This certainly was a fun experience, and I’ll definitely be back again. Until then, I need a drink.
From Nothing is a minimalist game with a simple goal: The world begins in darkness but is revealed as the player navigates through it, and collects shiny things…
I can see myself revisiting this, developing the mechanic, polishing, and optimizing the code.
I began this game in an odd way, due to the time constraint no doubt. I started doodling with the character design as I brainstormed possible directions to go. Realizing I had spent way too much time fiddling with the little details of the player character (If I adjust the alpha by just 0.02…) I moved on to the controls, still without a clear direction in mind.
I wanted the controls to be simple to reflect the rest of the game, and be easy to pick up. Again, I spent way too much time fiddling with the little numbers in order to get the right feeling, but I think it was worth it.
This is where I feel I went wrong, designing the character and controls before having a clear idea of the gameplay, so I buckled up and focused on the word… discovery. I decided I wanted the world to start from nothing and be revealed slowly. To do this I designed a quasi-destructible terrain engine, covered my world with it, and optimized it as much as I could in the time I had.
Now I had the player, the controls, and the idea. Implemented. But I didn’t have a game. And I had just slept for 12 hours. Great. So with a few hours before the deadline, I tied up the loose ends with what felt right. And so we have From Nothing.
