Amica

There is a severe lack of dragon games out there, let alone ones where dragons are the protagonists. The few there are either have dragons being evil villains, creatures to be hunted and slain or ridden by humans like horses or visual novel dating simulators. I seek to change that. I seek to be one of the few that breaks these defaults. For that, I intend to create a game where you play as the dragon, there are no humans and you are the hero of the story!

 

Introducing: Amica (title is subject to change in the future), my very first game! A game that takes place in a fantasy medieval-like world, where humans do not exist.

Devlog 1: https://mike-dragon.itch.io/amica/devlog/1602177/change-to-some-existing-ideas-a...    

Plot (subject to change)

Amica Draccodore is a small, young dragoness, living in the land of Delphinea. A vast kingdom ruled by a dragon king, where dragons and griffons have been living together peacefully for millennia, after finally settling their differences a very long time ago. Amica lives in a small village near one of Delphinea's borders, with her parents. Life was good there. Until it wasn't.

 

Once upon a time there was a kobold (still unnamed). A disgruntled kobold. A very disgruntled kobold. Despite not living in Delphinea, this kobold watched for years as dragons of other lands and from Delphinea itself passed by and were revered and respected by all, some even feared! Meanwhile, kobolds were often ignored, some even treated as lower forms of life. At least that's how this kobold in particular viewed the world, until he have had enough and decided something must be done! 

 

After years of research and exploration and gathering followers with similar views, the kobold came across a magical gemstone. A powerful one. Though this was magic he was not supposed to have, he saw in it a way to get revenge on all dragons for all of the shortcomings he believed koboldkind have endured for countless moons. Inebriated by this new power, the kobold sought out to use it against dragonkind. One night he and his minions travelled into Delphinea and reached a small village near the border. After approaching a nearby house, he cast a spell to steal the wings of all the dragons. "This will teach them! If kobolds can't fly, so neither will they!" he spoke out loud near the window of the nearby house. What the kobold did not know is that the spell could be cast only once before needing to be recharged for a long period of time. He also did not know that it had a very small range. 

 

Unaware of what was going on outside her window, Amica got awoken by the kobold's talking. She got up and looked out of the window, at first confused with what she was seeing. Kobolds were a rarity in Delphinea and she have never seen one before. Before she could think of asking who or what those creatures she was seeing were, a blinding flash of light coming from the kobold's magical gemstone engulfed the area. When it vanished, so did Amica's wings! Letting out a shocked gasp, Amica exclaimed "My wings!". This caught the kobold's attention, who now was bearing a pair of wings on his back. But they were Amica's! It seemed that the spell only stole one single pair of wings. And Amica was the unlucky dragon within range of it. Though disappointed with the result, the kobold told Amica that this was just the beginning. He told her that soon all dragons would lose their wings and all kobolds would become capable of flight and that there was nothing she or any other dragon could do about it. Though he also said that the only way she could get hers back was to come and find him, all by herself. Defeat him and take the magical gemstone was the only way she could revert the spell and get her wings back, thus, also preventing any harm to other dragons. Then he took off, leaving behind his minions and Amica.

 

Poor Amica. Not knowing any better and being so young and naive, she believed his words. If only her could do it, then she’d better get started soon and not tell anybody! Determined to get her wings back and save Delphinea from the same fate and possibly worse, she wrote her parents a note explaining what happened and then left in the middle of the night. Thus, Amica’s adventure to lands beyond what she knew began. Amica may be small and young, but she’s a dragon! And there is no stopping a determined dragon.

Only Amica makes it possible!

 

Items And Mechanics (Read the DevLog for updates/changes to these. If anything below is in strikethrough, then it has been changed from the original ideas written down below.)

 

The game is meant to have powerups, items and some mechanics that are not often seen in 2D platformers. Here’s some of the stuff planned (but guaranteed to be in the game):

 

Attacks

Being a dragon, Amica is capable of breathing fire. She can do it right at the start of the game and never loses this ability, even when hurt by enemies. This is one of her primary ways for defense and offence. With her fire breath she can defeat enemies from a safe distance.

Amica is also naturally equipped with sharp claws and teeth, making clawing and biting her other attacks, albeit at close range.

Powerups/Game Mechanics

Throughout her journey, Amica will come across a few magical crystals of different colors that can help her along the way. Red, yellow and green crystals can grant her a more powerful fire breath, temporary invincibility and even harder scales so she can be hit three extra times before she loses any health.

Sheep can be found to restore her health and while one sheep will restore her health back to 100 HP instantly, it will do so without any extra benefits, but hitting it with her claws will kill the sheep and have it drop from 1 to 3 pieces of raw meat, which she can eat to restore her health. One piece of raw meat will give Amica 20 HP. If she breathes fire on the raw meat, it will get cooked and give her 50 HP, with an additional 1 HP every 2 seconds, for a short while. If she breathes fire on cooked meat, it may get burnt. Burnt meat can still be consumed to restore Amica's health, but the benefits are limited to only 5 HP and nothing more. Any piece of meat (except for burnt meat) that sits on the ground for too long will rot. Rotten meat can give 10 HP if consumed, but it will also make Amica sick, causing her to lose 1 HP every 5 seconds, for a short while. If Amica breathes fire on a sheep, it will drop 1 to 3 pieces of cooked meat instead of raw meat.

Red Crystals will power up her fire breathing ability, making her flames reach a longer distance and burn hotter, dealing more damage to enemies, burning blue instead of yellow. This boost can be lost if Amica gets hurt, though.

Yellow Crystals will grant Amica a few seconds of complete invulnerability, making her completely immune to any attacks from enemies or environment. Though she better mind her step near any cliffs. Yellow Crystals do not turns off Newton's law of universal gravitation.

Green Crystals will restore her health back to 100 HP instantly, just like a sheep, but it will also grant her harder scales permanently, so long as she doesn't get hit. In this state, Amica can get hit up to three times before she starts losing any HP. Once those three hits happen, a fourth hit will cause her HP to drop. While under the effects of the Green Crystal, her HP bar will flash. It will flash the brightest and faster while at three extra hits, it will flash dimmer and slower with two extra hits left and even dimmer and slower when there is one hit left. Once all three extra hits are gone, the HP bar will stop flashing and settle back on its default color. 

Golden Coins will likely be in the game as well, but at this time I don't really know what to do with them.

Cutscenes And Level Intros

I want this game to have cutscenes to help tell the story, as well as intro screens to the levels, similar to how each level in Zombies Ate My Neighbors, for the Super Nintendo, starts, where a black screen with the level number and a phrase is shown before the level starts, and also not too different from how the levels in Yoshi's Island (SNES) also start.

Progress Saving 

Along her journey, Amica should meet an inventor who invented a device capable of saving her progress, so she can always take a break when tired and resume her trip whenever she wants, right from where she left off. Created by Professor Ore, a komodo dragon, the device looks suspiciously similar to something we've seen in real life. He (or she. I still haven't decided if this character will be male or female) named his invention, the "KommodoOre 64".

This is everything I have for the time being. The game itself still doesn't exist, as I am still learning the basics of GDevelop 5 to make it. Everything you read here is currently subject to change. For now this is what's planned. Though there is no dragon game for you to play yet, you can follow the progress of its creation and maybe even help it become a reality sooner by becoming a Tier 1 subscriber on my KoFi. The entire making of this game will be shared there. You can already see quite a few sprites I've drawn for this game over there. Take a look! ---> https://ko-fi.com/mikedragon 

Don't want to subscribe to my KoFi or can't do it but still want to see this game slowly come to life? No problem! Progress of this game can be watched on my Sunday art livestreams, the Chill Art Sunday, over at my Twitch! ---> https://www.twitch.tv/mike_dragon VODs of my streams where I work on this game can also be found on my YouTube channel. ---> https://www.youtube.com/@MikeDragon

Not all Chill Art Sundays will feature the making of this game (and future games), as I like to work on my art on that show, but if you don't want to or can't subscribe to my KoFi to follow the progress of my games, then the Chill Art Sunday is where can do it for free.

Oh, and speaking of free, this game will be completely FREE when ready! :D Tips will be extremely welcomed, of course! But otherwise, it won't cost you a dime to download and play it. :)

Funding

Like with Natural, I have no plans to ask for any donations to help with the making of this, but I won't refuse any either, if any do come my way. Though I'll share more details about that at a later date. All I'll say for now is that any donation made towards this game will be rewarded with the donor's name in the game's credits.

Fun fact: Amica Draccodore is a reference to Commodore, the computer company, as well as their Amiga line of computers. Though I have never even seen a Commodore 64 or Amiga in real life, let alone own one, I do find them awesome machines and love playing their games on emulators. If I could, I'd own them, at least one of each. For this reason, Amica was originally going to be made with the Scorpion Engine Editor, which would allow me to compile the game to run on the Commodore Amiga. However I ran into a couple limitations and inabilities that I think would hinder my progress, so I abandoned it in favor of GDevelop 5. 

Amica Draccodore is a play on words, being Amica the Latin word for "Amiga", which is the feminine word for "friend", while Draccodore is just "Commodore" mixed with "draco", the Latin word for "dragon". The device used in-game to save the player's progress (assuming I can figure out how to implement that feature), the KommodoOre 64, is a direct and obvious reference to the Commodore 64 computer, and I plan to add a few more nods to Commodore computers (and likely a few others, like the ZX Spectrum) here and there throughout the game.

Oh, and one last thing... All of the sprites and art in the game will be drawn by me, with 0 AI involved.

When will the game be released? Only God knows. lol I cannot promise any date at this time, but hopefully sooner than later! I will be updating this page with screenshots as the game takes shape. When I can get something playable, I should release early builds for you guys to try out while the full game isn't ready.

Do you like games and dragons? Then keep an eye on this page! :D