but I'd say the central trope is a gifted warrior who was chosen as a pawn for powerful beings begins to suspect he can subvert their will, and learns how while also learning to heal some of the pains of his world.
Well friend, it's been wild, since I've never professionally programmed anything prior to this. I've dabbled in a few languages as well as digital art my whole life, but prior to Covid never studied either "seriously". And truly I can only be doing so now because of YouTube and how accessible the info is now, which is miraculous.
I chose Unity for development (starting in 2022) because of the sheer amount of online support available, which has felt like the right choice, at least in that sense.
Forcing Unity to behave "pixel perfect", by far, haha. Especially in UI. I have done dozens of tutorials and mini-projects to achieve it, but it often feels like almost everything I want to do requires a separate solution to make the pixels behave. All of my art is done in Aseprite, so *already* looks the way I want, therefore things like Pixel Perfect camera settings help very little. I've learned a ton though, and also when to compromise for the sake of sanity and shipping this game someday, haha.
This is incredibly ubiquitous advice, and I'm sorry for repeating it, but I really do suggest creating small projects first and seeing them all the way through to release. As you work on these, keep notes for your "big idea". I dove into my big idea almost straight away, despite knowing this, and all I can say was I wish I'd followed this advice -- because PAUSING development on your passion project to go and learn something basic, only to then realize you have to now remake chunks of your game... well, that's not a good feeling, folks. Thankfully I think I'm past that stage, but I honestly think the other way would have been quicker in the end, even if I started a year later.
I just wanna give a shout out to game asset creators. My workflow is almost always to first find a paid asset that is close-ish to what I want, buy it, and then modify it over time to match my vision. It is amazing what people are making. And folks often recommend against doing this with art (1. your assets are unlikely to match each other well, 2. your game will look too similar to others, etc etc) but I find that if you just use those as a jumping-off point and really focus on the style you want (and are willing to redraw a LOT), they can be amazing for bootstrapping your project. It's an amazing community!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2636830/Behind_The_Kingdom/
-Michael
❤️
