Rogue Planet Reimagined (Steam Archive)

This is an older version of Rogue Planet from around 2021 that I put on steam in early access, I've re-uploaded it here for archival purposes.

It has a decent amount of levels and is a fast and is a roughly 4 hour long game that has a lot of extras and was made in a little over a year, using GameGuru on an older 32bit version. It was one of my first games, and I used it mostly to learn basic fps game design.

It's interesting to see how things I made evolved over time, and what I was thinking in earlier versions of my game. In this case, a fast call of duty type of hallway shooter game with surreal and strange elements from another almost fantasy demon world as you descend into darker and darker places and the world around you deteriorates. I ended up making it a little slower and more story focused as time went on, and found more success with that. But this is part of my history, and it's worth preserving.

A few tweaks were applied to the setup.ini file to make the game run slightly better, although I can't guarantee it won't crash or bug out at any given point.  This game is as is, and won't be updated.

It's a very simple game with a story that was made to be confusing, it didn't have any other intent aside from contextualizing the world and weird places you shot bad guys in, and I think you'll see that throughout this build.

Originally there was no story like how it ended up in the final game, and it was just places without any people or many living characters. It was more of a puzzle and exploration game where you solved weird riddles and explored increasingly abstract and darker places while uncovering dark and violent notes and lore of people who made these places and died trying to escape a disease that caused severe mental health issues and mass suicide and bloody oceans and mass graves.

It also had a few parkour and co-op elements planned, but they didn't go beyond an idea on a whiteboard that was quickly erased after realizing the engine couldn't support that. It ended up as a rough fps action game that got a mixed reception. Admittedly, the switch to fps gameplay was more so to learn basic fps game level design as opposed to being more of a finished game than anything. 

I found that GameGuru was pretty good in its earlier days for learning basic game development and wanted to share it with others. I ended up getting a mixed reception as a result of other games on the engine that had given a bad reputation and just grouped in with the rest of them despite only ever just using this engine out of a natural interest in learning how to make games.

Thankfully a few people were willing to offer some helpful advice and constructive suggestions and this project ended up as Rogue Planet: Dead Sand. Which took the engine to its graphical limits and pushed the old and once thought bad and awful tech to some pretty elaborate heights.

I ended pretty satisfied with what I made, and although it wasn't perfect, I ended up making something I was happy with and could show to people.

I'm glad to have made something fun from an engine that no one would expect could be good, much less all by myself. I really enjoyed the process of creating games, and I hope to do more in the future eventually. Through all of the stumbles and issues, it was a positive and fun experience that I won't be forgetting anytime soon.

I hope my struggles won't stop others from making games themselves, as I feel what GameGuru can offer is extremely unique and healthy for those who are overwhelmed by larger engines like Unreal and Unity, it's a very simple an intuitive engine where you make games by playing one. It's like building legos or playing with a virtual toy, and it's pretty intuitive when it works.

Maybe one day this engine will be open and people can go wild, but I'm on to bigger things now, and hopefully I can make something awesome.

Until next time, GameGuru.

Thanks for the memories,

-3ofSpades