Entomophobia is, for the most part, a success. It’s arguably somehow the most content complete game I’ve made yet, despite being made in 2 days compared to others that have had over a month.

More than anything, this project has convinced me of how streamlined 2D is for development. It removes a lot of variables you have to account for, and naturally smooths out the game.

Early proof-of-concept of Gameboy look

The idea of making a Gameboy game came from and old idea I’ve had: using a render texture to force low-res rendering. The screen is 128×128 pixels, rendered with no internal AA or multisampling. The camera for rendering the gameboy graphics is orthographic, while the camera looking at the gameboy is perspective and has some AA to it.

The title screen is so Gameboy it hurts

It also reminded me how valuable a dedicated artist is. I basically just gave them directions like “it’s a Gameboy look” or “make me an enemy that’s like smaller but not tiny.” It really freed up my mind.

The biggest enemies to this project were various kinds of clutter. I always knew it was a bit much, but there’s a lot to be said about letting someone unfamiliar with your game playtedt it. The dev team was used to the clutter, and thus it wasn’t as big a deal. Except it’s the main complaint everyone has with it: Too much clutter and screenshake.

Okay, I’ve ranted long enough. If you haven’t checked it out yet…

Entomophobia

-Scott