In our previous post we announced our first real game project called Bounty Bros, a public demo game we are developing as a prototype for a future commercial game. Over the last month we have put a lot of effort into providing a solid foundation for this and future games, and the result was a new pixel-perfect renderer that runs on desktop and the web!
In fact, because of the new renderer's ability to run on the web, you can play the work-in-progress version of Bounty Bros. right now! Just click on the "picture" below and either use the arrow keys, or touch and drag on the screen to control the character. You can even enter a couple of the buildings. You can use the full screen link to play in full-screen, or you can try out the version that has a CRT filter enabled just for fun.
In addition to adding a bunch of new features to Bounty Bros, such as collisions, building interiors, and pixel-perfect rendering, we have also made all of the source code available, not including assets and artwork, under our Katharos License.
The game is split into a few independent pieces: the Bevy Retro plugin, the Skip'n Go game engine, and the Bounty Bros. assets.
Bevy Retro
Bevy Retro is a Bevy plugin that gives you a first-class, pixel-perfect experience for developing Bevy games. It is what powers Bounty Bros. rendering, collision detection, and it's ability to run in the browser. Bevy Retro is designed to make it as easy as possible to make 2D, pixel-perfect games using Bevy.
Bevy Retro is under heavy development, but is still usable enough to do experiments with, if you're an adventurous developer.
Skip'n Go
Skip'n Go is our new experimental game engine that is tailored to producing top-down, Legend of Zelda®-like games using simple configuration files. Skip'n Go will start off very specific to the top-down gameplay style and maybe more similar to a "game kit" than a "game engine", but in the future it may transition into a more powerful game engine with features like scripting, allowing you to have greater customization over the gameplay style.
Skip'n Go is written in Rust using Bevy Retro, but you don't write any Rust to write Skip'n Go games, you just provide the assets, write YAML files, and use LDtk maps to build your game.
Skip'n Go is designed to run in the browser and can act as a web game player. By publishing your game assets somewhere like GitHub, you will eventually be able to instantly create a link to share your game in the browser where anybody can play it!
Bounty Bros.
As we've already mentioned, Bounty Bros. is our first prototype game. It is also a Skip'n Go game: just our own assets on top of the Skip'n Go engine. This means that if we can do something in Bounty Bros., then you can do the same thing in your own game by using your own assets for the Skip'n Go engine.
Our plan is to continue to make public releases of Bounty Bros. as we develop it, but to keep ownership of the assets. This means the assets will not be free to use for your own games, but you will be free to use Skip'n Go with your own assets according to the terms of the Katharos License.
Summary
We're super excited to be developing our first game and very encouraged with the progress that we've made so far. Feel free to open a discussion if you have any questions about Skip'n Go or any of our related projects.
Stay tuned for more progress updates. Praise The Lord! 🎉