Desert Child: Racing RPG Development

Oscar Britain, the developer of the Racing RPG Desert Child, talked about the development of his game, the art style, some gameplay and more.

Introduction

My name’s Oscar Britain, and I’m from Fremantle, Western Australia. It’s a nice place and it inspired me quite a bit. For years, I wanted to make a game set here. And so I did.

Start of the Project

80lv: What was the start of Desert Child and how did you work on the prototype?

Desert Child started as a side project with a friend but turned into my main solo project when he bailed. I wanted to capture some feelings I’ve found in other media, but not in games. I liked the idea of walking around a foreign city and trying to find something to eat. I wanted the music to be a big part of the game, too.

I drew a picture of the guy on his hoverbike, but when it was finished I realized that I had drawn him side-on while racing games normally place their camera behind the player. So I challenged myself to make a racing game where I could use this image, and that became Desert Child.

Art Style

80lv: Could you discuss the way you’ve nailed the art style and how you actually decided to approach it?

I was doing my masters of architecture at University when I started the game, so I was just drawing tons and tons of 2-point perspective buildings. Naturally, I just drew like that when I started the game. I wanted to do really bright, colorful pixel art though, as I was mostly doing grayscale pencil drawings all day at University.

Animation

80lv: What’s the way you’re working on the animation of the character and other elements in the project?

I was inspired to try rotoscoping after playing Prince of Persia and thinking, like, wow, this game has better animations than most modern 2D games. I found this software called Paint of Persia and used it to make a lot of early animations for the game by filming my friends doing actions, then drawing over them in the program.

Bike Speed

80lv: Would be awesome if you could talk a bit on gameplay, especially the incredible dynamism of the movements. What are the tricks for building up the speed in such a game?

The old trick for building the speed up is to just have tons of feedback when you boost. The screen actually compresses down a bit when you boost, which was a technique I took from the film Redline. There are the billowing dust clouds behind your bike too which add to the feeling of weight and heft.

Challenges

80lv: What did you feel were the biggest technical challenges in building this game?

Hitting a solid 60 fps with all the stuff that’s on screen was super hard. I’m not much of a programmer, so anything technical causes me headaches. I honestly find it challenging just remembering how the code even works.

Kickstarter Campaign

80lv: Did the Kickstarter campaign put any pressure on you? Did you manage to actually implement everything that was promised?

The Kickstarter backers are lucky! I didn’t hit the stretch goal for multiplayer, but I put it in there anyway. I don’t know if Kickstarter put me under pressure, probably more other things, but I definitely felt like it was a bit of a make-or-break game. I think the game is probably better than what I expected it to be. It’s way more polished, and there’s so much more music.

Oscar Britain, Developer of Desert Child

Interview conducted by Kirill Tokarev