Hello, everybody! And welcome to Out of Bounds!

The past week I finished the jam version of my game Out of Bounds, in which I have been working on as solo developer during the 7 days of the 2021 Epic Megajam.

I did everything on this project, from mechanics, to concepts, meshes, rigs, animations and even sound effects. The only thing outsourced was the music Erdfall by Kraftamt.

I was really happy with the results, so I decided to keep improving the game for a couple more weeks. Now, let me show you some of the process...

THE IDEA

To kick off, here are the first concepts I did right after I decided what type of game I was going to do (also considering the theme for the jam, which was "Running out of space").

So that's the main menu original idea. Unfortunately, I didn't have enough time to make a proper menu. What I did instead (just a few hours before the deadline) was an in-game menu with some explanations about the game, the credits and an instant-exit button...

The game does actually have a story: you're a freelancer game dev who is contacted by his boss to create a game in record time (sounds familiar, right?).

My idea was to have this short story featured in some kind of animated sequence. But again, I didn't have enough time for that either, so the in-game menu did the trick for that as well.

But now, with more time and with a solid base game ready, maybe I can get that working. I'm also considering about investing in some external support from colleagues to help me out on this. Remember that what I actually do in development is game design and game logic, so both graphics and audio are not my strong points.

THE BLOCKING

One of the first things I did for the jam was the blocking for the level design. I did a quick sketch on Photoshop and then the basic 3D on Blender. Here's how the first meshes looked like:

I consider this a very important step, since you put the idea you have in mind into something solid and ready to test. And one of the things that most commonly happen is that the scale end up being pretty different to what you had in mind, so you need to adjust here and there.

By the way. and in case you never heard about this game before, it's about adding stuff into some places and then compiling them to work. Just like creating videogames (?)

THE MECHANICS

Here's the first video I uploaded to my Twitter account. In which I showcased the most important features of the game: pickup items, drop them into their depot and then press a button to progress.

https://twitter.com/TobiasRusjan/status/1432871644419305473

And of course, I did some "awesome" concepts before that. Everything was based on the Unreal Engine 4 editor's style, so other devs who play the game can feel like home.

I recently created an improved version of the Compiling Shaders feature. Here's a video of that (not yet available in the current build though).

https://twitter.com/TobiasRusjan/status/1436115510668795906

THE ART STYLE

Besides the game itself, I needed to create some kind of aesthetic, both in terms of visuals and audio. But since I only had 7 days for everything (mechanics, graphics and audio), it needed to be as simple as possible.

So what I ended up doing was creating very simple low poly shapes , without UVs, textures or vertex colors; just different material instances for the different polygons of each mesh.

Items concept:

Items final 3D:

I'm not actually a 3D artist or anything. I have been using 3D tools for some time, yes, but I was mainly focused in creating blockings, collisions or some basic hard surface buildings for Doorways and Hellbound.

So creating these more organic forms was something new for me, and super fun!

This also applied to the interface (HUD). To achieve something quickly, I decided to render the items I already have created, looked for a nice font, added some borders and that's it!

The original idea was to have the face of the character for the health, but I ended up using the apple... It's super red, looks nice and I think it represent life/health pretty well :D

THE ENEMIES

The game won't be ready until it has something to bother you in your journey to achieve your goal.

Here's where the Spiky Bugs came!

So after exploring the map doing the pickup-and-drop-items for some time, the player will try to compile again the mechanics and BOOM! This creepy creatures will spawn from nowhere and try to stop you.

https://twitter.com/TobiasRusjan/status/1434641415708020740

You will pop up your Line Tracer (yes, that's from the Unreal Engine function Line Trace) and start shooting those creatures!

Here's where the action and shooting part of the game starts. It could be super fun for some or super stressful for others. But the game needed something like that at some point, since it won't be completed without it.

And this was also a new task for me: rigging and animating in Blender. I just grabbed You Tube and looked for some tutorials 2 days before the deadline!

THE RESULT

Everything combined resulted in what you can get in the free build I uploaded the past week.

I keep working on it and uploading images and videos on my new Twitter account. Follow me there for more!

My idea is to get the best game possible from what I have right now. Investing my time and some money, so I can eventually release an improved and paid version of it on Steam. The current version here on Itchio is 100% free, so go and grab it before it's too late (!)

Let me know in the comments below if you have any question and I would be more than happy to answer it. Or you can also tag me on Twitter, where I'm currently more active.

Thank you for reading, guys! Have a great weekend!

Tobias