Scrapper Life

Play Scrapper Life here:

My latest video game project, Scrapper Life is a 2D top down sci-fi text-based adventure where you take control of a space ship in a late stage capitalistic galactic empire and must scavenge, scrap, and make important decisions to make your quota! Inspired by elements of Slay the Spire and Inscryption.

I worked closely with the games artist to design the overall game’s aesthetic including the UI elements. We wanted to create a mix between old worn tech for the UI, while the game itself is meant to look more like a holographic display.

This project required a modular dialogue system that utilized global variables that changed based on text based decisions the player makes. To accomplish this I chose to use the program Inkle/Inky to act as our text based encounter editor. I had to learn the simple syntax for the program and how to establish and change global variables inside of the program itself. The choice to use Inky also required me to create a system of converting the Inky files into JSON files so I could process them as data and display the encounters text and choices in the games UI.

The project started with just Aeryn and I who worked together on Secants Lux. Again on this project I led game design and development, while Aeryn led Art and helped write the encounters in the game. Early on we were pitching each other ideas for the project and we grouped some of the better ones together. However, I wanted Aeryn to be able to contribute to the design not just visually, and with their previous DM roles in D&D campaigns, I chose the idea of a text based encounter game so we could both contribute to the story and gameplay design by way of writing encounters. Neither Aeryn or myself had much music experience so we recruited Ryan to create the guitar synth track for the game!