Overview / Usage

After searching for countless hours for a role playing game to play on mobile, I decided to make my own. Pixelot combines the best parts of classic role playing games. You begin by creating your own custom character that can pick between one of six different classes. With the opportunity to recruit over 30 additional playable characters, the game features a deeply customizable party system. There are plenty of places to explore in the game's 250 maps and 15 dungeons. With over 500 items to collect and equip, Pixelot allows players to make their characters unique. The story in Pixelot revolves around the necessity to gather the six elemental crystals that sealed away the Dark Lord. In your journey you will liberate towns from monsters, end a civil war, escape from prison, and even overthrow a government. Just when you think the game is over, it offers an infinite dungeon to explore with an additional 100 unique maps.

Methodology / Approach

I began dreaming of creating my own role playing game as a child. As I grew older I searched for a way to make that possible. In college I stumbled across a programming framework called LibGDX. LibGDX allows you to write java code, that can then be compiled into windows, linux, macOS, android or iOS games. For the next 5 years I worked dilligently on brining my dream into reality. As a solo developer I needed to make as many things for the game as possible. I quickly learned pixel art and used a tool called aseprite to make all of my drawings. I created the maps for the game by uploading tile sprites to a program called tiled, and exporting the maps as csv files. My game would then load these csv files and attribute the comma delimited id numbers to tiles in my game. I completed all of my development in the android studio IDE. On days when I was feeling creative, I would dive head first into creating art and the story line. When I was feeling most clever I worked on the most complicated mechanics that role playing games offer. Finally on the days where I was not feeling as driven, I tackled all the mundane but necessary tasks the game required such as writing comments, optimizing databases, and loading in files. After three years, I did an early release of the first third of the game on android and iOS and was met with overwhelmingly positive feedback. This drove me to do a second early release of the second third of the game a year later, this time publishing a pc version on itch.io as well. With the positive results from the second early release, I was able to do a full release for android, iOS, and this time Steam.

Technologies Used

Software

• Android Studio
• Aseprite
• Tiled
• RoboVM

Libraries / SDK's

• Java
• LibGDX
• Steamworks
• Google Play Game Services
• App Store Game Center

Other links

• iOS App Store Link
• Website
• Google Play Link
• Steam Download