Welcome to the final Ask Gamedev Community Member showcase of the year!
We’ve got another amazing group of games to share with you, all created by members
of the Ask Gamedev community.
For details on how to submit your game to be in an Ask Gamedev showcase, join the community
on Discord and keep an eye out in the announcements channel.
We’ll leave a link in the description.
Without further ado…
We are Ask Gamedev and these are the Ask Gamedev community Games of the month for December
2020.
Welcome back!
We make videos on how to elevate your game development and inspire others.
If after watching this video you want to continue the gamedev conversation, check the video
description for a link to our Discord server.
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sure to check us out there too.
First up on the list is our winner, as voted by the Ask Gamedev community on Discord: Dragon
Acres by WyldFire Games!
Inspired by games like Stardew Valley and Harvest Moon, Dragon Acres is a relaxing farming
sim / rpg, featuring, you guessed it: Dragons!
In the game you run a farm in the land of Dragon Isles.
Grow crops, go fishing, go mining, breed, raise and care for dragons & more!
If that wasn’t enough, the dragons can even help you farm.
The creator of WyldFire Games, Kendall Rust, started getting into game development at the
age of 11 using Scratch, and she quickly fell in love with it.
As a child, Kendall also loved dragons - well dragons, knights, Lego, action figures, and
video games - but mostly dragons.
Fast forward roughly a decade later, and through Dragon Acres, Kendall has been able to combine
both of her passions of dragons and gamedev together.
The title is being developed by Kendall using Pixel Game Maker MV, with additional help
from a story writer, a sound designer, a composer, and an artist.
Dragon Acres will be coming to Windows and Nintendo Switch in September 2022.
Congrats again to the WyldFire Games team!
Make sure to add Dragon Acres to your Steam wishlist!
We’ll have a link in the description.
Coming in at a close second (and we mean close - this title was only 2 votes behind!) is
Gravity Ace by John Watson.
Gravity Ace is a retro-inspired 2D multi-directional gravity shooter (aka cave-flyer).
It's a modern re-imagining of the classic game Thrust (from 1986), a brutally difficult
cave-flyer that John played constantly when he was a kid.
In Gravity Ace you pilot the Hornet, a small fighter craft with an experimental engine
that allows it to warp behind enemy lines.
Descend into dark caverns, raid enemy bases, and steal their power cores.
We love Gravity Ace because it does such a great job of modernizing a classic.
The art, attention to detail, the game feel - you can tell that the developer really had
respect for the classics and was passionate about getting everything right - while adding
modern touches.
As the cherry on top, the game even includes a built-in level editor!
John, the solo developer behind the project, has been a professional programmer all his
life and got into game development around 2013.
He was inspired to start making games by the One Game A Month challenge.
As a side note - if anyone watching is on the fence about dipping their toes into game
development, head over to onegameamonth.com and please check out the One Game A Month
challenge.
Since then John has made a lot of prototypes and participated in a lot of jams, but has
never released a real full commercial game… until now!
The title is being developed in Godot, and has been in development for 2+ years.
If you’d like to check it out, the title recently had an Early Access launch.
You can pick up Gravity Ace on Steam, where the game has, as of this writing, a 100% positive
rating!
This month we had a ton of submissions - so before we get to the rest of the list, let’s
have a quick look at some honourable mentions:
The OrangeRice by Bearboy Studios - a cute 2D platformer that gives us The Behemoth vibes.
Death Drives a Bus by Tall Beard Studios - a retro puzzler where you play as the Grim Reaper
behind the wheels of a bus.
SELINI - an atmospheric sci-fi platformer
Sine the Game by Lonely Vertex - a trippy runner where you control a sine wave.
and Spinny's Journey by Thunder Sparrow - 2D action-puzzle game where you navigate an alien
through increasingly complex mazes.
Next up on the list, hailing all the way from Prague, Czech Republic, we’ve got Red Rust
from ArtSource Digital.
Rest Rust is a side-scrolling beat’em up that uniquely combines fighting mechanics
with shooting mechanics.
While the title is inspired by the 8bit and 16bit hits of the 90s (Turtles in Time comes
to mind), it’s being developed with the modern player in mind - with an emphasis on
story and visual presentation.
The art style and fluid animations really caught our attention.
The game takes place in the year 1984.
You play as Agent Red - a soviet KGB officer who has been sent to the West on a secret
mission.
Over the course of the game she learns to understand her own emotions and the unfamiliar
world around her.
The title has been in development for just over a year.
It’s being made in Unity by a team of 5.
If you’re wondering why the art looks so great, that’s largely due in part to the
studio’s background.
For years, the aptly named ArtSource Digital, has been producing art assets for indie developers.
At some point they realized that nothing would compare to making their own game.
And so, their gamedev journey began.
The team hit the drawing board.
They went through a number of ideas and decided on making a side scrolling shooting game,
packed with boss battles similar to Cuphead.
Soon melee was added and thus their side scrolling beat’em up / shooter hybrid was born.
To stand out, the team is aiming to pack Red Rust with high-quality 3D animation, bright
characters, a compelling story, and lots of boss battles!
Look for the title to come out on Steam in 2022.
To keep up with the team’s development you can subscribe to their newsletter at redrustgame.com
Moving roughly 2000 kilometers north, we have the dev of the next game on our list.
From Finland, we have Arcanbreak by Kisuarts.
Arcanbreak is a point & click story-driven game about two inquisitors, Arun and Quila,
investigating a murder.
In Arcanbreak you play as both Arun and Quila, with each inquisitor equipped with their own
unique skills and powers.
Explore the atmospheric world, craft alchemical substances, and get to the bottom of the murder.
The title was made in Unity over the course of 6 months.
It was developed by yet another solo developer on this list, Kisuarts - who has been working
on games as a hobby for the last 10 years.
Previously working as the lead for a small team, they’ve since moved on to make games
as a solo dev.
Previous works by the dev include Light in the Dark, and Traum.
You can pick up Arcanbreak on Steam today.
And last but definitely not least on our list of the best Ask Gamedev Community Member games
for December is City of Rampage by Zhengis Tasbolatov.
City of Rampage is a 2D beat’em up game inspired by classics of the SEGA Genesis era
like Streets of Rage and Comix Zone.
While the title is still pretty early in development, we like the inspiration, and love what we
see in the art style and character design.
The main characters manage to be memorable while also perfectly fitting the beat’em
up aesthetic.
City of Rampage has been in development for almost a year, and is being made in Godot.
The solo developer behind this project, Zhengis is a comic artist with no coding experience.
Prior to City of Rampage he had never dreamed of becoming a game developer.
It’s not that he didn’t want to want to make games, but rather thought it wasn't possible
to make a game alone, or even with a small team without funding.
What opened Zhengis’ eyes though were engines like Game Maker and Godot, and all of the
inspiring stories of solo devs who have achieved their goals.
City of Rampage is scheduled to launch on Steam in 2021.
For now, you can add the title to your Steam wishlist.
Thanks for watching!
For more Ask Gamedev check out our previous community showcases, or this playlist on solo
game development.