Indie Spotlight: Brooke Vs. World Doom
Game Design student and Indie Gamedev, SlyBalto joins us to talk about his year long journey of Brooke Vs. World Doom
Today marks the beginning of a new segment :0
The other week we had CatCrash, a beautiful mobile indie game. A couple weeks prior to that we had Adam Robot who is the founder of Devs & Dorks, a community of indie devs, testers, and consumers.
I present to you a new Bronze League segment… Bronze Buds 2!!!
Just kidding but we will be showcasing indie games from time to time; still workshopping the name as you can see. I decided that this would be a good avenue to pursue and create a new segment because all great games must start somewhere, and many of the indie games I saw at PAX East, on Twitter, on Devs & Dorks have been beautiful and I want to be a part of it!
We are starting this new segment off TODAY! SlyBalto is the creator of Brooke Vs. World Doom, and he is here to tell us all about himself, Brooke, and the journey they have been on together over the years.
NEW Housekeeping
If you sent me your game rec and you don’t see it here, it may not be posted this week but it will get posted! Thank you for your patience <3
Bronze Buds Submission
Indie Dev Spotlight Submission
Linktree
Discord
I’m SlyBalto and I’m a gamedev that likes to make everyone’s day a little bit better! A lot of my works are colorful and full of action, especially my current project Brooke Vs. World Doom. I get a lot of inspiration checking out all kinds of media, video games included. I often like looking back at what’s been done before and think about what I could do to bring back certain ideas or ‘flavors' that got lost with time or would’ve aged better with a few tweaks. Recently I’ve been checking out stuff that’s outside my usual circle of tastes; inspiration can come from unexpected places. I always think about how I can “one-up” my own work. I ask myself “What can I shake up and improve?”. If I’m gonna cook up a meal for players, I gotta keep them anticipated for the next course, but being ever so careful not to bring out a dish they don’t have the appetite for. It’s tricky, and I’ve got a long way to go before I start serving out 5 star meals, but a cook’s gotta start somewhere!
My game Brooke Vs. World Doom is a wacky action 2.5D platformer about a spunky girl named Brooke Atomica fighting off an evil ring of corporations led by Symmetrico. The gameplay takes influence from a lot of different action games; it was originally based off of Mega Man X and Freedom Planet, and eventually evolved into what it is today. The game so far has 4 levels and is planned to have a total of 8, each action-packed with tough enemies and surprises at every corner. There’s plans for a Hardcore Story mode that plays through the game again, but with twists added in like a mirrored world, harder enemies, and a different ending. Although it’s hard for it to stand out in the sea of action platformers, the game tries it’s best to stand out with unique weapons inspired by games like Ratchet & Clank and powerups that really shake things up.
Brooke Vs. World Doom actually isn't a lifelong dream game, it just kinda happened. In the fall of 2017 I started attending Webster University’s game design program. The idea for Brooke was created just for fun earlier that summer and it was used for a game design class assignment. Next semester I had another class that had a final assignment to build a simple MVP. I thought that Brooke was kind of a cool idea so I got an early start, trying out Unreal Engine 4 for the first time in early February 2018. I ended up enjoying the engine and I decided it was time to get serious. This would end up being a dedicated project for the next 4 years.
Focus on really getting things done didn’t happen until late 2019, when I got a lot more serious about building it. There were more levels, the enemies were tougher, you could dash now, the platforming was snappier, I posted about it online frequently. It felt like I was building an actual game. I may have been the only one in my game design class that was working on something like this, I was probably the only one crazy enough to do it!
Although I had to fight through some health issues in parts of 2020 and 2021, the game is now picking up pace and more eyes are on it than ever before, which means now it’s time to get really serious and make sure this wacky project is greater than it’s ever been. Updates are worked on for weeks at a time until all of the feedback I get, from strangers to friends alike, are acknowledged as much as possible. I used to be nervous listening to feedback, worried of backlash, but I learned to embrace change. In fact, the best stuff the game’s got to offer comes from others, not me. Entire new systems were built just from reaching out to others and talking about the game; in a discord server I’m in, someone suggested I add upgrades for the weapons. A few months later, I had managed to rework all of the weapons and powerups, build an in-game shop, and a firing range for players to test out their newly upgraded stuff. It’s not put into the game quite yet at the time of writing this, but I do think all that time spent was worth it. Here’s to hoping players will enjoy this crazy new addition!
Brooke Vs. World Doom lives by a game design philosophy of mine: Challenge the player, make them feel cool, but never go cheap on them. The key is to introduce things like mechanics and enemies in safe “pockets”, where players can be given short but vital practice, like reading a book where exposition isn’t dumped but rather carefully spread out like bite-sized pieces. Cheap deaths and frustrating level design are a big no-no; the game should feel good to play through, even when you’re losing, but once it becomes irritating and repetitive like chores, it’s considered a waste of time.
My game is an incredibly ambitious project for me, being the first commercial game you can spend money on. Making this thing is a huge gamble, but I’d rather take the risk over never making that jump, because what if I land on the other side?
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