Meet Pew

Hi, I'm Dodz. This is the first post of the PewRun devlog, so let me start with the idea.

A flying saucer crashes into a gutter in New York. Out climbs Pew, a small green alien in a dark grey hoodie, holding a little plasma pistol. He is so small that a cockroach is a tank, a rat is a monster and a puddle is an ocean. Getting home means crossing an entire city that was never built for someone his size.

That's PewRun: a dark, hand-drawn 2D run and gun, told in chapters, set in New York on a rainy night.

Where it comes from

Three things were in my head from the start:

• Contra III: The Alien Wars. Frantic pace, weapons in capsules, bosses with several phases and attacks you can read before they land.
• Hollow Knight. Hand-drawn 2D, thin ink outlines, a melancholic mood and strong silhouettes.
• The tiny-world fantasy. Being minuscule in an ordinary place, where everyday objects turn into landscapes.

The last one is what makes it PewRun. A bottle cap is a shield, or a boat. A lit matchstick is a torch that keeps roaches away. A taxi driving past is a tidal wave.

One evening, one document

Before writing any code I wanted the whole game on one page. So the first evening became a game design document: a single HTML file with the story, Pew, the controls, the weapons, the bestiary, the art direction and a roadmap.

It also has five design pillars, which I now use to settle every argument with myself:

1. Small vs. giant. Ground-level camera, enormous objects, ordinary creatures as epic bosses.
2. Run-and-gun. Run, jump and shoot without stopping.
3. A city that reacts. Every object in the play space does something.
4. Light and water. Dramatic lighting and reflections, as look and as mechanics.
5. Dark, with a heart. A hostile world, and a hero who is expressive without saying a word.

Only Chapter 1, The Fall, is really defined: from the crashed saucer down into the sewer, with a mini boss under a dumpster and a giant rat at the end. The rest of the campaign exists as a proposal, and I'm keeping it that way until Chapter 1 is fun.

One source of truth for the art

The second file I wrote was DESIGN.md: the style rules, the palette, Pew's design and the prompt blocks I use to generate images. The image presets don't store any prompt text themselves. They read those blocks from DESIGN.md by section title. Change a rule there, and every image generated after that follows it.

That evening ended with a GDD, a style guide, a logo and a folder of concept art. The art had a lot of problems, though. Pew kept growing extra hands. That's the next post.