Game Design

Inspired By Toby Fox (creator of Undertale ), my first game was a 3h long 2D pixelart game made in GameMaker Studio. The story starts when the main character wakes up in hell - albeit a fairly pleasant corner of it - and decides that they will try to break out of it. Although whether this is even possible or if your escape attempt will only make things worse is yet to be seen.

While making this game, I got to try out designing a variety of game systems and mechanics. The game includes a story with multiple endings and interactable NPCs with branching dialogue. The fighting system is akin to old school Zelda games and includes several different enemy types as well as two final bosses. Besides, there is also a platformer section, a top-down arcade-style mini game and a dance rhythm mini game.

After release, I added multiple-language support and added Spanish as a second supported language with the help of a translator Alvaro Nunez.
My favorite technical implementation, however, was completely overkill for this small a game; I implemented a bit array to store story variables that could be unlocked throughout the game. Since there were only about a dozen story variables, this only decreased the save file size by about 44 Bytes, but I enjoyed writing it.

Escaping Hell was my first real exercise in finding my own creative voice. I wrote the story and dialogue, made concept art and animated the characters and monsters. The story was inspired by themes of mental health and learning to be kind to yourself. I added in my own sense of humor in the dialogue and tried to fill the game with characters that would build out its world.
Please check it out on Steam.