Back in 2017, with no prior coding or game development experience, I decided to learn Unity and started work on Game Over.

Up until the pre-release reviews were giving it 10/10, 8.5/10 & 8/10 (Pizza Fria, Checkpoint Gaming, Thumb Culture respectively), I was dead set nervous that the game might be no good.

It comes out today on Steam (in half an hour, feel like I’m gonna barf). I’ve met some of my best playtesters here on Lemmy, so I’m happy to announce it here specifically!

Steam Link Trailer

  • irish_link@lemmy.worldEnglish
    12·
    7 days ago

    Holy crap man! I don’t get paid till Wednesday but after the trailer I am in. First thing I plan to purchase that morning.

    Thanks for sharing and I am looking forward to it. I hope it takes off like a freaking jet!

    • threeduck@aussie.zoneOPEnglish
      7·
      7 days ago

      Bless you man, I appreciate it! If you like it, someone told me that once a steam game gets past 10 reviews, it gets better presence? If you get the time, hide a Lemmy reference in there so I know it’s you 🤝

  • karpintero@lemmy.worldEnglish
    9·
    7 days ago

    Congrats! Just watched the trailer and the game looks and sounds awesome. As someone who has a lot of half-finished projects, I’m impressed you stuck with it for 8 years and got it across the finish line, that must be a great feeling.

    Were you working on it full time or on the side?

    • threeduck@aussie.zoneOPEnglish
      6·
      6 days ago

      Haha thanks so much! Ive been working on it on the side, but also most weekends for about 8 hours a day (no kids helps!). I worked night shift at the sleep lab for 5 years, and when the patients were snoozin’ I’d just start working on it. When I went back to day shifts and actually had to do my job, progress slowed a bit, but then it just ended up gobbling ALL weekends.

  • Landless2029@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    6 days ago

    Oh man I’m dying!!

    Want some weed and smooches?

    Mature Content Description

    The developers describe the content like this:

    *This game contains themes that some players may find sensitive. Frequent references to character’s own mortality familial death, thematic references to non-specific religions and doubts.

    One character offers the player “drugs”, including a bottle labeled *XXX*, a needle, and a marijuana leaf are displayed. Accepting the choice damages the player whilst admonishing them, with the only way to defeat the character being to decline the drugs.

    Some mild horror elements.

    Mild cartoon violence, including depictions of optionally kicking a character, patrons of a bar brawling,

    Minimal cursing (“heck”, “damn”), with one character’s fight sequence involving farting and burping.

    No sexually explicit content beyond “smooching”, with a sequence involving a portion of the screen displaying a pair of lips in kissing motion. One character mentioned “goosing” his wife “on the bum”.*

    • threeduck@aussie.zoneOPEnglish
      3·
      5 days ago

      I DIDNT KNOW STEAM WAS GONNA PUBLISH THAT ON PAGE. Haha I thought steam just wanted to know every possible naughty thing so they could assess who to share the game to during marketing. But FINE.

  • ryannathans@aussie.zoneEnglish
    8·
    7 days ago

    How did you pick up coding? What was challenging? Were you stumped by any major issues in development?

    • threeduck@aussie.zoneOPEnglish
      11·
      7 days ago

      How did you pick up coding? There was some free old book online by a guy who called “=” a “gozinta”, but I can’t find it anymore… I read that through, used a few Udemy courses, Brackeys, CodeMonkey the Unity Discord forums. Getting the basics down was easy, anything else was well tough.

      What was challenging? A few years into development, and Everhood came out. On first glance it looked just like Game Over, and I got pretty bummed out, like someone had beaten me to the chase. But when I actually played Everhood I saw it was a fairly different game (everhood you’re not playing to the rhythm), but it was a rough bit of time prior to getting to play and Everhood and learn that!

      Were you stumped by any major development issues? Oh my god the timing of the notes down the note lane. I swear I rewrote that code 10 times from scratch. Making sure they’re set to the audioSource.time property, but also accounting for pause behaviour, accounting for generating notes PRIOR to the music starting (and therefore audioSource.time = 0), making sure it doesn’t waver out of sync etc etc. But everytime I reworked it, it felt more robust, so it helped with confidence.

      I wonder if every developer feels as though their code is held together with tape, glue, and good thoughts…

      • Leeuk@feddit.ukEnglish
        2·
        7 days ago

        Huge congrats mate! Takes a special commitment to spend so long turning a vision into reality.

        Also, pretty sure most AA games are also held together with tape and glue.

      • ryannathans@aussie.zoneEnglish
        2·
        7 days ago

        Haha fantastic work. For any tricky piece of code many devs write unit tests so you can be more confident in that piece

  • FynhPie@piefed.socialEnglish
    3·
    6 days ago

    Congrats! The trailer looks really cool and the music sounds amazingly good. I just bought it and am going to play it over the holidays. Good luck with it!

  • DjMeas@lemm.eeEnglish
    3·
    7 days ago

    I love love love rhythm games. As a Beatmania player since the late 90s, how difficult is this game?

    • threeduck@aussie.zoneOPEnglish
      3·
      6 days ago

      Ooh if you love rhythm games you’ll definitely be able to play through it I reckon. Hard mode is pretty tough, but I added Less Hard which has fewer notes and wider note trigger zones. And if you ever get stuck, you can switch on Nigel Mode which plays the level for you.

    • threeduck@aussie.zoneOPEnglish
      4·
      7 days ago

      Not yet, but it works with switch controls on PC one reviewer said?

      If it does well, I think Unity lets me port to Switch fairly easily…

      • Chris@feddit.ukEnglish
        3·
        6 days ago

        This looks intriguing (also every game should have a Nigel Mode). I’d definitely be up for a Switch version, I don’t get chance to play on anything else these days.

  • Coelacanth@feddit.nuEnglish
    2·
    6 days ago

    This actually looks unbelievably good, especially for a solo dev with no prior experience. Giving some Undertale vibes, but I like what I could see in this trailer better I think. Undertale didn’t really land with me but looks like this could.

    Sadly I suck at rhythm games and was already intimidated by what I saw in the trailer so I don’t even think I’ll dare attempt this one myself.