I spent the best part of 14 months deciding which engine to use. I had a lot of prop assets to make anyway so I could take my time with my choice. There was very plausible reasons to choose each engine for very different reasons.

Unreal Engine 5

Main reason to consider this engine was the artist workflow. I love that it works almost the same as Maya or Blender. I simply setup my scene and light it. I can then rely on the renderer to sort out shadows, ambient occlusion, global illumination etc. No need to bake shadow maps, global illumination etc. I can easily iterate on the art without worrying about re-baking the lighting each time which can take days to sort out. This work flow does come at a very high price for me. I’d be locked to mid to high end PC specs, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Not a bad thing, but as a first time indie dev I need a large customer base to hopefully succeed. I would like to launch on Nintendo Switch and Mobile if possible without too much compromise. If I chose unreal I’d have to give up on a Switch launch.

Unity

This was going to be the engine I chose. It’s widely supported. Loads of learning resources and a wealth of Unity developers if I need to hire some help. Many friends of mine are Unity developers so I’d feel very empowered to go down this path. Unfortunately the recent Unity fees made me reconsider. This doesn’t take away from how good the tool is. It has a proven track record of producing quality games and experiences for talented studios around the world. A lot of my favourite devs use it. Maybe I’ll need to use it some day for another project, who knows.

The Unity fee changes have been reversed after the massive backlash which is a good thing. The trust is broken and it’s only a matter of time before something similar comes a long. Next time the changes will be legally iron clad for sure. I don’t like my fate being at the mercy of someone else if I can avoid it. I feel my investment is better else where even if it’s difficult at the beginning.

Godot

The hardest path for sure. If I go this path there’s very little help out there in comparison to Unity. Fun thing is that out of all three engines I felt most comfortable in Godot. I initially had a play with Godot with version 3.5. What I quickly found out was the render engine could not replicate my tests in Marmoset Tool Bag. Although I loved the work flow it wasn’t viable. I looked into further updates that could improve the render engine in Godot. A lot of what i wanted was coming in version 4.0 but there wasn’t a concrete release date. Since I had a lot of artwork to do, I simply kicked the can down the road. I froze my decision on my game engine choice until 2023 in late 2021. Around the same time I just started a new job and that tied up my free time largely until April 2023. I was able to carve out an evening here and there to do more asset creation. Not enough consistent time to learn a game engine and the scripting language. Over the period of time I decided to go down the path of Unity. As they had more learning resources and I had people i could ask for help. Even though I felt more comfortable with Godot.

Then the Unity fee fiasco happened and I suddenly had to re-evaluate my choice. In the short term the fee situation would not effect me at all. For me I like to hope for the best but plan for the worst. In the short term. It’ll be hard going if I use Godot. In the long run my studios financial future would be stronger. The last time I chose what was comfortable for me over what other said was learning Maya over 3D Studio Max or Softimage. Turned out to be the right way to go. Maya has its problems but I’ve made a successful career out of learning it. I don’t see why Godot will be any different.

I love this game so much. I’m no shmup (short for shoot em up) expert, but of all the shmups I’ve played over the years this game keeps me coming back. It’s a gift that just keeps on giving. I’ve never managed to beat the game, but it doesn’t stop me from appreciating the quality of Gradius V. It’s brilliant in every department. The sound track is so epic. I listen to it as I’m making assets from my own game.

What does Gradius V have to do with my game Phantom Complex? Narrative delivery and music. The game gives a small amount of voice over at key points that help flesh out the world masterfully. The amazing soundtrack fills in the gaps. The soundtrack beautifully describes the mood of each level. Perfectly ebbs and flows with the action, it’s not dynamic as stages are scripted. It makes the game feel cinematic.

This is something I hope to replicate within Phantom Complex. I’m not sure what style of music would suit my game. I feel that’s up to the composer to discover. I’m no musician, so I’ll rely on their expertise’s in this matter. Makes no sense to pay a professional then not listen to their skilled opinion.

I have an idea for a Shmup game. Perhaps it’s the next game I make after Phantom Complex.

As my time is a premium these days. I try as much as possible to do things with a dual purpose. The same with gaming, I try to limit my gaming to titles that have a core mechanic that’s similar to my game project.

Which brings me to Deedlit in the Wonder Labyrinth Record of Lodoss War. Gosh that’s a mouthful. Going forward I’m just going to say “Wonder Labyrinth”.

Wonder Labyrinth lands in the Metroidvania category. As I’m a big fan of Metroid and Castlevania I took to this like a Duck to water. I didn’t know too much about the game before I bought it. Art work looked cool on the box and I’ve heard of Lodoss War in the past. Pretty sure it was a Dreamcast game back in the day (best console in my opinion). Did a bit more research on Wonder Labyrinth and found a trailer. I was blown away by the pixel art and animation. It’s up there with Castlevania Symphony of the Night in my opinion.

So I ordered my copy from Amazon. Yeah I’m a physical copy purist, only with switch games now. Most disc based games (Play Station and Xbox) require a day one download to function. I “will” own my stuff and be very happy thank you. For those who know what I mean.

I must say it’s been a while since I played a game so obsessively as i did with Wonder Labyrinth. Right from the off I was hooked. Controls work great and responsive. Minor mark down was the inability to swap between weapons on the fly. You have to pause the game go through menus to do this. The quality of the experience really shines through. Although Wonder Labyrinth is a short game for the genre. Short games are not a bad thing. It’s better to have a short but high quality experience, than a long drawn out low quality game. Assassin Creed comes to mind. The recent games are like an unpaid second job.

If you have the money and time, I fully recommend Wonder Labyrinth for all you Metroidvania fans out there.

My love of gaming and a dream to make my own all started 30+ years ago. When my siblings and I got a Sega Mega Drive with Sonic 2 for Christmas. I can still feel the shock and excitement as I think about it now. We didn’t see that coming, a day to remember.

Trying harder in school finally made sense. I simply wanted to make something amazing like Sonic 2. I paid more attention in art classes, started drawing more. Cherished my one class of I.T. each week. All in pursuit of making games one day. I studied each game I got as much as I enjoyed playing. Many of the games I still own and play till this day.

At University I decided not to study a course in game design. I couldn’t see how this would work for me. It felt right to continue down the artist path. So, I decided to study animation. It was pretty tough going. I didn’t have a computer at home for much of my life compared to my classmates, so I was learning to use a PC while getting to grips with Maya and Photoshop. The challenge was worth it.

I got through my studies and entered the workplace. Quickly found out I was unprepared for the games industry. I needed to do even more work to get that job. You’d think that was part of the course but no. Till this day there’s a disconnect between education and workforce requirements in games, VFX, commercial / advertising 3D industries. That’s for another discussion.

I managed to break into the games industry on 2 occasions. Once in Canada and second most recently in Czech Republic. As a 3D artist first time and a 3D Animator. I was excited on both occasions, and I enjoyed my time at both companies. It did not match what I thought working in games would be. Main problem was my taste in game design. The game styles I love don’t get made anymore, not at big or medium sized game companies. They do still happen often, but only in the Indie game dev scene. Not a big chance of working at small companies like that. Budgets are tight so they don’t hire many people. If I want to work on the type of games that speak to me, I’d have to make my own. So, I started down this path 3 years ago in my spare time and between jobs.

I have enough assets created to start on a vertical slice of gameplay over the next 12 months. I don’t know if my game will find an audience but I’m going to enjoy the journey wherever it leads.

When I first started my game it quickly became known I’m going to need a lot of props for my project. What made this harder was the type of setting I chose, sci fi. My game isn’t set far off in the future. 20 - 30 years really so I could base things on modern designs I see today with a twist. This was around the time I had to get over my thoughts about using asset packs. It’s not cheating it’s smart. I can’t do every ounce of my game by myself. A friend mentioned about a site called kitbash.com. So I had a browse and to my fortune they had the secret lab pack that had most of what i needed. I also saw how many big studios use their asset packs for big production. Made me feel like an idiotic snob for not using asset libraries to my advantage sooner.

They sell complete asset packs based around a theme. Secret Lab were the type of assets I needed. It wasn’t all great. I had to go in and do a lot of poly count reduction on every useful asset. UV unwrap was'n’t right for my needs so that needed to be done. As my game isn’t photo realistic all textures where custom made in Substance Painter. Although I didn’t model all these assets from scratch I had a big part to play in getting it all ready for Godot Engine. So I still had a big say in the result for my own ego. I estimate that this asset pack alone saved me about 6-9 months of work. In the end it took me 2 months of solid work to get the assets i chose all prepped for my game.

Great tool for many artist to use in their projects. You can find them at www.kitbash.com

I use Marmoset Tool Bag 3 quite extensively to make reference videos of all the assets I create. I do not have much free time to draw concept art for each individual prop. I’d prefer to take this a proach but I’m a studio of one for now, work smarter and all that. Marmoset Tool Bag lets me keep track of everything. I keep a directory of reference videos for each prop that I make. I can visually compare everything together to keep thing consistent. As of today I’ve made 230 unique props for my game with much more to go.

Marmoset Tool Bag is a real time render engine like Godot or Unity without the game making parts. I set up scenes like I would in a game engine to see if my textures are in the right place.

It got me thinking recently why not drop some of the scene assets together along with some quick character animation. See if it all looks cohesive or not. I have not done this before so it could fall apart. Luckily, two years of prop modelling and texturing was not a waste. It all works well so far. Have a look below.