u/Shot_Insurance_3988

Hi everyone,

I’ve been developing a classic platformer as a hobby project for a while now, and I’m at the point where I’m wondering whether I should release the game at all — mainly for the experience.

It’s not a huge project, and I don’t have any major expenses that I need to recover. For me, it would mostly be about going through the full process once: finishing the game, releasing it, getting feedback, and learning from it.

That said, I’m unsure about pricing. My original idea was to offer the game at a very low price, around $0.99. At the same time, I’m wondering whether that makes sense, or whether a free release might be better for a small hobby project, especially if the main goal is experience and visibility.

I’d be interested to hear how other game developers see this:

Have you ever released a small hobby or indie game?
Did you offer it for free, or did you charge a small price?
Would you do anything differently in hindsight?
And how would you feel about a $0.99 price point for a small classic platformer?

I’d really appreciate your experiences and honest thoughts.

hey everyone,

At the beginning of this year I got back into game development after about 15 years away from GameMaker, and I wanted to share the current state of my first bigger project: Pixel: The Awakening.

The game is a 2D retro platformer built around a pretty simple idea:
The world has lost its colors, graphics, and abilities. You start in an almost completely black-and-white environment and gradually restore everything — both visually and through gameplay.

Starting without any colour or textures, the first black-and-white world introduces the player to the core mechanics.

At the beginning, the world consists only of simple blocks, pixels, and minimalist menus. As the game progresses, it evolves through different eras of video game history.

Right now I’m planning around 8 worlds inspired by different console/gaming generations:

• Magnavox Odyssey
• Early Atari 2600
• Late Atari era
• Early NES
• Late NES
• SNES
• N64-inspired sidescroller style
• Modern HD graphics

The idea is that not only the visuals evolve, but also the gameplay, abilities, enemies, and level design become more advanced over time.

In World 2, color has returned, but textures are still missing.

First look at World 3 (textures still work in progress).

The project is also meant to become a homage to my own gaming experience growing up with different generations of games and consoles.

Current features include:

• basic movement
• enemies
• collectibles
• simple power-ups
• a working main menu
• first playable sections
• a basic achievement system
• cosmetic rewards for special achievements
• a speedrun mode with a continuous timer
• adjustable resolution in windowed mode
• a reworked settings menu with custom keybinds and controller support

I also added a small Father’s Day Easter egg:
If you play the game in German on Ascension Day, the player character holds a beer bottle.

At the moment this is more of a hobby/learning project than a serious commercial game, but that’s exactly why I’m experimenting a lot and learning with every step.

Especially when it comes to sprites, animations, and level design, I can definitely tell I’m still a beginner, but it’s really motivating to see the project slowly come together.

I’m still very early in the development process and wanted to start documenting the journey here. I’m always happy about feedback, ideas, criticism, or questions.

I’d love to hear your thoughts:

• What do you think about the core idea?
• Which retro era would you be most interested in?
• Do you have ideas for gameplay mechanics that would fit different console generations?

Thanks for reading.

Update 1:

Here is an early gameplay teaser video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrc-3jfriFI

Update 2:

A small interim update on the game

I created transition levels that are played between the worlds. My main goal was to practice “pseudo 3D.” In these levels, you basically run toward the new world while collecting coins, represented as perspective-based graphic fragments.

transition level 1 -> 2

A few other ideas are currently floating around in my head, although I’m not sure yet whether they would be easy to implement:

• An overworld map for level selection.
• The building blocks for restoring the graphics are randomly hidden throughout the levels. You could still play through the game without collecting them, but the game would remain black and white.
• Modular levels, so every playthrough looks different.

At the moment, I’m still torn between finishing the game in a more traditional way and creating a sequel with the features described above, or integrating those features into the current game.