Eggy's Games

A lot of the time I look back on my old games and still have good fondness - but not this one. This one was plagued with production issues the entire way through and almost didn't get finished. Lets look at the behind the scenes of the pain in the ass - Heaven and Hell.

Core Concept

The main core of this game was mixing my old games Draw-Play with a more action style. So this time you could rebuild your island with seeds from the damage done. Then you would go to the wave and fight enemies with some hack and slash mechanics.

At first this was working till I realised how easy it was to fall off. The game originally had health for the main character and it was just failing miserably. So right off the bat we realised we had to transition to a % based damage system similar to Super Smash Bros.

Even though this did work, it always felt like the fighting just lacked something. It just didn't feel right. I was lacking that smooth and fluid look. I think that single thing really ruins any fighting based game. I wish I took more time to develop that. Unfortunately I wasn't very experienced in the fighting genre so it was very bland.

I did like the part where you switched between light and darkness.

Sponsorships Issues Due to Religious Themes

Something that threw me for a curve ball was sponsors not wanting to put their logo on it due to the religious themes of using Heaven and Hell. I did not realise that was going to be an issue until the game was done. My usual sponsors like Armorgames didn't want to touch it. I was like oh crap!

This caused a lot of issues for weeks trying to secure payment. I was panicking, did I just put all this work into it for nothing? luckily I did find a sponsor called agame that was happy to ignore it.

I did learn though, just don't touch religious elements in games if you are going to get cooperate sponsors. They don't like to be affiliated with those things at all. Looking back on it it does make sense. I should have made the game just be "Light and Darkness" that would have made a lot more sense.

Fun Drawing But Terrible UI

I do enjoy the island building part the most, but that was easy since I had already accomplished this with Draw-Play. So the fact that part worked is no surprise. I also find the UI to be very ugly these days as well. Not much of this game is salvageable at all. None of the art or concepts hold up anymore. It was fun to find out what the game would be like, but it really needed a much higher production value to realise it's full ambitions.

I think the game was just a little too ambitious and that's coming from me who loves to throw insane new genres together. I guess I finally hit the limit.

Summary and Ending

Overall it's amazing this game even got released, the game almost took a full 6-8 months because I was slacking off, having personal issues, having to move house at the time and more. I am glad it was finished off though, leaving it unfinished would have been horrible.

So I have mixed feelings about this game, it will always represent a time of great difficulty but at the same time I'm also really proud I managed to get it done and get through that period of my life and come out much stronger.

Rest in hell......Heaven and Hell.