0 & On: Breakpoint "Zero and On"

Made before I learned C# and C++ back in 2017.

Summary

Gameplay

Oleguer Thrown is a wildernest survival expert who is sent with a group of scientist in an exodus away from planet earth. The fate of the "Forgers", the group Oleguer joined, gets compromised when one of the space rockets that fled the earth strays away from its path and ends up in a planet named "Folath", a dying planet with a mysterious human civilization while a war is cooking.

0 & On: Breaking point would had been an Action-RPG, similar to "The legend of Zelda" by Nintendo but more focused on a wild combat. Despite being in a scifi world where there are holographic weapons and guns, the guns were imagined to be severely nerfed to allow more melee combat and the player counted with a team.
The main weapon was a holographic axe inside that is emmited through a device in a gauntlet. The special mechanic of this game was that this melee weapon has a battery, and can get depleted. Once it is depleted it has to reload and the player will need to use their fists in the meantime.
And finally there were team members, people that travel with the main character and do an speciphic role in combat, Bella [distraction], Arthur [Ranged attacks], Malcolm [Another melee fighter], and Nora [doctor].

My work

At that point in my life I was 17 years old, and in highschool. I wanted to be a game developer, I still did not have the experience, but I still designed the gameplay, art, and music, but at that time I was not as good as I am today. I can implement the same game mechanics a thousand times today if I wanted to.
I managed to make a little team of developers with people across the internet. I never met them in person, but they still managed to deliver pieces of music tracks, and sprite sheets.
-Kvolik Korozkov (His nickname) - 2D artist
-Enian (His nick name) - Composser
-Fernando Cabrera - Composser
"Zero and On" is a full story divided into four games, for which I have the plot written, and have been working on it over the years. I might have not finished this version of the project, but I want to retake it when I am ready to handle a full game with good assets, and have enough money to get coworkers until it is done.

Level design

The level design loop was simple, fight enemy encounter, or explore using the character's tools.
In the mechanics and dynamics, the enemies and player could use the same resources. An enemy could take medkits from the ground, fall from high places, step on launch pads.
My phylosophy for this game was "Not having excuses", at the time I was tired of silly game mechanics that are still plaging the industry such as:
-"you can't go there because there is a bush", I wanted players to break them.
-"The scenario doesn't allow walking down a mountain/hill", I wanted to make the characters slide down from high places in a 2D game, no character is agile but they can slide downhill if they want.
-"the enemy soldier is hurt", I wanted human enemies to be smarter and look for ways to survive too like taking medkits from the ground.
-"This chest needs a key", I wanted the player to also be able to break them in exchange of losing some money from it.
-"Here is a bullet-eating character to escort", I placed one that despite being useless, she runs from enemies, follows the player and hides by herself.
The game may not had been completed but it still counted with those mechanics. As the game is not just mine to just finish it with shortcuts, it is for the player to enjoy and be rewarded from being creative and/or smarter than the game that is trying to oversmart them.

My experience

The original version of this game was never finished, but for a 17 year old highschooler was a decent attempt. I did not have knowledge about Game Design Documents, Github, nor UML diagrams so at that time I was just experimenting with random mechanics and ideas.
This project taught me that simply projects can be too large for a person, and the experience is everything at the time of making such projects as a person.
I finally stopped developing this game when the files corrupted and erased the first level, or at least the graphics of the first level were incredibly corrupt the game became unplayable.
-2026 I am working on a combat prototype to get some people interested in this project.

Link to the project

-Test of combat

-Damage

-Mountain slide (the 0 to 7 numbers vertically)

Image gallery