Pheugo is the result of me trying to learn how to use Unity3D.
It really is more of a computer science experiment than any sort of planned out game, and indeed many features were dictated by the limitations I came across or new features that Unity added as the game progressed.
About 3 years ago I first came across Unity 3D and instantly fell in love with it. I had made a couple of apps in another SDK and decided to see what I could do with Unity. I downloaded a few examples and asset store packs and got to work tinkering and trying things out.
I eventually settled on the basic game mechanic that you see today in Pheugo and then just kept adding features and trying any cool idea that came into my head. Many ideas worked (sometimes after 3 or 4 attempts) and some ideas failed. I kept daily backups and each night I would playtest what I had done to make sure it had not impacted the performance of the game. Sometimes I would have to roll back a whole day or even a whole weekend worth of work and then approach the feature, bug or problem from a different angle.
As my confidence grew with Unity3D I stepped into optimisation and in this respect Unity’s profiler really has no equal. I became obsessed with getting Pheugo to run faster and faster with no lags whatsoever which would eventually see me re-write various parts of Pheugo 2 or even 3 times until I had completely nailed that section, feature or task. I was simply astounded and very intrigued about how much I could throw at Unity so I just kept pushing the envelope by adding features in a CPU and GPU in-expensive way.
Sometimes I would be at my day job or in the shower and an idea would pop into my head about how I could shave 1 draw call or 4 instructions off and still get the same result. I would end up having many, many little ideas like this and altogether they have made Pheugo one of the fastest games of its type.
I really like old retro games especially the Atari 2600 and Arcade games so I watched and read many articles about how those old games were made – the ideas, constraints, and strategies that were used by the developers at the time.
I love how many of these games (whilst not having the best graphics) are fun but require good hand-eye coordination, very quick thinking, real-time decision making and a little bit of practice to master them. I really hope Pheugo has become a modern-day take on those old Arcade style games set on 21’st century technology and aimed at pure gamers who grew up playing Mario, Sonic, Space Invaders and Galaga. I hope you enjoy Pheugo as much as I enjoyed making it.
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This article was Published by Edamame Reviews, Written by The Mush Dev Studio Team.
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