Hillside: a game dev blog

Five or six years ago, I made a little game about exploring dungeons in a small town on the side of a mountain. It was a top-down rpg inspired by the original diablo, zelda and my favourite childhood game, ff: mystic quest. I made a pretty cool little demo involving a forest maze and some cool skills and enemies, culminating in a boss fight on a mountain. The engine was a bit funky and collisions weren't too accurate, but it was playable, and kind of fun.

This is a reboot, but a much more focused reboot. This game is being designed for desktop but primarily for mobile iOS / android.

Hillside is a side-scrolling role playing game. There aren't many platforming elements, instead, there are action-rpg elements. The controls are extremely simple. There is only one direction: forward, onward, towards your destiny, adventurer. There aren't a huge clutter of buttons, dpads, or random bits of chaos on the screen. The player customizes their hero through random loot, class choices, and skill choices. The goal is to reach the bottom of the dungeon and slay the evil that lives there -- and to do it faster and better than all your friends on the ladder.

I've always liked games, a lot. I spent a good chunk of my childhood playing 'em, and a good chunk of my teen years making them. I started learning basic in middle school, and eventually branched out to a few different languages and engines but I never really ran with it. Turns out I had more fun designing and building than I did debugging and coding.

I'm not an artist, I'm not a programmer, I'm caught somewhere in between. And thats where this project comes in.

I've got about a month until I am fully committed to a post grad course. I've always wanted to complete a game. I have countless project files all over the place but I've never finished and published one. Over the next few weeks, I'm going to do it, and I'm going to post my progress here as I do.

I'm just copying someone else who posts game dev blogs on here. It seems like a good way to keep myself motivated and track progress.