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Cyber Shadow developer discusses how the game's scope ballooned during development
Cyber Shadow, a love letter to NES platforming/action days, is making its way to Switch on Jan. 26th, 2021. The game has been a long time coming, and that might have something to do with plans for the game expanding quite a bit.
Developer MekaSkull has put out a new dev blog going over the game's creation, starting from day one and going all the way up to the final version. In one snippet, we see just how much was added to the game as development rolled on. Check out a blurb below, then click over for the full piece.
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. 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. Shadow’s initial design was refreshed a couple of times before landing on the final one.
This scope didn’t last. Before long, the game was designed to have nine levels instead of six, a dialogue system, special items, mid-bosses, and cutscenes. The aspect ratio was changed from 4:3 to a much wider one.