NEON SKIES

Inspiration

We were inspired by old arcade games focused on dogfighting (like Two Tigers). We wanted to make a classic shoot ‘em up, but with smoother physics and more satisfying motion for the player.

What it does

Neon Skies offers an immersive arcade experience where the player pilots a battle plane to fight against waves of enemy aircrafts. The game has smooth and satisfying movement which allows the player to take tight turns, stunts, and maneuvers. Players must utilize their reflexes to navigate the increasingly challenging battlefield. The game features various enemy types with unique behaviors and attack patterns, creating dynamic and replayable gameplay.

How we built it

We developed Neon Skies using Unity, Blender, and Aseprite. Our initial steps involved outlining the game and implementing core features such as shooting, flying, and enemy behavior. The background, including the sun, city, and fog, was created in Blender and seamlessly integrated into the game. Additionally, a team member designed the planes and their various rotations using Aseprite. As we fine-tuned the mechanics, we experimented with different parameter values to achieve the smoothest mechanics possible. The rest of the time was spent bug fixing, and polishing.

Challenges we ran into

We had to do lots of debugging when coding the movement of the main enemy of the game, the red planes. This is because they need to seem somewhat intelligent in their actions and have to use the same movement system as the player to chase them and fire missiles. Coding them to be interesting to engage with was difficult, and we faced a lot of bugs with how they operated. Even after debugging, we had to hold two playtesting sessions to tweak their movement further, until it became fun and satisfying.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are especially proud of how satisfying the flying feels. Throughout the development process, we continued playing around with the movement to make it feel heroic. The movement allows people to play with the momentum of the plane, pulling off stunts and hairpin turns with ease. We are also proud of the FX including post-processing, and particle systems.

What we learned

We learned about modifying post-processing, and emissive materials through a script. We also learned how to use Unity’s particle system. We became better at behavior scripting, physics based movement, optimization techniques, and iteration after playtesting. Finally, we became better at teamwork and managing a project with extremely tight deadlines by following a strict plan.

What's next for Neon Skies

We hope to keep polishing our game over the summer, adding mobile controls, adding bossfights and more enemies, and implementing multiplayer. We are also going to market it as a free-to-play game and build up an audience.