Today Cyberbike Shootout officially launches on itch! I'm so proud of the work put into this project and love how it turned out. Just two months ago I was taking my first steps to learning Unity and C# as a complete beginner at game programming, and now I have a released game to show for my efforts.

Cyberbike Shootout grew out of my love for classic top down shooters like Space Invaders and Galaga. Though this is not my favorite genre, it was one of the first that got me into gaming - the instant action, the simple controls, and the colorful graphics all started my interested into gaming. I fused that gameplay with my love of cyberpunk and bright neon colors to make it and the game also developed out of a tutorial from a Udemy course by Gamedev.tv. If anyone is looking into learning Uniuty, I highly recommend their courses, as they provide amazing building blocks to start with.

The original concept was actually going to be an angel fighting against swarms of space demons. However, the complexity of the main character's planned animations caused me to switch it up (I also may have been revisiting Akira around this time as well) and I think the  visuals really benefited from it. After all, who doesn't want to play a badass blue haired chick on a futuristic motorcycle killing cyberdemons? The concept formed in my mind and quickly cemented itself.

The next step was getting a composer onboard for the background track - I knew I wanted something fast, electronic, and beat driven, and my friend Jake Hodges delivered an excellent track that captured that perfectly. All I had to do was tell him I wanted a track to 'shoot cyberdemons while riding a motorbike' to and he was off and running.

Creating the enemies was also a great experience. Teaching myself how to work on animations and sprite sheets while also letting my creativity loose to design crazy looking demons was a blast and yet another tool in my expanding arsenal. I wanted to expand the animations more but limited them to 3-4 frames each was the more efficient call for this game.

This project taught me so much about game programming and design. Even adding the smallest gameplay element was always a puzzle and finding a solution required me to go through all my newfound C# tools as well as some Google-fu. I also learned about scope creep, and even though there is so much I could still add to the game, I had to cut myself off and actually finish it. This project was never intended to become a sprawling mess of bosses, levels, and storylines - it was only meant to be a project for me to create a game from start to finish and make it fun. I think it succeeds in that regard.

I hope you consider downloading the game and let me know what you think!