Cubics Ad-venture released!
You can play the game directly in your browser at itch.io ⤴!.
My nephew and I started developing this game in early 2024. He created the characters, mechanics, and some enemies while I handled the programming. After working on and off on it for two years, I didn’t want to pay the Construct 3 license for another year I decided the game was ready to launch.
Cubics Ad-venture is a classic platformer with personality. It’s a short game with three stages, but some of the bosses can be kind of challenging depending on your experience with platformers. The main character has some great animations, courtesy of my nephew. All the graphics are original and hand-draw (no AI!). The music and sound effects, on the other hand, were all taken from other classic games since neither my nephew nor I have experience in sound engineering or composing (for now).
Game development has fascinated me ever since I was a kid playing video games, and it did influence my decision to pursue a career in computer science at least a little. I’ve developed some small games in the past, but Cubics Ad-venture is the biggest one so far (even if it’s not huge by any measure).
In 2024, when I talked with my nephew, who also loves games, and proposed that we create one together, I found myself thinking back to my own childhood, when I wondered how games were made and started tinkering with programming. It was hard, but I have fond memories of messing with QuickBasic, plotting pixels on the screen, and making them move with key presses.
As a child, I was amazed by the small things I accomplished, but I never managed to fulfill my ultimate goal at the time - creating a game. Back then, I think I would’ve loved having someone help me reach that goal. That’s one of the reasons why I decided to build this with my nephew: I wanted to give him the opportunity to see an idea through from planning and design to fruition.
The development of Cubics Ad-venture was interesting: whenever I met with my nephew, we’d exchange ideas - mostly he’d tell me things he thought were cool and that we should add to the game. Double jump, parry attacks, easter eggs, achievements, you name it. A kid does have a lot of ideas! As the programmer (and killjoy), I’d slow down his endless stream of ideas and tell him we needed to focus on the basics first. Also, if we implemented all the ideas he had, I’d go crazy.
He would send me art assets that he drew, which I’d process and import into the game. I’d show him how development was progressing, and he’d give me his impressions.
The engine I decided to use to build the game was Construct 3 ⤴, which is easy to use and allowed me to rapidly test and integrate new assets into the game. However, the more I worked with it, the more I started getting annoyed by its idiosyncrasies and weirdness. I’ll share my impressions of the Construct 3 engine in a future post. For future projects, I decided to try GameMaker ⤴, which seems more “standard” in terms of how it works.
All in all, I’m happy to have finished the game, even if it’s rough around the edges. I hope you get some enjoyment out of it. Now it’s time to think about my next game project.
Post revised with ChatGPT