Alien Annihilation! (Game)

Imagine a hard boss battle combined with silly characters. Now combine it with goofy, charming graphics that I drew and animated myself. I had fun during this hackathon, I'll make sure you do as well.

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Inspiration

My inspiration for this game was Cuphead, Castle Crashers, and Alien Hominid HD. If you don't know of these titles, Cuphead is a game where you take on difficult boss battles (Alien Annihilation is one trial-and-error big boss battle), Castle Crashers is a silly game with some humor to keep the audience engaged (I tried to put some humor into my art and story in this game, because at the end of the day it was fun to make it that way, and made this hackathon extra fun for me. P.S. I think the ending is pretty funny but I doubt anyone will make it that far). Lastly, Alien Hominid HD is a game made by the developers of Castle Crashers, so it carries the same charming humor and artstyle. Although it's a completely different kind of game (run-and-gun), it has aliens in it and it was made by The Behemoth, so it was in mind during my development process.

What it does

What it does is hopefully make you have fun. It's a little tough especially at first so it might make you mad, but as it's a boss-battle video game, the trial-and-error process feels more and more rewarding the longer you play. It cures boredom, provides enjoyment, and hopefully the story bits make you laugh a little.

How we built it

I developed this projects on two devices, my laptop, and my iPad. I drew up and animated every image on my iPad, and I airdropped said images to my laptop. On my laptop (MacBook), I coded the game from the ground up in a Python library called Pygame. It is used to develop 2D video games in Python, and I've been consistently using Pygame to enhance my Python knowledge and flexibility for about 11 months now.

Challenges we ran into

Honestly, a mix of ambition and ambiguity. I was absolutely thrilled to try and finish a video game in one weekend, but I definitely should've planned more ahead if I'm being honest. While I was ~60% sure that I wanted to make a game for this hackathon, I didn't think much more about it until the coding had already began. If I'd planned and had a structured idea of my pathway for this game, I definitely could've added more character and charm to it.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I am very proud that I finished a game in one weekend. I've been meaning to do a game jam (Which is like a hackathon but exclusively video games) for probably the whole 11 months that I've been with Pygame at this point. This hackathon gave me the opportunity to strike at the goal which I've had planted in my mind for a while now, and I'm excited to strike at the next.

What we learned

Something that I always had in my mind is the fact that every single bug is caused by me. To elaborate, there would be moments where I'd somehow make the alien character fly out of the map or disappear, because I've never made a game like this before. But, all I had to do was think about my recent changes, and what I had done to change the outcome of my code both positively and negatively. While it may seem obvious to some, this simple mindset narrows down potential causes of bugs, and was usually correct during this hackathon.

What's next for Alien Annihilation! (Game)

Honestly, I really loved creating this, and I'm considering expanding upon it, and adding it to another one of my games. (Maybe as a bonus, or I could combine smaller games like this into a "party pack") I recently got a Steam page for a game I've been working on for a while, and I honestly might throw this game in as a "bonus game" for once the player finishes everything in the primary one.

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