Inspirations for our Game

We found a name! At least a temporary one- Ufology (pronounced Yufology)!!

As I mentioned in my first blog post, both Oscar (@spacepluk) and I grew up when video games first started becoming popular in arcades, consoles and home computers in the early 80s. I used to spend hours playing on our Atari and Mac (later Nintendo/Sega and PC) with our friends and family. Oscar even remembers playing games on his Amiga (!!). Every stop at the mall or errand-run was accompanied by my brother and I begging my parents to stop at our favorite arcade. Games like Space Invaders, Galaga, Ms. Pacman, Frogger, Super Mario Bros, Tetris and other classics have a warm and fuzzy place in our hearts. So naturally, when we started thinking of making our own games, we wanted to make a tribute to those amazing pioneer games.

After the initial brainstorming phase (you can read more about that here), the idea we decided to go ahead with was a mobile F2P retro-style arcade space shooter. We wanted the graphics and gameplay to be based on early arcade games but with a modern look. In addition, we wanted Ufology to be in 3D, while most of the games we were inspired by were in 2D. A retro-but-modern looking 3D-but-based-on-2D game was a big challenge for me, as this is my first project as a game designer and CG artist.

The main inspirations for Ufology were Galaga, Gradius, R-Type, Axelay and Xenon 2. Many of the enemies in Ufology are based on the enemies from those games. Here are some of the adaptations, would love to hear what you think!

Game development, games, 3D design, Ufology, game design, indie development, game art, games, gaming, shooter, arcade, retro, old school, space, galaxy, palette, color, inspiration
Gradius by Konami, 1985
Game development, games, Ufology, 3D design, game design, indie development, game art, games, gaming, shooter, arcade, retro, old school, moai
Our version of Gradius' Moai
Game development, games, Ufology, 3D design, game design, indie development, game art, games, gaming, shooter, arcade, retro, old school, galaga
Galaga by Namco, 1981
Game development, games, Ufology, 3D design, game design, indie development, game art, games, gaming, shooter, arcade, retro, old school, deathmite
Our version of Galaga's deathmite
Xenon, Games, Retro, Shooter, Old School, Arcade
Xenon 2: Megablast by The Assembly Line, 1989
Game development, games, Ufology, 3D design, game design, indie development, game art, games, gaming, shooter, arcade, retro, old school, xenon 2
Our version of the horseshoe crab thing

Let us know what you think in the comments below- suggestions are always welcome 🙂 We would love to hear about the inspirations for your games!

Stay tuned for some more development logs coming up in the following weeks.

And don’t forget to subscribe in the upper right menu!

Liran

This Post Has 6 Comments

  1. leora grunhaus

    15 Sep 2016

    wonderful creativity combined with nostalgy and imagination !!

  2. Santana

    16 Sep 2016

    Oh my goodness! an incredible article dude. Thanks However I am experiencing problem with ur rss . Don’t know why Unable to subscribe to it. Is there anyone getting equivalent rss drawback? Anyone who knows kindly respond. Thnkx

    1. liranjulia

      21 Sep 2016

      Sorry about that! We will take a look at it later today. Thanks!

  3. Sagie (Liran's brother)

    18 Sep 2016

    Looks very cool!
    I heard that your brother used to whip your ass at Super Mario 😜😜😜

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