I have always wanted to make this game. Sea Tiger is a loose adaptation of the classic Sea Dragon video game. I played that game for hours and hours on my Atari 400. Both games were inspired by Scramble. In making this game, I remembered how much fun these types of game were to play. I had such a blast making this.

Resolutions

At the beginning of 2023 I made a resolution to finish 12 small prototypes, games, and weird experiments in 2023. I’m a little behind schedule, but I had such a good time working on this game I wanted to complete it. Most of the ideas I have for weird experiments aren’t quite so involved. I plan to catch up this month with a simple maze generator, an outdoor scene, and a room builder. I might bend the rules slightly, by combining some of the earlier experiments into a legitimate game later on.

#1 Sea Tiger

This game is a prototype. The game has you piloting a small submarine armed with torpedoes, depth charges, and rockets. You loose air through actions in the game and by taking damage. When you run out of air the sub is destroyed and you restart at the latest checkpoint.

The game lacks polish and juice. It could use a settings menu. There are some missing sound effects, especially in the boss battle. Heck even a little camera shake could go a long way. Background and parallax scrolling are missing.

Unplanned Improvements

Sea Tiger is just a prototype. I had such a good time with this game, I can easily see me coming back to it to make it a full game. I would need funding to pay for art, music, and marketing. Here are just a few ideas:

• Biomes. The game needs more levels and more biomes. For example, imagine the Sea Tiger diving under a polar ice cap, or into the darkness with a search light. Imagine the flora and fauna that would populate those biomes. Some friendly. Some not so friendly.
• More bosses. More enemies. Better art. I’m actually proud of my first ever
• pixel art effort, but there are much better people out there.
• More music and more sound effects. The camera is a little wonky. I would
• love to use 2D lighting effects, and provide some more beautiful background
• and scrolling. Multiplayer. Even couch co-op, or remote couch co-op.

Lessons Learned

• Everything takes longer than you think. Don’t get discouraged. Making this game I had a lot to learn. The Godot game engine. Pixel art. Learning is critical, but if you need to go fast you have to account for the time it takes to learn something. Give yourself a break if your progress slows down, but don’t let yourself get caught in the watching tutorial trap. Do first! Learn second.

• Level design was another surprising time consuming effort, and I only designed one.

• I had a great time doing the art, but realized pretty quickly that if I’m going to finish 12 things I will have to rely on asset packs. As a result I found the music for the game from Sixty Minutes of Free Music by Snabisch, and most of the sound effects I found from a free SFX pack (I apologize for not giving credit; it was free to use, but I cannot find it anymore).

• Godot was a pleasant surprise. The workflow and canonical patterns are different, but similar, coming from Unity. I really had a fun time with Godot, and the engine and the community have gotten more impressive over the last few weeks.

• The most important thing I learned overall was to work on something everyday. Even if it was only 5 minutes to open up the editor and run the game. Working on the game everyday was the key to finishing it. I found the time to work on the game and complete it. Some people wake up at 4am to exercise, I made sure I woke up early so that I would have a least a few minutes. Sometimes, later in the evening I would have more time, and more time on the weekends, but working on it everyday is the key for me.