Shadowspaz

Coma programmer, here!

This is absolutely the situation I started out in. I basically forced myself to learn pixel art, and picked up music composition as a hobby. I was never happy with just how long it took to produce good art, though, so I went with a different approach- Minimalism.

A lot of my early projects were designed around the code, or a core game mechanic. I used a lot of plain circles and squares because they clearly defined the edges of colliders and didn't get in the way of gameplay. Playing as a box that can smoothly jump and bounce around the room and feel tangible is a lot better compromise than playing as a highly detailed character that feels floaty and unresponsive. Game design and feel should always come first.

I played around with procedurally generated art a bit, just because it didn't require any artistic ability on my end. For sound effects, I would use SFXR, or grab thing from freesound.org and mix them together with Audacity.

Erik here, programmer for Coma. :)

Coma uses a pretty customized engine for a lot of parts- Particularly the physics.

It's all built on top of Unity, but starting out, the idea for the game was a lot simpler than it is now. As such, we really didn't need all the fancy collisions and physics of the entire Unity physics engine- It just felt like a bunch of junk we wouldn't use. So we built our own, simplified version.

Then the game got bigger, and so did our physics. It's still a much simpler system than Unity's default, but it has the advantage of feeling complex. Pete can be nice and bouncy, with fluid movement. The Spiders are jittery and random. Other enemies are heavy and stompy, or light and floaty, all built on the same system with some tweaked variables. The trick was to create a physics engine that felt complex and dynamic to the player, while in reality, keeping everything nearly identical in terms of functionality.

It's been a ton of fun to write so far. :)

I've always been paranoid about that. lol

I would always seek out the public domain sounds (Creative Commons 0, I think). For those, you don't need to give credit. They're free to use for anything.

The people that upload those are the real heroes. Haha

Awww, you guyys <3

Erik here, Coma's programmer.

Game Engine of choice: Currently Unity.

Recommended: Definitely Unity. You can make a full game with no knowledge of programming, or strip out almost all of the UnityEngine and build absolutely everything yourself. It really has the capacity to grow with you as you get more comfortable with it.

Your first question is a trickier one... I have a pretty rigid understanding of what I believe to be some game design basics, but not everyone sees things from the same angle. I think this is what makes the landscape of game development so volatile and alive- There are so many different views on this, and so many different well-made games. I've spent my life analyzing games to find an unbiased approach to an objectively good design philosophy, but I don't think that's what's happening.

I can at least say that it has taken me 15 years to get as confident as I am now, but this is an ever-changing landscape. It keeps things fun. :)