snowysierra

[snowysierra]

My first PC game prototype was just this image.

This image is my FoxPaww game prototype. Usually game prototypes are interactive rough versions of a game with placeholder art. I've done that too for other games. But not this one.

I always prototype the most challenging part of the game. If I can't complete that, then I can't make the game.

I've created a few mobile games before, but never a PC game. On mobile, the graphics are small, so they don't have to be very detailed.

On PC, the graphics are displayed on a huge monitor. The graphics are very obvious and every detail is very visible. PC graphics are scary.

I've never really done much with graphics and treated them like an afterthought. So if I wanted to make a PC game, I would have to do better than that. I had to do Graphics First.

I was scared of drawing interactive game assets. I've never done that before. I'm not a game artist.

But I really wanted to create a PC game, so I gathered some courage and it took some patience. After taking my time and experimenting a lot, I ended up with this image. Once I had this, I knew I could work on this PC game.

[snowysierra]

It's fun to come up with different enemy types. In the video are a couple of pink slimes that split into smaller blue baby slimes.

I wanted to introduce as much variety in my game as I could, in every new level and on every new screen. So almost every level introduces a new enemy type and switches level themes.

The game originally started out with bigger enemies. I thought: bigger is better. And maybe that's true visually. But smaller enemies have more room to move around and are easier to avoid as an option. So more recent enemy types became smaller.

I wanted to make the pink slime huge and really exaggerate the effect of splitting into many smaller slimes. But after a few encounters with it, that become annoying. The smaller pink slime is easier to avoid, which is something I like. Lots of games don't allow me to avoid enemies without a penalty of some sort.

In my earliest versions of this game I planned on having huge bosses in the game as well, but I abandoned that in favor of just exploration and discovery. I think this game is pretty close to a cute metroidvania breakout though, if I added special power ups, puzzles and bosses. I don't think a game is ever done. I can add these features one by one in future updates. So I'll see what happens, what the initial reactions are on Steam and which direction that will take me with this game.

[snowysierra]

If it made me laugh, I'd put it in the FoxPaww game.

I knew I wanted horror themed levels in my game early on.

However, my design philosophy for the FoxPaww game was that every part in the game either had to be cute and make me go "Aww", or make me laugh.

At first I though this would be easiest to accomplish with the pumpkin obstacles. In the end, my favorites are the skull obstacles. They got pretty zany, especially once I finished animating them.

I also really like how the music for the spooky levels turned out. This might be my favorite song out of all of them in the game.

[snowysierra]

I needed a song for my snow themed levels. When I think of snowy landscapes, I think of cold wide open spaces.

So I tried to make this song sound more open, cold and ambient than my previous forest song. I applied the composition tricks that I learned in my previous song here too.

I like the initial build up the most, when the supersaw instrument is first introduced and followed by a layered more upbeat supersaw pattern. The song gives me a cold chill when I listen to it. So I think it captures the mood that I was going for.

The character is from the FoxPaww game on Itch.io and Steam. It's my favorite snowball character. I think it looks most fun when the character is chaotically surrounded by other happy snowballs like in the game ^^

[snowysierra]

I really love these happy jumpy kawaii snowballs ^^

The characters, obstacles and enemies. But also the character silhouettes in the lower right and the squishy animated life paws on the lower left. I think animation really adds to the cuteness for all of them.

I designed every character with different layers. Since it's all vector art, it's very natural and convenient to use as many layers as possible. When I drew everything, I wasn't even thinking about animation.

But then when I tried animating the different characters and elements, all these separate layers really worked to my advantage. I could do pretty much anything I wanted to make each character type unique though animation behavior.

I didn't plan ahead for these animations. I just messed around with it until an animation made me smile. And I think that's important. If it could make me smile and feel warm, maybe it could make other people feel the same way. So I hope I was able to capture that with every animation in FoxPaww.

If anyone is interested, there's a playable FoxPaww game demo on itch.io.

[snowysierra]

This the FoxPaww Forest song, inspired by lofi and chill trance.

This is the first song that I wrote for the game in LMMS. I tried to make a chill edm song to match the relaxing mood of the game.

My first few attempts didn’t work out. I used to play as a percussionist in an amateur orchestra, so I’ve always been heavily inspired by classical music. Thing is, classic music doesn’t sound good when played by electronic instruments. At least not when I’m doing it ^^

A friend of mine is a big fan of chill EDM genres and he helped me broaden my horizon when it comes to music. I learned to layer music patterns together. All this is probably basic stuff for more experienced composers and producers, but it’s all new for me.

At least in the end, I think I made a somewhat catchy song that fits the game. I hope to get better at this over time.

About the apple and paw animation. One of the apple characters in the game is swinging to the music, so I took it, modified it a bit and used it for this song too. It’s one of the non-animal characters that I really like.

[snowysierra]

FoxPaww in 10 seconds. Rescue the Red Panda, save the day!

I tried to make a game that's easy to pick up & quick to play. With a core gameplay loop that's easy to learn, difficult to master.

So I started with the standard brick-breaker game genre template. With just the paddle, a ball and some bricks to break. However, I quickly disliked the idea of having to break every single brick. I mean, I'm terrible with aiming with a paddle. Breaking those last few bricks was just annoying to me.

So I decided that the player can steer the ball directly. It just can't make sharp turns, but that's what the paw is used for. If I didn't want to break bricks, then I also needed a different goal.

I tried a few ideas, including defeating a bigger boss. In the end, though, because I love nature and animals, I settled on exploring nature and rescuing animals. The "bricks" would be funny, cute and merely obstacles for the main goal.

[snowysierra]

I really love these faces, so I animated them for the main menu.

This is actually my second attempt. In my first attempt, I discovered the fun of animating for the first time. So what did I do? I went wild!

Big exaggerated movements by all characters. Faces turning toward each other to greet the next character popping up. However, with all this exaggerated motion, the animation looked very goofy. I was going for cute. So while I had a lot of fun doing that, I had to start over.

A friend of mine advised me to keep the animation very simple and subtle. So I did exactly that. And yeah, I think this looks pretty cute, including the little eye blink at the end. I learned my lesson, less is more ^^

[snowysierra]

My "improved" game banner with characters, gameplay AND PAWS! ^^ I really like my first game banner with the cute faces. However, a friend of mine asked me how he could identify what kind of game this is and why a game called "FoxPaww" does not have any paws on the banner. Good questions. So here's banner version 2.0. Now showing off characters, some gameplay AND PAWS! Paw Five! ^^ I don't know which banner is better, they're very different. Maybe I just like them both ^^ If you're curious about my game FoxPaww, check it out on Steam or Itch.io ^^

[snowysierra]

I finally got my first furry PC game on Steam and Itch.io, woohoo!

FoxPaww: a cute furry breakout exploration game

You're a fox in this cute, funny, nature-themed brick-breaker game with a twist! Explore, discover and rescue its animal friends in 21 colorful, non-linear levels with an auto-map. Bounce or rotate your ball. Destroy or avoid cute obstacles. Levels are uniquely generated and highly replayable. Awoo!

This took a long time! I wanted to create everything myself. The artwork, animation, game design, music, sound effects and coding. It’s... overwhelming. I have no idea how I managed to finish this game, but somehow I did! Woof!

I have gained a lot of respect for other game devs. It’s difficult to make a game, even a small one. Fortunately, it’s also a lot of fun and very rewarding to see everything coming together in the end ^^

[snowysierra]

Art trade with @denstrytheflof

My next art trade! Again, I wanted to push myself to do better than last time. The character is still cartoony, but more cute and less silly. I drew the room in perspective, with the character relaxing and gaming on its Xbox in its bedroom. Along with some posters on the wall with a fox and kawaii minecraft. I didn’t know how I’d draw a convincing bed in perspective in the lineless art style, but I think it worked out fine. Hey there! ^^

[snowysierra]

Art trade with @boltrecord_drawings573

I got an art trade! Once again, because I was drawing for someone else, I had to try to make this drawing more detailed than anything I had done before. I was allowed to be more cartoony with the pose. So I tried to make a more expressive character along with a background! I hadn’t really done any backgrounds or settings before, so that was an additional challenge. The character is a bit silly ^^

[snowysierra]

Don’t eat me, I’m too cute!

Such a simple character, yet very important and dear to me.

It was a quick doodle for art-speak on a discord server. They were talking about restaurants serving bunnies as food. This felt like a funny response. I didn't plan on posting this as art, but the little fellow grew on me. In fact, this bunny has become one of my main placeholder characters when I work on my games ^^

[snowysierra]

Lovely Bunny

A friendly artist gave me gesture drawing exercises. Thanks to him, I'm less anxious at drawing full body characters. I'm very grateful. This was a difficult pose for me, and it probably shows.

[snowysierra]

Nibbling on fluff

After my first commission, I was a little disappointed that I wasn’t able to do a lineless full body furry character. And also, I thought that the paws still looked a little flat. So with this panda character, I tried to improve on all of that! I really like the pose and and paws here. I almost got used to the lineless art style and I don’t think it’s as limited as I originally thought ^^

[snowysierra]

Commission for Circuit Wolfy

It’s my first commission! I was so happy when I got this commission! I tried to keep expectations low, but I tried really hard to do a good job. I aimed for a full body pose, but I wasn’t ready for that yet. So it became a partial body and more detailed than anything I had done before. I love this character and want to thank Circuit Wolfy for the request! ^^

[snowysierra]

Check Please

This was my second attempt at lineless art. In my previous drawing, the character was facing forward. Here I wanted to retry drawing with perspective while keeping the art style lineless.

It was difficult to pick the right colors. Colors matter so much more in lineless art, because there are no lines to separate the various shapes. I also had to add a shadow line to make the snout stand out from the muzzle.