Hello all! It’s me Charles Davis! The one-man show that is the development team of the upcoming video game Lair of the Insect God and this is the developer blog for the game. In this post I’ll give the background on the game, what the game is, who I am and the story of the game so far.
So after being nudged by a couple friends of mine I’ve decided to do the responsible thing and start a developers blog for the game as I go through the process of making it. To be completely honest with you I’ve never been much of a blogger, or a vlogger, or a social media person in general – but I gotta start promoting this damn game somehow so here we are! Afterall – I wasn’t much of a video game designer before I started making this game anyway!
In terms of how I’m going to treat this blog – I’m thinking I’ll write occasional posts about the current progress of the game and just general where my head is at with the design of the project, as well as some history on the process of making the game so far. I’m not really going to hold myself to a specific timeline on how often to post (as most weeks there probably won’t be much new to say as game development is SLOOOOW – particularly when you’re a one man show) – but I’m going to try and update once a month I think. Monthly seems like a reasonable timeline to have enough meat to talk about, given the pace of progress.
As a forewarning – this blog is going to be FULL OF SPOILERS – in terms of what enemies, levels and boss fights there will be in the game. I’m going to probably keep most stuff about the story secret though – or at least keep the story elements to a high level. I have a hard time thinking the blog will be interesting at all though if I’m not showing regular stuff like gameplay, enemies, bosses and levels though – so that will be completely spoiled. I’ll try to add in fore-warnings before I do that.
For this blog I’ll be posting pics and screenshots – but if you want to head over to social media I’m posting video clips regularly. The best places to follow are my personal accounts which are all @dasegad (Instagram, Twitter, TikTok). I also have social media names claimed for the game and my company Chunkle Freaky, but I’m probably not going to use them much until the game is in a more impressive looking state (with proper levels and backgrounds) as those are going to be more for proper “promotion”, rather than general behind-the-scenes type posts – so for now you’ll get the most out of following my personal @dasegad accounts. Be forewarned I also post a lot about professional wrestling and Dungeons and Dragons.
So where to begin? Well since this is the first blog, I guess I’ll do the basics – what this game is, who I am and the current state of progress.
What is Lair of the Insect God?
Lair of the Insect God is an upcoming video game that I’ve been developing since 2020. It is a narrative driven 2D action game with light metroidvania and platforming elements, along with the ability to do different types of combos with different weapons. There’s some other design elements that are being thrown in related to how the map will be explored as well. Think 2D Sekiro meets Castlevania meets Mortal Kombat.
One thing that I think is unique about the game as well is that the graphics are being created using live-action “digitized sprites.” Basically, taking video clips of real actors and then converting that video clip into sprite based animations – so when you play the game you’re controlling and fighting real actors! Environments and some enemies are also being created with a combination of photographs/video clips I’ve taken, public domain stock images and – most exciting of all to me – photo-realistic images created by AI (currently I’m using DALLE-2).
So why is the game being made this way and not the normal way with pixel art or 3D graphics? Well the short answer is “because Charles can barely draw stick figures so he needs to rely on photos/video clips” – but the longer answer is probably more interesting. Let’s get into who am I to explain that.
Who is making this game and why? – the story of Lair of the Insect God so far
Me! Charles Davis! I’m making the game! So some background on me – I’ve never made a video game before and prior to this project I had no coding or video game experience. I’m actually a film maker and an actor – you can see info about the movies I’ve made at the Chunkle Freaky website. But basically I’ve made 8 films (currently working on the 9th) – a combination of feature films and shorts which have played at a handful of various film festivals in the US and are available on streaming services such as Tubi, Amazon and TromaNow.
I’ve been making films since 2012 and prior to that I ran a radio drama podcast called Sci-Fi Radio Theater (still available on iTunes and Spotify!). Outside of making movies I also run an on-going Dungeons and Dragons theater show called Ready ReRoll at the Chain Theatre in New York City. Beyond creative endeavors I have a day job working in Search Engine Optimization at a company based out of NYC as well.
So what’s up with the video game then? Well, what happened was COVID. Basically, I was gearing up to film a movie called Tender Kisses (which has since been finished and is now available to watch on streaming! I won Best Actor at the 2022 Newark Film Fest for it!) – we had it cast, costumes were bought, props were ready, locations had been identified. Then everything was brought to a screeching halt with COVID and the entire film had to be put on hold as lock down happened.
As COVID progressed it became very apparent that it was going to be a while before any film making was going to happen again for me, so I called the movie off and spent the next 3 months feeling very depressed and playing lots of video games to pass the time. While my wife and were very fortunate to keep our jobs through the pandemic lock down (and were also very fortunate that we didn’t mind being locked inside with each other and the family) – the itch to do something creative did keep nagging at me. So the question ended up being, what could I do that didn’t require having to leave the house?
Drawing and other like minded arts were out – as I’m the world’s worst artists (see previous storyboard photo for proof), and film making was also off the table for the time being. Well as I had mentioned – I was playing a lot of video games at the time, particularly older games on my Switch (I replayed all the PS1 and PS2 Final Fantasy games specifically – FF9 is still my favorite) and it got me reminiscing about about old games I used to play as a kid in the 16 bit era that I remembered. One game particularly I kept thinking about was the Sega Genesis tie in game for the movie Batman Forever (the one with Val Kilmer where Nicole Kidman rubs the nipples on the bat-suit and says how she loves “men in tight leather” or something like that – I can’t really remember the movie anymore, but I do remember the McDonald’s tie-in glass mugs they made that my friend Jon’s parents still have and use to this day).
I know the Batman Forever game was panned by critics at the time, but as an 11 year old I remember thinking it was awesome – mainly because of the graphics (I actually never beat the game). The game was made by Acclaim and used the same engine and digitized-sprite techniques as Mortal Kombat 2 – basically taking live action video and then taking the frames from the video clips and using them as animated sprites in the engine, thus giving the perception that you were really controlling the real-life Val Kilmer Batman! (at least to my 11 year old brain that’s what it felt like).
As I sat in my COVID lock-down stupor I started thinking “why did people stop making games like that with live action sprites? It was such a cool thing and with hardware being so much more advanced today it must be easy to do!” (NOTE: as Charles would later find out – it is in fact not easy to do).
Then I thought “Hey! I’m a film maker! And I have a green screen studio in my house! Why couldn’t I make it?!” (NOTE: By “green screen” studio Charles is referring to his garage that he painted the walls, floor and ceiling green – and not even Chroma Green, he painted it Home Depot Sparkling Apple Green, because it was only $25 a gallon vs $75 for true Chroma Green).
Additionally around this time I had also started making little After Effects animations and posting them online – mostly out of boredom (you can see them all on my IG or TikTok). I also started thinking “why not also incorporate these little after effects animations I’ve been doing into the environments, backgrounds, etc. in a game!”.
I knew how to film things on a green screen – process the footage and do animations in After Effects from my film making experience, I could use that to get the animations for the video game!
My only issue was the coding – or was it?!
As I had previously mentioned I have a normal day job where I work in Search Engine Optimization. Around 2018/2019 (and into today) there was a big push in the SEO industry for Python (a coding language). It was basically made out to be believed that all SEOs simply HAD TO KNOW PYTHON, or you were falling behind in the industry (IMO – this turned out to be completely untrue, but it certainly scared all of us into trying to learn it at the time).
Due to the push that was happening in the industry, the heads of our division at the company I work at encouraged us all to take Python classes. I had never done any coding before in my life outside of basic HTML and CSS for website building (and to be honest most of that is just automated these days) – so I spent an hour a day for 3 months taking a couple Udemy Python courses for general data science usage. At the end of the 3 months – I knew almost nothing. Or maybe I should say is that I had no practical abilities to code anything in Python – BUT what I was able to do was code along with tutorials as I watched them. It turned out that was all I really needed to be able to do to get started in what eventually became scripting video game scenes out in Godot (more on Godot in a moment).
So I as I sat and thought about how to make my game, I suddenly remembered that I had a (sub) basic knowledge of Python – well that’s a common language right? Surely every video game engine in the world would use it!
Nope! As I came to find out nearly all video game engines use some kind of variation of C++ or C# as their scripting language – damn it! I’m a brand new beginner programmer! And I want to make my game now! I can’t be bothered to learn C++! At this time of year?! In this economy?! Surely there must be another option.
And sure enough – after scouring for hours on forums and reddit posts, I finally found my solution. The miracle known as the Godot Engine.
Godot is a popular (amongst indie developers) game engine that is simple(….ish) to use and utilizes a coding language known as GDScript for its scripting. GDScript is basically 98% Python – at least from a syntax perspective – which is all I needed.
The other great thing about Godot was the fantastic community surrounding it. There are tons of online tutorials, YouTube videos and resources that will teach you how to use it. It was perfect for what I needed. Even though it turned out how I’m making the game is a bit…. unusual…. to what the engine is designed for. But with enough time and effort I figured it out (or at least am in the process of still figuring it out as I go – but it’s working so far!)!
So I was off to the races – and I started making my game. How’s the progress been then?
Progress so far on Lair of the Insect God
There is so much to talk about in terms of the journey that has occurred in creating the game, how far it’s come and how far it has left to go. I’m not going to go into all of that story here – as I think that’s better saved for future blog posts – because there’s a LOT to talk about.
But I’ll give a basic summary here. When I started making the game – I believed it was going to be “easy” and done within 6 months. As I sit typing this, I have been working on the game for nearly 2.5 years (I typically work on it after work and on Saturday’s 2-4 hours a day 6 days a weeks). I predict it’s going to take me at least another 3 years to finish it (if not a bit longer).
Despite the length of time and difficulties there have been I can honestly say I’ve never been more passionate or excited about a project I’ve worked on before in my life (this is also by far the longest it’s ever taken me on a project). Working on the game has become a big part of my life – it’s not just labor now, it’s a lifestyle. Like going to the gym regularly.
In practical terms, here’s the current state of the game – note that all of this isn’t including finding and fixes bugs and glitches as they pop up (which is all the time).
Current Progress
- The player character, with all of his weapons and use items/powers is completed.
- 6 out of 7 enemies are completed.
- 7 out of 16 boss fights are completed
- 11 out of 11 puzzles rooms completed
- The camera has been figured out and base code for it is set
- The game is running within reasonable RAM usage levels
- Combat and platforming feels good (at least to me currently) but will also continue being refined
- Floors, walls, ceiling and platforms are completed
Things Left to Do
- Finish enemies
- Finish boss fights
- Design levels, areas and flow of game
- Write the story script for the game
- Record all the animations for story based cut scenes and characters
- Record voice acting for story cut scenes and characters
- Create cut scenes
- Create music for the game
- Make backgrounds for each level
- Test, test, test, test
- Refine EVERYTHING
- Get it ported and up on stores
- Market it! (working on this with this blog)
- A million other things I’m forgetting or not realizing yet
So this is actually going to be where I end this blog post. There is so very very much left to write about – I haven’t even gotten into how I started utilizing AI generated images or the experience of recording animations! What it was like first figuring out how to code things! How I first got into doing After Effects animations! Why is it called Lair of the Insect God?! What are my inspirations and design for the game?! My goodness, so much to talk about!
But I’m not going to write it all here – I wanted this blog post to be the start where I lay out the pre-journey to the beginning of making the game. Exciting things to come! I’ll probably structure each blog post with what I’m currently working on in the game and then go into a little story about the history and experience of making the game so far. Stay tuned!
In the mean time you can keep up with things on IG, TikTok and Twitter on my personal account @dasegad . To be honest, I use IG and TikTok the most, I’m not much of a twitter guy but I do try to put regular video game stuff there as I have some progress.
Thanks everyone!
-Charles