Bionic Slammer now has a playable demo!


Hello everyone! 

As Christmas approaches, it is exciting to announce major updates about our games in development. And today I am really happy to finally be able to share with everyone a playable demo of Bionic Slammer! Bionic Slammer has been our biggest project to date, and we are proud to be part of it, despite the difficulties related to the scale of the project. This is why we rarely communicate, and take our time to reveal new elements. We thought we could announce a release date earlier, but ultimately we remain cautious. An indie project like this requires evolving slowly to improve over time.

We had started thinking about Bionic Slammer in 2021 during the covid quarantine. During the whole year of 2021 we chose our tools, wrote texts, looked for references that we liked, tested different solutions in Unity, and we defined the game we wanted to make. In 2022 we had a playable prototype and could really start development. Yves made a bunch of drawings for the environments, while Simon used them to build the world of Bionic Slammer, and to start tuning the gameplay and enemies.

In 2023 we were fully invested in Bionic Slammer, and we worked hard on the game. Producing such a game, mainly with two people (and with the occasional help of external people), is long and monotonous. You have to hang on, keep producing day after day, even if you feel like you will never see the end of the project. The team had the support of Yazorius, our musician. Always in contact with Simon, Yazorius started composing the game's music from the reference visuals, and descriptive texts. Being able to combine the audio with our already well-developed game really helped us realize the work already accomplished, and it was really motivating.

2024 was pretty similar to 2023, but it was our 2nd year of producing the game, we were a little more tired, and we knew that the only goal was to finish the level design and enemies. Thanks to all the work that was done, we were able to isolate a small part of the beginning of the game, and make it the playable demo that we share today! The creation of this demo took us a long time. It has been polished to look as much as possible like the game we want. We still have a lot of work to do for the full game, but we made a giant leap!

We hope you enjoy this demo! Of course, it is not perfect yet, but we can finally show you what we have done so far. If you discover the webgl/html version and like it, or are curious about it, then please take the time to play the Windows PC version (free download), as it is prettier and more readable. We also recommend using the Xbox controller. The current gameplay is closer to old school games that we love, that we played in the 1990s and 2000s, and that we would like to see again in 2d hd.

We did not want to make a competitor to Castlevania or Hollow Knight: Bionic Slammer is not a pure metroidvania, it is our own vision of the 2d platform games that we grew up with. Please do not be disappointed if this game does not seem to you to live up to your favorite games: it is our own project, with our ideas, and we are not trying to make a metroidvania that follows a precise model, nor the best game in the world. We want to make the game that we would like to play, but we must also be realistic with the size of our small team.

Soon 2025: we would like to release the game this year, or the following year at the latest. It all depends on the beta testing phase, the player reception and the amount of issues to be resolved. We don't want to give a specific release date, but we want it to be soon. If we progress well, and if players like the demo, then we will consider releasing a new demo later in the year, as well as more videos.

The game is currently planned for Windows on Steam and itch.io, but we hope to release it on other platforms. For that we still have to decide if we will release it alone, as a completely independent game, or if we will entrust our baby to a publisher. We don't know yet if a serious publisher could be interested in our game, and on which conditions. The players' reception will have a lot to do with it, so we need to see if we can reach a part of our targeted audience.

Currently the game is 70% done. The level design is 99% done, the enemies are 90% done, the bosses are 75% done, the music is 100% done. We then need to polish the gameplay, add events, cutscenes and side quests, including shops to buy bonuses... There will come a stage where we will play the game in private to look for everything we can improve, and then finally we will launch the Beta test. We have not decided whether this Beta test will be private or public, but we will inform you in due time. It will not happen before several months.

We hope that you enjoyed the demo and the Reveal video, that you will want to know more, and play the final game. If so, we definitely need you! Follow the game on itchio, add it to your wishlist on Steam, and talk about it around you! Thank you in advance for your enthusiasm and support. All your ideas are welcome: do not hesitate to contact us in the comments area. See you soon!

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