MUMBA MAIL #2
Art by the talented @milkyace, who’s been working with me on our games for almost eight years now :)
Happy mid-August everyone! By the time I get around to actually posting this, I’ll be in Michigan with my family (or Alaska with friends if this gets posted later than I intended). At the time of writing this update on August 15th, I just wrapped up working on the fourth game in the collection. Still waiting on some art and music assets, but the programming for it is all done.
With this post, I primarily wanna discuss the very first game in the collection, which is…
UGBY MUMBA (DEMAKE)
Wow, look at that title screen! It’s deliberately barebones because Ugby Mumba is intended to be an Atari 2600-style demake of the very first game we ever made as a group, which we remade later on in Shrimp-OS. I talked about this already in the previous Mumba Mail, but just to reiterate, this demake was originally intended as a simple practice project so I could get used to working in Godot. The idea for a collection of small-ish games came about midway through making this thing.
Ugby Mumba seemed like a good project to demake as an Atari kinda game mainly because it’s a very short arcade experience in the vein of something like Mario Bros. (the 1983 one where you’re slaughtering crabs in a sewer, not the Super one). I was drawn to the 2600 aesthetic because of its simplicity; every object is pretty much just one color, no larger than 8 pixels wide, and few sprites can be rendered on-screen simultaneously at any given time. Obviously I’m bending the rules a bit here, but my goal was just to make something convincingly 2600-like, not “the real deal.” I wanted that commitment to extend to the gameplay and controls too, so you’re not able to change directions mid-jump or cancel a jump mid-air or anything.
If you’re wondering about why there seems to be so much flickering, that’s a result of me trying my best to emulate the Atari 2600’s sprite-count limitation. The 2600 would only allow two player sprites, a couple “missile” sprites, and another thing or two I’m forgetting about to be rendered at any given time. Games would get around this limitation by rapidly switching whatever sprites are being rendered on-screen every frame. For example, with Pac-Man on the 2600, the game would render one ghost on frame 1, the second ghost on frame 2, the third on frame 3, the fourth on frame 4, and repeat. This’d result in some rapid flickering, but it’s better than nothing, right? I feel like this flickering is a charming and often-ignored trait of those limitations you could find on older consoles, so I wanted to include that in this game. That said, the gifs I attached are all 30 FPS even though the game itself is running at 60, so the flickering is a LOT more annoying in these gifs than in-game. I promise it looks way better in game when it’s running at a higher framerate. Scout’s honor.
Again, Ugby Mumba is a VERY simple game. You control Mumba and you have to collect ten eggs (which spawn randomly around the level) to win while dodging enemies that flood the screen from the top-down and can quickly overwhelm you if not dealt with. And you’ve gotta do that within the time limit. Sometimes, enemies will drop coins you can use to purchase upgrades and weapons in between levels. I definitely didn’t reinvent the wheel with this one (forgive me, I made the original version of this game when I was 17), but I think the variety of weapons, enemy types, and level designs makes the game worth a few plays :)
^ This here’s the shop screen! Every level has a different character you buy stuff from at the end and @milkyace did all the portraits for all of them!
Ugby Mumba’s got a total of eight levels for you to play through, but on any given run you’ll only go through five of them. Between the first and final levels, the game has you pick between three sets of two different levels from a cute little map screen:
Again, this is a demake of a game I’ve made twice before. You can go out and play two different versions of this game right now, but I’m real happy with THIS version and the set of restraints I tried to work within. I’m tempted to make this game a fourth time as a bookend to the collection. I think it’d be cute. The collection starts with a demake of Ugby Mumba, so it should end with a huge grandiose remake of it too.
Anyways, that’s all I’ve got to share for this month. Like I said before, I just finished working on the fourth game in the collection. I think after I get home from my trips in September, I wanna begin polishing up what we’ve made thus far so I can have a demo to show to some publishers. If that works out, then cool! If it doesn’t, then whatever. The game will get done either way :J
Thanks for checking in, see you all in September!
