Pilfered Liberty
Breaking from tutorials and guides, Pilfered Liberty was my first attempt at making a fully fleshed-out game that is open for public sale under the Autumn's Dawn LLC I created. Playing as the captain of a kidnapped crew of Junkers, your mission is to find your captured crew and take out any hostile Slaver Pirates that bar your way in this 2D Platformer/Shooter. You can see the postmortem here and the changelog here.
Contributions
Design
C# Programming
Pixel Art
Music
Combat
Combat is relatively straightforward in Pilfered Liberty, as the player only needs to focus on crouching and shooting. The core of combat instead comes from how the player needs to use these two mechanics to defeat the various enemies. For example, some enemies can only be shot in their torso, forcing the player to crouch to avoid fire, but stand back up into firing range to counterattack. Others are low to the ground, meaning the player needs to avoid bullets near their legs while crouching to be able to shoot back.
Level Layout
Due to the simplicity of the gameplay itself, the levels are also overhauled to make sure that the simple design could be utilized as excitingly as possible. The player can only jump one block high yet is two blocks tall. This means that most navigation through levels requires falling or moving platforms, giving more of a focus on the shooting rather than platforming. However, they are still expected to time electric traps and enemy fire as they make their way through the level with the toolkit they have.
Objectives
I didn’t want the game to just feel like a grind of nonstop shooting and running, so the maps were designed around the main focus: the missing crew. These offer the player a sense of progression and purpose. With each greyed-out head filling in, the player will recognize how far along they have come with each level. After making it through a particularly challenging section, the player will be rewarded with a crew member to rescue and a full heal. It is required to save the crew members to open the room’s exit, forcing exploration.
Difficulty
Consistent playtesting was necessary to see what elements were too hard and which were too consistent and boring. Because there are only two enemies, the way they are placed around the map can dramatically change how hard a specific part can feel without changing how the player interacts with them. Players grow with the challenges and improve, flying through previous stages much faster if they ever have to restart which all leads to a boss that tests their mastery over what they've learned.
Theme
All of the pixel art and music is original content. The intention was to have a game that is completely unique, so rather than seeing the 100th Unity Asset Pack clone, it was important to make sure that you knew you were playing an Autumns Dawn game. Deliberate efforts were made to pull back any aspect of the game that felt too extravagant while putting extra effort into making elements like the music feel old school yet exciting. As progress was made on the game, it was a careful balance to add new and fun features without feeling out of place.
