Fennic Fox: Gunslinger’s Shooting Gallery Prototype
In 2014 I worked on an unfinished Flash game for Stencyl Jam #14 called Fennec Fox: Gunslinger. It was a dialed back idea of a bigger platformer game where an old timey cartoon character traipsed through different environments. I scaled back the idea even further to make a simple shooting gallery prototype. The basic game is functional but the bonus levels were buggy. Here’s some art from both games.
Title Screens
Gameplay
Fennec Fox
Targets
Backgrounds
I experimented with different rendering styles for the backgrounds. First I tried drawing them in the same program as the characters but that looked too flat. Then I tried painting them with a soft airbrush. Eventually I settled on something somewhere between the two – solid shapes molded with shadow, texture, and gradients. This is also where trouble started as you can see I made the backgrounds many screens wide. I’d sketched them that big originally figuring I could just crop where needed. I think I was just afraid a smaller level would make it look like a spammy flash ad instead of a game. Click for full images.
Baddies and Other Character Animations
Stencyl handles animations by designating milliseconds for each frame. I figured the sprites should use as few frames as possible to keep the motions snappy.