Dragon Raid

You are a Dragon!

Stomp your way through a kingdom to free baby dragons from the evil princess.

A game by my kids

This is the first ever video game created by Kygar (Age 5), Stellaria (Age 7), and Asherion (Age 9) with a little help from Pali-dad-n Artix.

Features

• Stomp on buildings
• Stomp on knights
• Stomp on Trees
• Stomp on Archers
• Breath fire….
• Stomp on houses
• Stomp on Castles
• …also, you can stomp on stuff.

How to Play

• B= Jump
• A = Use Breath Weapon

NOTES

• The kids did the art, level design, and the story.
• Thank you to Raftronaut (Jordan Davis) for surprising us with a custom song fo the game!!!
• Kygar plays all characters on the cover art 😀

Story time

This project was special, because this is the first video game that my kids completed together. But it was a very challenging project from the perspective of a parent. The goal was to have them work on a simple game concept where they could do 100% of the art, levels, and music. At first I attempted to work with all of them at the same time. It became obvious the better path was to work with them one-on-one at different times. While I am used to working non-stop for a crazy number hours, their attention spans were… much shorter. So we started doing things in very small, short sessions. They all learned how to create pixel art using Asesprite. I was surprised at how quickly they memorized and used shortcut keys. However, there was a steep learning curve doing basic things like doing pixel perfect selection. I found that holding the mouse with them and doing the first few together was all it took. They had a hard time understanding how the colors were really paint masks until they we started adding color to monsters and tiles in the game. It took about two sessions for them to get really comfortable navigating NESMaker and building screens. When I saw the 5 year hit the collision button and used the 7 key to paint collision, I felt sincere hope. We build the screens over 2 weeks. Originally the game was just one long series of screens with things to smash on them. But when working with Stellaria, we created a text screen…. and the idea for a plot started forming. Everyone chipped in, but Kygar was the one who insisted on the baby dragons– which morally redeemed our monster rampage. Asherion got carried away with the Princess Trap screens…. which were really fun. He re-did them all on the last day. Stellaria and I spent two sessions working in Famitracker, but struggled to produce a usable song. On the plus side, she does now chat middle C is now. She also knows it is the Z key in Famitracker. Like any good ByteOff entry, things all magically came together on the final day. To submit the game, we all placed our hand on the mouse and pressed the submit button together.