This August we participated in a community Game Jam organised by the now discontinued -to the dismay of all of us- Brackeys. We were handed down the challenge to make a game in a short span of time that had something to do with the theme “Rewind”; and after pitching a good amount of ideas, we decided for the adaptation of a concept we had in storage for another game: A character that would go forward and backwards in time depending on a resource bar that would fill up or be consumed based on how much it moved.
play Dewind demo!
Dewind: Fighting against time entropy
An alien race conquers planets to turn them into zoos for other races. And to do so, they install machines that manipulate time to devolve their inhabitants to a point in their history where they are harmless to them.
Our hero is inexplicably somewhat resistant to its effect, and sets out to fight them. Mostly because there’s not much of an alternative.
Evolution
The player controls a character that is fighting against de-evolution: It can be on 4 different evolutionary stages, each signed with different strengths, weaknesses and capabilities.
The way the character alternates between stages is through management of a resource called Timeslide. Timeslide is lost over time and the way for the player to regain it or slow it’s decay is by moving.
Timeslide
Timeslide is a resource that both allows the player to achieve different stages, but when depleted will also cause the player to lose a life and have to start the level from scratch.
It is depleted over time by a fixed amount. And can be obtained by moving. But each Character Stage has a different ratio of Timeslide gain (Which is also a capped curve).
By controlling it’s evolution state, the player can access four different sets of capabilities:
Monkey Stage
If you lose enough Timeslide, youll devolve into such a primitive stage that you can't recover.
Say bye-bye to that heart icon.
Caveman
With a melee weapon, high damage, somewhat slow, but with a great jump distance and decent resistance.
80s Stage
The 'contemporary' stage. With a ranged attack but low fire rate, and the lowest armor/resistance of all. It makes up for it with the highest speed and best Timeslide gain curve.
Cyborg
The character has high firing power and rate, a ranged attack and high armor, but it's the slowest and has trouble gaining Timeslide. Use only in case of emergency!
This way, our unlikely hero will have to solve platforming puzzles and combat situations by adjusting his state of evolution and taking advantage of its pros while dealing with its shortcomings.
Tech stack!
The game was developed in
Unity, and we used a mix of
Adobe Photoshop and
Aseprite for the art. Music was composed in
FL Studio.
play Dewind demo!
