#CYBER SHADOW MEKA DRAGON PS4#

I had decided early on that I would never have a publisher, as finding the correct one would be impossible… right? Wrong! For example, the docks and boat ride were born from a track that sounded like a boat chase, and the rest of the level grew from there. Stages would inspire music, and music would inspire stages. The gameplay and music discovered natural synergy together. Enrique “Pentadrangle” Martin joined and the solo dev became a team effort. The aspect ratio was changed from 4:3 to a much wider one.Īny game needs music, and luck was on my side as just the right music found the game. Before long, the game was designed to have nine levels instead of six, a dialogue system, special items, mid-bosses, and cutscenes. Shadow’s initial design was refreshed a couple of times before landing on the final one. At this point, the game was redubbed as a “one-year project” that had maybe six levels and a story that only existed between lines, expanded by a manual. I kept working on the game because I thought, why not? The game was taking on a life of its own - and jumping between the seats of a writer, artist, coder, and sound designer - it kept it fresh for me at all times. It was shaping into a game with slashing in addition to jumping. My training project wasn’t just for training anymore. I used photos of myself as a reference for drawings and animations, but I couldn’t (allegedly) run like a real ninja, so the animation ended up looking pretty stiff. I also read somewhere that bumping your head on the ceiling can be frustrating, so I made sure the head-bumping distance was displayed on the grid as well. It was a jumping game, so I first experimented with jump-arcs and came up with a grid-like mechanism that displayed the kinds of jumps possible to land. I started to spend my spare time on a “training” project. With the tools for indie devs becoming more accessible, it was time to take the plunge. The question was, “Is this something that I can create?” A question that preceded a logo test and a mockup of a ninja in a level. Shovel Knight is released, and a certain blue plougher digs his way into the hearts and minds of people, showing that these types of games were not only welcome but desired. Time passed until it was the year of the shovel, 2014. “No one would want to play a new, 8-bit-inspired game,” I thought. The idea of making this image into a game didn’t even pass my mind until much later. Inspired by a passing thought, maybe a dream, the pixels manifested on canvas, only to be forgotten for years. The then, 20-something pixel artist and retro game fan, Aarne “MekaSkull” Hunziker, drew a picture of a ninja suspended in a tank, fueling the insinuating ambitions of a game, against his will.

I’m so excited to present some of the background evolution of the game, that I’ll be talking about myself in the third person for a bit.

#CYBER SHADOW MEKA DRAGON PS4#

Hey! This is MekaSkull, the developer of Cyber Shadow: the retro-rooted, ninja-jumping, robot-slashing action platformer that is coming to PS4 and PS5 on January 26.

Cyber shadow meka dragon