If you know anything about the Streamcast, you know that we love games. Particularly games being built from the ground up by independent developers, without the shackles of public shareholders, infinite growth or loot boxes.
This makes Black Voices in Gaming (BVIG) and Dames 4 Games (D4G) some of our favourite showcases to look out for every year as we see some of the hottest games being worked on.
Read on as we got to interview CryoGX, the developer behind Advent NEON, as featured in the BVIG showcase back in June 2024.
Advent NEON looks like a really fun game. How would you describe this game to someone who has never heard of it?
Assuming they know a good amount about gaming already, I'd tell them it's a high-skill-ceiling 2D platformer where you play as one of the most overpowered mascots of all time. You've got a full platform fighter moveset, with hitboxes multiple times larger than you, the ability to combo dozens of hits together in seconds, teleport around the screen, freeze time, and basically turn Super Saiyan in the middle of any level. Why? It's fun.
Someone like Mario isn't strong enough to make it through this one.
What were your inspirations behind Advent NEON?
Fast paced action games, platformers, fighting games and battle/shounen anime. People generally have quickly noticed the Sonic and/or Megaman inspirations, but the idea of the game goes beyond that into its own territory, going for a feel of reckless abandon and power fantasy that usually comes from insane anime fights or sprite animations inspired by them.
I believe it can come down to the question of: "What if those classic game characters felt THAT much stronger to play as?"
The very first childhood idea & inspiration I had for Advent NEON, probably a decade before development even started, was me playing Megaman ZX and really wishing I could dash through the air in any direction I wanted while exclusively using melee attacks.
How long have you been working on this game's development?
I've been working on it seriously for around 5 years.
I started it in my senior year of college off of a platformer tutorial for GameMaker Studio 2 and went from there.
The first couple years of development honestly just went towards making a refined demo, because I wanted to get funding with a solid vertical slice of the game.
It wasn't until after that when development of the full game truly started, and it's been 3 years since then.
Did you make all of Advent NEON by yourself thus far? If not, who did you work with and how did you find them?
Yeah, the whole game's done by just me. Art, music, assets, programming, design (gameplay, character, sound, etc), business, legal, QA, etc. Everything.
I'll occasionally talk to friends and other developers for insight, but no one else has been hired to actually work with me. I don't intend to change this either and have enjoyed really pushing myself in every possible direction to make this thing real.
What challenges did you encounter while making this game and how did you overcome them?
I feel most of the challenges with development so far have come down to designing fun gameplay around Neon's deep moveset.
The longer I've spent making the game, the more things I've learned about that moveset and the more times I've had realizations of what can be improved.
This may be the biggest challenge, because if left unchecked, it causes a kind of development loop where the game won't actually get finished.
I personally accounted for all this happening ahead of time though, by allowing myself to rough out multiple parts of the game before trying to refine or finalize any one thing, knowing that my design sense would improve by the time I have to come back and finalize those things I roughed out early, and not allowing myself to iterate beyond that finalization point.
Which platforms is this game scheduled to release and when can we expect Advent NEON to release?
The game is currently slated to release on Steam/PC in early 2025. Be sure to wishlist the game before then!
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