Hi Everyone,

In the past week we've been overwhelmed by the feedback we got on Chronodog: Earth Defender. I never expected the game to be one of the most rated game in the jam or to have people featuring it in their videos (there, here and even in Korean). Thank you so much to everyone playing the game. It really means a lot.

To return the favour, I thought it would be fun to share some details about the development of Chronodog: Earth Defender. So here some details on how the game was made.

Check out early builds of the game

Something worth noting that I forgot to mention in the video is about balancing the difficulty of the game. In the last hour of the jam, I actually made the game much easier by increasing the amount of slowdown you get when solving the puzzle (Each of first puzzles slow down time by 80%, later puzzles are a bit less generous). While I always try to keep the difficulty fair during the development (so balance for new players and not us), I also know that we played too much to properly judge this aspect. So one of the last thing I do in nearly all jams is to dramatically reduce the difficulty. After watching people play Chronodog I think the strategy paid off again.

Here Boy - Finding The Dog

Arthur did an amazing work with the art of Chronodog and it was a big part of the appeal of the game (who doesn't love dogs or space or both?). But he didn't land on the space doggy immediately. Here some of his early concept when we didn't have a title yet for the game (obviously).

From Arthur:

"There isn't a lot of time for concepting and adjusting designs during a 48hr game jam, so I had to jump in head first and start drawing final artworks as quickly as I could - these were the only sketches I think I did all weekend before starting on the final assets. Our idea was that you were at the controls of a spaceship, which left me to freely imagine who the player character could be. Aliens are fun, but a bit weird and off-putting to some people. And everyone likes dogs, right?! When you only have a couple of seconds to make the player empathise with the main character, you have to make them count. So a little comic to show it was your first day on the job helped sell the panic both Chronodog and the player might be feeling. Thanks for playing!"

Coding Timelapse

Even if this would be interesting for only few of you, I also recorded my screen during the development of the game and I used the footage to have a timelapse of the development.

So What's next?

I don't know... dinner?