Minimum Viable Platformer

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  Hand drawn banner art

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  Primitive, just unlocked skill tree

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  Upgraded UI skill tree

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  Menu unlocked

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  Intro

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  Game with barely any progress

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  Game with further progress

Inspiration

I'm the Game Development lead for the Google Development Group in my university, and in teaching people about game design I found out that very few in my school knew anything about game development so I thought of this as a way to teach people how games go from unfinished to polished without getting them bored.

What it does

It's a platformer game akin to Super Mario or Geometry Dash where there is only one button: jump. It then gives the player a skill tree that they can use to unlock upgrades that develop the game. The skill tree is connected in branches so a player learns that sound effects are related to adding music for example.

How we built it

I used Godot to build it, and drew the assets and animations on Flipaclip on my phone.

Challenges we ran into

Flipaclip can hang sometimes. Also general bug issues on making the game, as well as some performance bugs when testing on mobile, but those were mostly fixed. It is meant to be a difficult but fun game and finding a design to balance that was hard, but eventually from feedback on playtests it more or less got that balance.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I'm proud that the people in my community trusted the apk file I shared and had fun playing it. Also enjoyed making this sort of metagame.

What we learned

That what seems easy for the developer may not be so for the consumer. Also learnt how to balance game economies more.

What's next for Minimum Viable Platformer

Getting some sort of funding to push this on app stores as well as advertise. May also balance the game more, because it has a lot of content but is not really balanced.

Built With

• flipaclip
• gdscript
• godot