Pew Pew Galaxy

Game Idea

Pew Pew Galaxy is a simple action game in which you shoot at everything that moves (and a few things that don't!). The only thing you won't be shooting at is fuel, which you need to sustain your flight.

Behind the scenes

With this game I was attempting to make a small mobile game somewhat quickly. Unfortunately, it did not go too well in that regard, but was a fun experience and some lessons were learned.

It's another space game. I don't know why I'm always making space games. This one is simpler than Doomflight though. It has ships with different abilities, but they're not upgrade-able. It has short (30-60 seconds) levels that get more and more difficult, and unlock the abilities and some space ship visuals.

The whole gameplay is focused on tapping on the screen to shoot at things, and tapping on your ship to activate its special ability.

My role

On this project I wanted to get proper art made by an actual artist, so I hired a freelancer, and they did an amazing job in terms of speed and quality!

Sound: For sounds, I only needed some background music and 7-8 sound effects. I have many asset packs, so I thought "hey, I'll find what I need in these packs and be done with it". NEVER. AGAIN. That's all I'm gonna say. Next time I'll hire a professional - it would be much cheaper, much better sounding, and much much faster.

Programming: I did all the programming, of course, but in all fairness the game is rather simple and didn't require anything particularly interesting.

Game and level design: This s where I had more fun. I needed to come up with stuff to shoot at, to give a nice variety of things. Then I needed to generate the levels. Initially, I just made some procedural generator with a difficulty parameter (more or less), but that had the issue that the levels felt the same. So, I had 4 types of obstacles, and decided to do the following:

1. On each level, use one type of obstacles as main - it will be used with higher difficulty than the rest

2. Choose 2 types of obstacles and use them as secondary and not that difficult. Don't use the third type at all.

3. Loop the main type in a specific sequence throughout the levels, so that player gets them in a somewhat predictable way

This worked nicely, as it made the levels feel more different, giving you different challenges which are perhaps better suited for different ships!