![the pedestrian video game the pedestrian video game](https://www.apunkagames.biz/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/The-Pedestrian-screenshots-2.jpg)
We wanted to differentiate ourselves from potential competition by adding the 3D world into the background. Continuing what was mentioned before, we added the 3D into the game because we were not content with how our game looked like every other indie platformer. But we couldn’t only look at the game through the lens of 2D.
#The pedestrian video game trial
I’m sure many other puzzle creators have mentioned before, it’s a great deal of trial and error with constant tweaking. We are constantly sketching and prototyping ideas that we have for interesting interactions between different elements. Some of the real struggles comes from the creation of the puzzles themselves. While our level editor is barebones and truthfully kind of ugly, it still fulfills our needs. It has modular pieces of the sign that we can drag and drop to build levels. Joel: One of the first things we worked on was a level editor. The goal is to blur the line between puzzles to create a seamless flow of puzzles that the player can experience, not interrupting the player with level changes. After the puzzles are placed we connect their exit/entrance doors together via splines and non puzzle transition signs. As we are building out the 3D environment, we place “Level Markers” in suitable puzzle locations, that we then assign puzzles that fit the difficulty gradient and mechanics we want to teach the player. We usually start the level creation process by creating the 2D puzzles with varying mechanics and difficulties in our editor that we store with no particular world location in mind. Next we added the mechanic of walking between these signs in order to keep the player in control at all times.
![the pedestrian video game the pedestrian video game](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/987f11_5d07b4195a1d4a358e862079861c5336~mv2.jpg)
Very excited with the result we continued by adding camera movement that reveals the 2D signs from different angles to better concrete the player in our world. Still not happy with how generic our game looked, we started experimenting with Unity’s 2D sprite elements intermingled with 3D art, rendered with a perspective camera. In an effort to make the game visually interesting, we decided to add a parallaxing background with multiple layers.
#The pedestrian video game full
Jed: When we started creating The Pedestrian it was a full 2D game that had a drastically different art style/direction then it has now. Instead of dropping the project we wanted to transform Bathroom Break into something we were proud of and would love to play ourselves. Bathroom Break at the time was not a project that met our standards. We knew what each other were capable of and we constantly challenged each other to improve. We simply created high expectations for what we could do as a team. After spending a long time learning level design, better programming, and visual storytelling, we became discontent with where the game was headed. Unsure on how well that idea would work out and lack of peers to critique it, we pivoted toward a puzzle platformer style. It was originally a 2D game called Bathroom Break where the goal was to get to the next bathroom before you wet your pants. What is his relationship with the female symbol like? Do they love each other? or is their relationship strictly professional? 2013 is when we started our long road of weird ideas trying to make this into a game. I started to build a story in my mind about what kind of man he is. But that hasn’t weakened our zeal, we really want to create something bigger with our sort of grass roots, small-town team. We are completely self-taught and have no work experience in the industry. Jed always had an interest in coding so he fell right into the last piece of our team composition. Daniel learned the skills necessary to create game ready art, and I adapted my skills to work on the design side through Unit圓D. We had an MMO set in a subdivision, steampunk-viking dungeon crawler, and an arena shooter played with micro tanks in a literal sandbox. Our first projects/prototypes were laughable but I know they shaped our team to what it is now. Then the interest in game development was born. We satisfied that interest by teaching ourselves Blender and 3Ds Max to create fun little scenes and school projects. Daniel had always been an old school paper and pencil type of artist, but Jed and I were more interested in 3D modeling. We’ve been friends since we were kids, and we’ve always had our particular interests. Joel: The Skookum Arts team consists of our artist Daniel Lackey, programmer Jed Lackey, and designer Joel Hornsby.