Such a fun game to make! Many lessons were learned on this one. 

Invasion of the Heart (IotH) took a lot out of me, stretching my knowledge of game development and researching ability. Many times I was stuck on an issue like assigning enemy paths, positioning bullets and screen clearing. 

The beginning of the development process for this game felt like a rush compared to my first game Wing-Pack Joyride, I was riding the high of completing my first real game and was throwing as much down as I could. After putting down placeholders for everything (the angels that you see below), creating player movement and the enemy starting point came surprisingly easy. Although the first problem soon arose, enemy bullet spawning. Suffice to say the bullets were not falling as intended, I tried everything I could think of and had to step away to do some research. 

Ultimately, I figured out the child/parent system of Godot and spawning bullets became a breeze. This way of thinking and set of actions continued throughout the dev and art process for this game, and I hope to carry it forward with me.   

Speaking of art, this game is all original art. Improving at art is important as I hope to make VNRPGs and one of the big sticklers for games like that is art. The biggest lesson learned art-wise from this game is the power of the symmetry tool to really speed up development and make cool designs. In particular is the armor for the heavy mob, really thought that one was cool. 

One other lesson is to follow an art direction, for this game I wanted to lean into prime colors and less shaded stuff which also made the development process faster as well.  Lastly the space background, such a cool blend of Clip Studio Paint's oil brush of purples and blues on a dark background, lowering opacity, some distant star dots and sprinkles of closer shiny stars all on a massive 3840x2160 canvas. So cool! 

Overall, this game was so fun to make, I truly feel like I am learning game development. I am so happy to be making progress in this challenge and look forward to the next game!

So the next game? Game 4 of the 20 Games Challenge seems to be an even wilder space adventure! stay tuned and thank you for reading!