The Kevster Games - KerSPLAT! (2024)

Paint a path for yourself in this colorful, frantic, top-down shooter!

First-place winner!

KerSPLAT! was my first-ever game jam submission, made in 48 hours for a jam hosted by my university's game development club. Based on the theme "two colors", I settled on an idea for a game about a circular blob firing bullets of paint to both attack enemies (of the opposite color) but also to clear a path through the level; enemy blobs would also be firing bullets, coating the ground in their color. Due to several setbacks in the last few hours of development, I was unable to complete as many levels or features as I would have liked; however, the game boasts 11 complete levels, multiple enemy types, several blob colors (each of which fires a unique type of bullet), an interactive menu screen, and fast-paced, juicy, punchy gameplay backed by a soundtrack composed by my close friend Skele.

I consider KerSPLAT! to be my first fully-developed game; I have a tendency to needlessly inflate the scope of a game until a finished product is basically impossible for me to devleop on my own. Despite the fact it is not particularly large in scale, I am happily able to recommend it as a fun, bite-sized game which has a defined progression and clearly-defined ending, without any bloat making it feel like it has overstayed its welcome.

Developing KerSPLAT! taught me the importance of creating an iterable design for short-term projects. In doing so, you can create small parts that can be easily expanded upon in order to create interesting content much more quickly. Additionally, it was an invaluable experience in refining my artistic workflow, as I was able to quickly and easily develop colorful, clear, and stylish UI elements for the game in addition to handling the programming.

I plan to develop a sequel, KerSPLAT 2! in the coming months; preliminary work on the engine has already begun, and was announced on my X page some time ago.

View screenshots:

Download the game!

Developed by The Kevster Games Team:

The Kevster: Programming, Art, Concept, Design

Skele: Original Soundtrack

Special Thanks: Andy, Matt, John, Josh, Zach, Hailey

Development:

The paint trails left behind by bullets are calculated as being completely smooth; they are pixellated before rendering to give the game a little extra crunch. I was between halving or quartering the resolution of the paint, both of which can be seen in the image carousel above; I ultimately settled for just halving the resolution, because quartering it made it look too gritty.

The game originally featured a pristine white background. While this may have made for a better "messy" vibe, I thought that changing it to a darker color made the colors pop a little more, making it easier to keep track of what was where.

At the very beginning of development, the game was conceptualized to take place on an easel with an art studio in the background. Early sprites used a painted style to reflect this, but I felt the game lacked character this way and decided to make it more vibrant, sharp, and cartoonish.

The logo was always shiny and paint-themed, although I decided to add paint dripping later on. The final logo has a little more depth than the logos pictured here.

The game's background as drawn in Krita. This image was cut into two parts, the red and the green, then exported as white PNGs to be recolored separately during runtime. The green shapes (as seen here) reflect the enemy's color, while the red shapes reflect the player. Using the color swapping item in the game will also swap the background's colors.

Each color in the game has a unique face and bullet type associated with it. I wanted to make the faces reflect the bullet in some way: for example, because the yellow bullet bounces off of walls, I made the eyes of the yellow face angle off of a straight mouth (representing a wall); the purple bullet can split off perpindicularly into a "T" shape, so the mouth is two "T" shapes meeting at the tail.

I briefly considered making each color have a unique shape (more clearly showing the "T" for purple and the explosive properties of blue), but I figured a uniformly circular design was better.

Original Soundtrack:

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse