Design

I got the idea for the game from a few different sources. The first being an animated series called Monster VS Aliens. In the movie Seth Rogan voices a character called Bob, a mutated jello product that became sentient. His character had one eye ball that could freely move around its body. I didn't want to directly rip off the movie so I thought of Angler fish light to hang infront of its face. Now anyone who has played ARK will know these fish, granted they because majorly irrelevant in later expansions. This is a fish that uses phosphorescence in extremely dark places under water to hunt its pray. The blobs in our game have a light source on them but for simplicity they never got a light put on them in game. Now the speed blob was inspired by Turbo, another animated movie that had a snail with extreme speed. I've always thought slugs were a better character, which became the basis for the speed abilities movement. Lastly the jump ability has a 3D angle to it, since it can jump and has a floaty personality to it.

The pickups in the game are jokingly donuts, they originally were rings inspired by Sonic the Hedgehog, which aside from Pokemon on the Gameboy was one of my top played games in my childhood. Donuts came in as a building asset but quickly became a collectable object, and a baked dozen seemed fitting.

Sadly after I had created the concept and pushed forward on production, someone told me of a game called Katamari Damacy, so we had to make sure our game was different.

Prototype

I started prototyping Monster Factory back in 2020, when I was toying with ideas for our first game. We originally had this game in the HDRP but it looked hyper realistic and didn't fit with the concept, and the lighting was too intense. The original map quickly expanded from a park surrounded by buildings. Becoming roughly 2.5x bigger.

Production

Production started a little rough. Assets came in at different times, and there was no real set end date. The idea was to finish two week after we began, but four weeks later we still weren't finished. Production continued right up until we decided to shut the project down, and crammed everything into a final build. Testing was limited, and the game was pushed to the floor for an asking price of 1.99$

Release

Release has gone smoothly. Currently in the process of making a build for Mac, and some later changes may occur depending on which direction we take with the game. I may later add proper shaders and consume effects, but for now items just disappear from existence. I wish I had more time, but a studio not making any money can't dwell too long on any one project or they'll fail.

It was shortly after release that the decision was made to make the game free, and to sort out the Mac build issue so more people can enjoy the game. Progress is ongoing.

It's the first of many, so I don't expect this to succeed or fail. It's just one to say we did it!