Introduction

This is my first game I created with Game Maker. The reason is that I'm a beginner in game development. Game Maker provides an easy interface so it suited my needs. Besides, I made a good price during a Humble Bundle special in 2016 :wink: . "Bypassed" is an android game available in Google's Playstore: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appcs.bypassed

Game Icon

Game Idea

In the first place, I wanted to create a game in reminiscence of Nintendo's old Game & Watch games. Later on, I abandoned the idea of the typical stop-motion-movement of these games. I saw much more potential in smooth gameplay, so I changed the direction to an increasingly fast game with focus on quick reactions.

Goal of the Game

Every incoming car has to be directed to a lane having the same colour as the car. For this purpose the player selects the grey lane (transporting the car) as well as the proper destination lane. Following screenshots give an example.

Tutorial pt. 1

Tutorial pt. 2

Design

The game design is minimalist and colourful. For most elements I used colours from google's material design colour palette. The main colour is blue, with elements in prime colours red, green and yellow. Texts are usually white.

Game Logic

Managing lanes and colours

The most important part of the game logic are lists, each containing a special type of lanes.

The types are:

Free lanes: This list contains all lanes that are not used by a car and that could be used as an entrance for new cars.

Used Lanes: Contains all lanes that are currently used by a car.

Connected Lanes: Contains lanes that have been selected by the user through pressing the buttons.

A lane can exist in multiple lists. As an example, a lane can be used by a car and selected by the user. Hence, this particular lane has an entry in the "used" list as well as in the "connected" list.

On top of that, the game uses an algorithm ensuring there are always lanes in every possible colour, i.e. red, green and yellow. For easier game control it also ensures that a car can be transferred from the left to the right or vice versa.

Let us assume a yellow car appears on the left side. The game sorts the lanes' colours and guarantees that there will be a yellow lane on the opposite side (i.e. on the right). Thus, the game can be controlled with two thumbs. If this was not the case, the player would have to touch two buttons on the left in this particular example. Since the game is played in landscape mode, this would make quick interactions much more difficult.

Spawning

The game chooses randomly whether a car is spawned or not. For every new car its driving speed gets increased slightly. The minimal time between two spawned cars is based on this speed. As a result, the number of visible cars does not exceed 1 at any given time.

When a car gets transferred from one lane to another, it compares its own colour to the lane's colour. If it's the same the car moves on and the score is increased by 1. If not, the game ends.

Scores and Achievements

Bypassed saves the highscore both online and locally on the device. For Online highscores the game uses Googles Play Game Services (GPGS). These are easy accessable for me as a developer and players. Furthermore, GPGS provide unlockable achievements. There are achievements for new highscores and for the number of completed games.

Nonetheless, the game can be played totally offline without online highscores and achievements.

In-Game Advertising

The game uses the Google Mobile Ads SDK (AdMob). The game only uses interstitial ads at the end of a completed run. The game decides randomly when to show one.

I don't show banner ads because they look terrible and distract the player.

Game title

I named the game "Bypassed" because I think it's a suitable name and describes it in an abstract way. However, I'm not pleased with its effect on the ranking in Playstore's search results. There are many apps with descriptions containing the words "bypass" or even only "pass" that are ranked on top of my game. Among them a surprisingly large amount of VPN Apps :rolleyes: . Though, the game has already moved upwards due to a handful of downloads. So improvement is in sight

Quite recently I created a new facebook page which will get more content over time: https://www.facebook.com/PlayBypassed/

If you're keen enough to give it a shot, simply install "Bypassed" from the Playstore. It would make me very happy if some of you liked it and leave a positive review.

In this sense: You Shall Bypass!

Best regards,

Christian