PLEASE START US OFF BY INTRODUCING YOURSELF:
Hello, my name is Juhana Myllys, and I'm an Artist/Designer/Founder at Mureena.
TELL US ABOUT BIONIC BAY.
I'm making the physics-based action-adventure game Bionic Bay with the Taiwanese Psychoflow Studio. I handle art and design, while Xiao-Fong Huang and Kevin Lai from Psychoflow are the programmers.
A few years ago, I came across an interesting game mechanic on Reddit. At the same time, I was doing pre-production work for my next game and realized almost instantly that the mechanic in the video could be a core mechanic in my game. The person who posted the clip from his game demo was a Taiwanese computer science student, Xiao-Fong Huang. We started chatting and eventually began making a game together.
HOW HAS THE DEVELOPMENT JOURNEY BEEN
Meeting someone from the other side of the world and ending up making a game together is a long shot, really. But for us, it has worked surprisingly well. We all work independently, meaning we each have our own distinct expertise. It makes everything clear almost by nature. We rarely talk but communicate by text daily. It has been an experiment in a way, with every futile form of communication being nonexistent. This means very few meetings, etc. We communicate only when necessary and focus on making the game most of the time.
WHICH GAME ENGINE DID YOU CHOOSE AND WHY?
We are using Unity, which was selected because it is the engine the programmers are most accustomed to.
WHAT'S BEEN YOUR BIGGEST DEVELOPMENT HURDLE SO FAR?
For me, probably the amount of time level design takes. The bar is very high, and sometimes it can feel frustrating how long a relatively short part of the level can take. On the other hand, it has certainly paid off; the quality of the game is quite high.
ADVICE FOR FELLOW DEVS?
Personally, I've noticed that I had to improve my working habits, especially in an indie project like this. This means there can be a lot of different types of tasks, and you only have so much time in a day. I think the most important thing is not to let other things distract you when you are doing one thing. Make sure you have cleared your schedule in a way that allows you to fully focus on the task at hand. Do not try to do too many things at the same time.
ANY FINAL THOUGHTS?
-Wishlist Bionic Bay on Steam!
- Juhana
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1928690/Bionic_Bay/
❤️
