SoulBlade, a custom game

This is a nostalgia project. I have been designing this game on my phone.

The story behind this game starts around a year ago.. I didn’t have access to my computer… so i was looking for something fun to do on my phone.. and then i actually found this application that is for game deign that works directly on your iPhone. The app “Hopscotch” is marketed at kids.. but it is really sophisticated. For a long time I wanted to design a computer or video game.. and now i finally had the means. it wasn’t easy.. this game is basically a series of hundreds of simple math equations.. telling images or objects to move by the “pixels” or “coordinates” on the screen. Telling them where to go relative to what the player is doing. Still it’s a lot of fun. It’s just a long series of simple equations, like “you move 20 pixels when button 1 is down” type thing. Also something about the program makes it hard to control the “sizes” of objects. you have to keep adjusting it in the blind with percentages until it happens to be right. lots of blind mental calculations. often objects appear way to big and you have to use code to shrink them. this also creates lag.

I’ve put the visuals in from many of my favorite classic games form the 1990’s and 2000’s. It’s basically a mixture of “Youshi’s Island, Castlevania, and Donkeykong” the combination is intended to be a bit comedic. And Castlevania is the primary inspiration. Castlevania is a game about using swords and whips to explore a vast castle and fight Dracula the demon king. This is like a fan game, and not technically my “own game” because it is a combination of others games. But sometimes even as a gamer I notice that I enjoy playing fan made expansions of my favorite games even more then I enjoy new or original games. So maybe it’s not a sin to remodel what is already existing as long as you don’t sell it. If it’s not broke don’t fix it.

So my game is basically Castlevania but with a kinds of goofy “Super Mario” esque elements scattered throughout it. I may have to recreate the game one day in a different application to make it available to more people. Years ago I was creating this same game in Adobe Flash, but my subscription ran out! So i can’t even use flash any more. The goal is to create a casual adventure that is more for fun and an excuse to relax then anything else. the game has a lot of randomized elements so you can have a different experience each time. Even if you can’t play it is fun to watch it, also because i can add music to the video that would be in the actual game.

Sadly it isn’t that easy to access for the public, I can’t sell it or even make it available to people in an easy way. If you download the iPhone app “Hopstotch” you should be able to play it, but it won’t have sound or music, and it may try to charge you 7 dollars after a month for the app. According to the creators of the app, they were able to play my game even though it uses outside images that sometimes don’t appear.

This project hit a wall when i found out it would be so hard to share it with others, not have it’s own sound and music, etc. So that’s why there isn’t a lot of motivation to really “polish” and finish this project. I have wanted to design games for a long time. Maybe one day I can continue this project on a different platform like GamesSalad or “Unity”. I am also considering trying out something called “Ocarina Sharp” that is fan made and lets you make 3D Zelda games, but I have a feeling it will be complex.