Kryptos

(Working Title)

Kryptos is 2D pixel art themed platformer. The game follows the character of Kryptos, a small green alien of the Krill species, who is attempting to find his missing family and flea his dystopian world of Lumina. The player must traverse a collapsing and unstable environment while fighting off the military forces of Lumina with a mix of movement and energy based attacks.

This project uses:

  • Custom game engine written in C++

  • SFML graphics library

This is an ongoing project and it’s code can be viewed here

After developing the initial idea for Kryptos, I began developing proof of concept tests.

This prototype was a success with some basic movement mechanics, sprite rendering and projectile movement implemented. A robust and scalable project structure was also implemented.

Proof of Concept

Prototyping

I also created two, more fleshed out, prototypes. One was created within Unity first in order to define minimum requirements of the prototype as well as save time, and the second was created using the custom engine I had began implementing.

Both prototypes where a success and have helped to redefine the projects scope as well as inform design decisions in terms of level and character design.

This part of the project was run in parallel with my fourth year research project and dissertation on the impact of commercial versus proprietary game engines of developer experience and game quality.

The research paper can be downloaded here.

Unity Prototype

Custom Engine Prototype