After we finished making Goliath, we started working on a new game 6. september 2019.
The working title was "Project Digilicious". This time we wantet to create a SHMUP game with parallax scrolling.
We had no idea how to do it, but this was our goal to accomplish.
A mission to Mars unfortunately brought back a deadly virus and infested and killed all insects in the world.
Pollination robots called Sky Shapers were built to avert a global food supply catastrophe.
But the virus rapidly evolved and soon turned the Sky Shapers aginst the humans.
As a result crops failed and starvation was a fact. A scientist created a poison that neutralised the virus.
But the lack of food made him to weak to stop the virus him self.
Luckily before he died he managed to prepare his pet hawk Tycho for a mission to save Earth from going extinct like Mars did.
Now the only living organism on Earth is this hawk. You are this hawk.
Your job is to find the last seed vault that is beeing located some place high up in the sky.
Can you find it, release the seeds and stop the virus before it is to late?
The art work on the box lid was hand drawn in Gimp. Same for the Sky Shapers logo and Digilicious Nibbles logo.
No AI was used to create these images. Only Novel Oi (Organic Intelligence).
Lid and base design
The idea behind the S in Sky Shapers was to make it look like a claws from the hawk, with leathery skin.
To get the animation right, we studied how actual birds flap their wings.
This video show the first step in making the movement look natural before details were drawn.
For us this was a major breaktrough!
We only had a horisontal scroller tutorial to work with, but wanted to make the game vertically scrolling.
First sketch of Tycho. This became the front art of the big box and title image.
This was the first sketch of the game concept.
This is how we pictured the levels in the game. The word "Mesosphere" was the first project name before we settled on "Project Digilicious".
Before we made the intro, we made a mind map.
This is the storyboard of the intro.
This was the concept art of the first boss. Based on a dreawing that Rune`s daughter Milla drew in 2020.
This was the first drawing of the mid-boss in level 2.
This was the concept drawings of the final boss on level 2.
This is a drawing of the mid-boss in level 3.
This is a concept drawing of the last boss.
This is the game over drawing.
This is the idea behind the hall of fame.
Concept art of the power ups.
This was the first list we made of the specs and limitations. Just to know what we had to work with.
This was the first drawings of The Minigun and how we wanted it to look like.
We only had 3 colours to work with, and that was a challenge!
This drawing show the start of level 3. We wanted it to look like a buliding site with fences and unfinished buildings in the back.
To get the background more exciting to look at, we put cranes in the background.
Early concept drawing of level 2 Odovakar castle.
The game graphics are tile based. Level 2 had a map width of eleven 16 x 16 tiles.
Concept art of the Reseed inc. tanks where the seeds are stored.
To map the meteor maze we had to draw the positions of each meteor.
Concept art of level 2 enemies.
Concept art of level 3 enemies.
These are some of the enemy patterns we made.
Concept art of enemy patterns used in the game.
This is concept art of the end scene.
Early prototypes of Tycho.
Before "Sky Shapers" the game was code named "Project Digilicious".
Concept art of the trophies you can win between levels.
