Ninja Starstorm

Spring 2019

This is a high-contrast endless runner that was a short project for a game development class meant to help us learn Phaser CE. I was inspired to create a game in just two colors, as I enjoy designing with constraints.

This was a solo project where I created the art and sound as well as programmed the game. I'm especially proud of the parallaxing background.

Team Size

Solo Project

Dev Cycle

Two weeks

Softwares I Used

Phaser CE

BFXr

Ableton

Photoshop

Sound Design

This project was my first time using Phaser CE to implement sounds and music, as well as my first time using Ableton to compose. As the dev cycle was extremely short, I attempted to keep it simple.

I spent a couple days composing the gameplay music, designed to be a house electronic style background track that's easy to listen to while playing a repetive game.

I created the sound effects using Bfxr. The jumping sound affect was intended to be a nod to old school platformers, using a higher pitch square wave. For the hit sound effect, I wanted a lo-fi sound that wasn't too abrasive.

Gameplay Music Sample:

Programming

It was particularly difficult to program this game as it was my first time using Javascript and Phaser uses its own library. Both took some getting used to, even with good documentation available for Phaser. I wish I could have spent more time programming additional interesting mechanics into the game.

My favorite part of the game was implementing the parallax background. I took two assets and programmed them to scroll at different speeds.

Art

The art for this game was simple as I only had to design with two colors, and it was intended to be flat and iconic. This left me time to do animations and work on the parallax backgrounds. The art was not quite as polished as I would have liked due to issues with the spritesheets that I didn't have time to resolve within the two-week dev cycle.

Ideation & Prototyping

As the project was required to be an endless runner, most of my game design choices had to do with the aesthetic. I was inspired by a capstone game by a former UCSC group where the background was black and white, as well as the players. It provided an intriging way to interact with the environment. I was also inspired by this episode of Samurai Jack.

Play the Game

Play on Itch.io

Website by my awesome wife.