Galaxy Gunner, The Making

Galaxy Gunner is one of the first games I have made and designing it took some deal of balancing to get it right. The game started of initially with just regular enemy ships and a boss ship as the challenge. The goal was to survive the incoming enemy jets and defeat the boss, which is the enemies' Command, to win the game.

The space map continously scrolls at a reasonable pace to simulate as if the player is infact driving their jet through the squads of enemy jets to take down their command. Since the player will be focused on dealing the multitudes of enemies coming their way the continous, seamless space scenery is suitable for the job.

The map has an out-of-bounds system where if the player crossed the edge of the map, instead of just hitting an invisible barrier they will get the game over scene. I wanted to create the scenario that when the player leaves those bounds, it will be as if they are leaving the battlefield and no matter what happened afterwards, it will mean you have failed your mission to take down the boss. It will be akin to desertion, even if the player crossed the bounds by mistake, which I have done multiple times.

Another part of the level that defines this game are the enemies. A total of 4 enemies are in the final game. These enemies are all different in terms of skills to balance out the whole fleet and be able to challenge the player. All would have different damage, reload time, health and speed. The different exterior features further set them apart and reinforce the idea that these enemies are formidable to the players.

The player jet also holds the ability to shoot high damage bullets and repair itself to increase health. All these features have a delay before it can be activated again to better give players the sense that they are working with time restriction and that they need to carefully plan out as their shoot through the enemies.

For a short game I would say the game is relatively easy and provides a simple and clear objective, and it is a start in my skill in level design.