Borbudo! It's an Indie game for Android inspired by Time Bandits, Gauntlet, Dungeon Master, and Metroidvania. I created it over the last two years or so and recently I drew a line in the sand and said: this is it, I must fix all the functionality bugs and promote this thing. The world will judge my game.
I grew up in the 80s. Three of my favourite games that I played with my siblings and cousins were:
Time Bandits:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjTYvMSxnQc
* Many re-playable unique levels, run around and shoot enemies, solve mysteries!
Gauntlet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLnkCAFihqA&t=2s
* Endlessly roam around shooting the baddies in your quest to find treasure, the key, and the door to the portal to the next level
Dungeon Master:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zssYYPMkG-E
* Still the best dungeon crawler: you are utterly alone and must survive in a deviously dangerous dungeon which gets scarier by the minute (well, if you're a kid in the 80s I guess)
So, Borbudo was unconsciously inspired by the above: it is my unique derivation of the permutation of these great games. I wanted it to be an endless journey into interesting worlds to explore, with challenging puzzles, devious monsters, and lots of blasting.
You can see that the game is Alpha. I still have lots of work to do. For example, it needs better graphics, more sprites, better enemies, bosses, etc. But I feel the game is good enough for me to start promoting it.
You will also note that the game's graphics are poor by today's standards: they are based on graphical primitives like polygons and lines. However, I submit to you that this is the core strength of Borbudo: if a game is compelling enough (for whatever reasons), it can get away with poor graphics as long as the graphics are *iconic*, meaning that they convince the player that the sprites are what they are, and that the player is indeed in the world of the game. In Borbudo, the graphics and gameplay quickly make you a person in a vehicle exploring interesting worlds and blowing up everything in sight. Conversely, you don't sit there thinking: the graphics suck, Candy Crush looks better!
The technical reason the graphics are what they are is that I will be able to create far more levels if each sprite is based on a single array of polygons (each polygon having its own fill and edge colours). This makes the APK download very small. Conversely, if I had to create a bitmap for each sprite, at 24 angles each, etc, the size of the download would be massive and prohibitive. I have everything in place to continue creating 100s (1000s!) of interesting levels. And in the future I want to release my level and sprite editors to the gaming community so that everyone can share in the fun.
Furthermore, there are games out there with poor graphics that are popular, like Minecraft and Dwarf Fortress (they use ASCII characters ha ha!)
So, I'd like to invite you to try Borbudo at the Google Play Store:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.borbudo.free
There are also some videos on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbgCeCKSiFtfrlJL-YlD_lg
My Patreon link:
https://patreon.com/borbudo
I'd love to hear your take on my game, and if you'd like to support this indie game developer, a review, advice, or a Patreon pledge would really help!
Thanks for your time!
Rob Lehrbass