Hi everyone! Today I am excited to present to everyone in here my game, Bio-Gun! A metroidvania shooter made with Construct 3.
Currently, I have a BETA AVAILABLE on STEAM for Windows
- Mouse and Keyboard support
- Gamepad support
- Remappable keys/buttons for both configurations
Steam Page
Join our Community Discord
WHERE IT BEGAN
A few years ago (2016?) I made a survival shooter that is currently on Scirra Arcade. It was called: Bio-Gun Arcade Edition. It currently still holds a spot on the front page which amazes me to this day! I am honored that so many of you enjoyed it! A few years later (2019) I decided to pick the project back up and make it into a Metroidvania where you explore the insides of a Dog.
Figuring out what the design should look like was VERY difficult. For one, there isn't any reference on the internet of what things look like at a microscopic level. So I had to wing it and take a lot of creative liberty with the designs.
WOMB
LIVER
Ultimately, it took about a year to figure out and feel confident with the current asthetic of the game. During that year I also taught myself how to make a handdrawn world that functioned like a metroidvania. There are a lot of metroidvania examples that are pixel based for Construct, but I have yet to come across any that go beyond Pixel and are hand drawn so there weren't any tutorials I could find. This resulted in a long period of development spend on how to make an interconnected world.
Map
PLAYER MOVEMENT
Once I figured out how to connect rooms and store data from previous rooms (Persist Behavior) and Respawn Timers for enemies I instantly felt empowered! I soon after focused on the player movement. I believe I spent about 3 months on this alone. From adding polishing touches like Cyote Jump (grace period that allows you to jump after falling off a ledge) to Button Input Lag (pressing the jump button before landing still allows you to jump once you land), the controls felt VERY responsive! Adding a nice weight to the players Jump was also crucial as was giving players the ability to control the exact height they wanted jump! All of these things combined made for controls that felt responsive and solid.
NPC's
Next up I felt that the world needed to have memorable characters! Thankfully since the theme was Inside of the body, a lot of the designs of the characters were inspired by what cells do!
From white blood cells to Liver Cells, all of them naturally had a place inside of this world I was creating and their roles inspired their designs! Also being inside of a dog I felt that all of the characters should have a Dog look to them.
The game is still under development so I have plenty of other characters that I will need to design. Such as ones for the other Organs that the player will explore in the game.
THE BOSSES
This was a fun and challenging aspect of the games development. Bosses are VERY crucial to a metroidvania. It's where you test the player and reward them for understanding mechanics you taught them along the way to the boss. You can see glimps's of my bosses in the trailer. They had a specific design philosophy in mind when creating them. In Bio-Gun you start off with the ability to dash. I am not a patient person myself and I love speedy movement so I felt it best to begin with an ability most games give to the player later on. Since you start off with Dashing the first boss is designed to utilize dashing while still being relatively easy since its still early on in the game. One of the phases forces you to dash to keep up with the boss in order to deal damage to it.
This game design philosophy is enforced with the next two bosses. So lets review:
- Boss 1: Focuses on teaching Dash.
- Boss 2: Focuses on teaching Aiming while enforcing Dash.
- Boss 3: Focuses on teaching Jumping while enforcing Dash, Aiming.
After that the player has been taught the Fundamental abilities and we let your hand go and throw enemies and bosses that will push variations of all those 3 systems + the newer abilities they get later on.
Bio-Gun is being developed by two people, myself and a friend. We've got about a year or so left of development. We can't wait to show everyone more stuff as we continue our journey. It is my hope that this post inspires those who want to make metroidvanias using Construct and also to show its totally possible!
Bio-Guns Beta is public so if you get a chance to play it please feel free to give us feedback in our Discord or down below. I am on Discord often so I'll catch the feedback faster there. Thank you for reading!