Welcome to our first look at how Goblin Games created Laser Wing, our shoot ’em up homage to old school side scrollers such as R-Type and Ikaruga.
The main goal of this project was to create an example game to show students of the University of Northampton what they can create on our new arcade cabinet.
Early development was getting the shooting and movement feeling correct with placeholder assets. Here’s the earliest example of the game!
From there we tested some assets created in preproduction, adding enemies that shoot, background sketches and model concepts.
A lot of the core mechanics were locked in early such as a dash mechanic you can see above and a charge meter that fills to give you a powerful shot.
Whilst the shot visuals themselves changed a fair bit, the time and feel of the weapon is almost identical to the final implementation.
Stay tuned as next time we will look at the preproduction for the game including backgrounds and ship concepts!