Mayfly Studio

Oh, right, I should probably say what Neon Galaxy is, anyway!

I was led to explore this game concept after playing Derek Yu’s Spelunky. For those who aren’t familiar with Spelunky, it is a “roguelike platformer.” Platformer, because you jump around, and Roguelike, because — like the classic Rogue — the levels are randomly generated each time you play, based on a carefully tuned algorithm that tries to generate a fun and distinctive gameplay experience. As I’ve mentioned here before I’ve always been fascinated by procedural content, but I always regarded it more as a tool to easily generate large amounts of fixed content than something which could happen at runtime. I certainly never thought of it in the context of an action game. Spelunky proves, with great skill, that procedural content can deliver fun action and at the same time lead to tremendous longevity. In the end I just had to try the concept for myself.

The general idea behind Neon Galaxy, therefore, is that it is a Roguelike 2D shooter, a bit inspired by Descent. The player enters a series of asteroid mines infested by hostile robots. The task is to fight through the mechanized hordes, find the power center, blow it up, then get to the escape door before the whole place goes up. To improve the chances of success, the player can find resources and powerups in the cave — at the risk of fighting additional enemies, of course. The Roguelike aspect of all this comes in because although there’s a designed progression through mazes of increasing difficulty, the actual mazes within that progression are randomly generated, as are their contents.

I worked on NG for a while last year and then went through a phase where I was randomly flitting between projects. I got a lot of neat little tech demos working, but so far Neon Galaxy is the only thing that actually has anything close to a real design document. Because of that, I reasoned that this was my best chance of actually completing a game. And so, since the beginning of November I’ve been focusing very closely on this title. I’m hoping by the end of this month to have something in a barely playable state, and to get it released by, perhaps, spring.

I can see no possible way this plan could go wrong.