LOW G MAN: TOMORROW
[ Personal Project ]
About
Low G Man: Tomorrow is an old-school platform game inspired by the namesake NES title from the early 90s. Players control a character whose jumps defy gravity, and guide him through multiple levels while facing an eldritch invasion from outer space.
The core loop consists of navigating levels with lots of enemies and a few environmental puzzles, bringing back an aura of nostalgia for titles developed for the early Nintendo platforms.
The game never saw the light of a prototype, so the GDD remained short, as lots of observations needed to be playtested.
GDD
A retrospective
Revisiting the project after several years of experience (besides being a bittersweet moment) has allowed me to reflect on some interesting aspects of the document, both in terms of its usefulness and how I would write them differently today.
- Since most of the mechanics were "borrowed" from the original, rather than focusing on repeating itself too much, the main purpose of the GDD was to provide a "shopping list" of abilities for enemies, such as Garret Bright suggests here.
- The main beef I have with this document is how little it focuses on the 3C (Character, Camera, Controls) which, given the nature of the game, would have been quite important.
- The document also lacks a clear reference to top competitors. The release of titles such as Celeste, Super Meat Boy, and other more "emotional" games such as Ori or Inside would have been an excellent source of inspiration to modernize the concept and add value beyond simply reintroducing old mechanics.