My latest game project is called Undersea Odyssey. It's my first excursion into the world of mobile gaming, and I'll be making use of the free-to-play model to get more people to pick it up more quickly. You play as a constantly-moving submarine journeying through an infinitely-long cave, avoiding obstacles in search of lost treasure. Your main score (and where you'll rank on the global leaderboards) is based entirely on how long you survive, but the treasure you collect will let you purchase upgrades, new levels, and of course custom sub paintjobs, which is what everybody really wants.
The game takes a lot of inspiration from Flappy Bird, but it differs in a few key ways. First, UO takes full advantage of the accelerometer built into all mobile phones. In order to steer your sub, you'll be tilting your phone...and it's coded to be as realistic as possible, so it'll take a strong tilt to start to move, but only minor adjustments once you've built up momentum. A second key difference is the asset pool; you've already seen some of what I have planned, but rest assured that each level boasts a full set of unique obstacles centering around a different theme. I'm a firm believer that you can do a lot with a little, but hopefully the variety will keep players coming back again and again!
What I'm hoping to copy from Flappy Bird is its success. I believe I've managed to capture the same, simple one-button gameplay and the addictiveness of trying to beat that high score, either yours or the world leader's. Although the mobile market is decidedly different from that of console games, the main goal for this game is to promote the ZWOLYA GAMES brand.
So when can you expect to play Undersea Odyssey? Well, sooner than you might think. Another interesting thing about mobile is how extremely easy it is to push updates to a released game, and how common and not-looked-down-upon it is, unlike with consoles. Many popular mobile games even have consistent, scheduled releases that they market as "events". I can use this model to my advantage, to get a first release out the door as soon as possible, and then continue to add new levels and other content whenever they're ready. And since each one will come with a new advertising boost, it's really a win-win situation.
I've got plenty more dev logs planned for the future, mainly on all of the things that have been responsible for my silence as of late, such as a foray into Unity's UI layout groups and an entirely new (to me) style of coding the game! But for now, just enjoy the latest round of artwork, the default player sub:
