Transcript
Neko Ghost Jump! Is a 2D/3D puzzle-platformer developed in Unreal Engine 4. It was originally conceived as a game jam submission in Epic Game’s Spring #ue4jam back in May 2019. The theme was “The Other Side of the Coin”. After five long, hectic yet very fun days the game jam version was submitted. Which is what you’re seeing in the background now.
The original intention for the game was to make it pretty difficult, which we succeeded since a vast majority of the players who played the game jam version were unable to finish the game and rage quit. We kept this in mind during production and created a fully featured tutorial experience for players.
Soon after submitting the gamejam version, I felt that we could easily polish this up, expand upon a few ideas we had and ship it successfully in a year. I then asked the team members if they wanted to continue working on the game, everyone said yes. However, in the end only 4 out of 5 of the team members stayed on.
As I already had a company setup and managed multiple projects in the past, we decided to use the Burgos Games name. Contracts were sent out, game design documents and technical documents were added to Confluence and project management tasks were done via Jira and daily scrum meetings happen through voicechat on Discord.
As you can see in the background, the game has undergone quite a bit of changes, not only has the art been improved, we’ve redone and unified the User Interface. We also added full Xbox controller support into the game.
We do week-long Sprints and sprint planning occurs on Mondays. We’ve found that we are able to accomplish more and fix any issues along the way much easier and faster with the quick turnarounds.
We picked up an Art Lead soon after starting production which helped unify the art side of things.
We are currently 9 developers strong. One Creative Director/Project Manager/Programming, PR/Marketing (me), one additional programmer, five in Art (one of them the Art Lead), Two in sound (one sound fx, one composer).
We plan on releasing the game next year on PC (Windows and Linux), Xbox One and PS4. If possible, we’d like to also ship on the Nintendo Switch.
We will have 7 total biomes with 5 levels each, with one more for the final boss for a total of 36 levels. We anticipate anywhere between 6 to 12 hours of gameplay, depending on a multitude of factors such as if you’re trying to speedrun and compete on the leaderboards for every level or if you’re playing in Casual Mode and bypassing the time completion requirements to unlock the boss level in each biome.
Each biome has its own unique environmental hazards, enemies, puzzles and finally bosses giving the player a unique experience along the way.
Neko Ghost, Jump!’s core game mechanic is the switching between 2D and 3D perspectives allowing the player to complete the vast majority of puzzles in the game.
There are leaderboards for each level as well as the overall 100% completion leaderboard. This entices players to replay levels and compete against each other to become number one in that level or to keep that spot.
Players are also able to collect currency during the game to unlock various character customizations suchs as emotes, clothing, even skin color. If they want, they can just find a level with a lot of coins, replay it a bunch of times and farm up until they can buy whatever they want.
What you're seeing right now is the Jungle biome. We have the Grasslands biome (tutorial), Desert biome and Jungle biome completed. We're currently working on the Ice biome.
