I have been fiddling a bit with Construct 2 for prototyping things fast and managed to get two working prototypes out of it. Both are endless runners and I’m not sure if they will move past being prototypes.

Prototype 1: The Zone

An endless runner game in which you are a stoner that goes to fetch a fan for a friend in need, but gets sucked up into The Zone. There he has to avoid obstacles to keep his fan intact and afloat.

I managed to make a decent prototype of a guy going up and down flappy bird style, you can die if you touch the enemies or the ground. It’s missing a lot of features, work, love and polish to make it stand out.

After one hour of work I decided to move the prototype to Mighty Editor, it seemed like a good idea at the time, because I find Construct 2 free to be way too limiting for a full fledged game and the event blocks drive me nuts after a while. It turned out that Mighty Editor got too much in my way for me to truly like it after a week of work, so I dropped it. I still like Mighty Editor’s concept and will keep an eye on it, to see if it improves.

You can play the zone here

Controls: Glide/move up with spacebar

Prototype 2: Money Run

Money run is a multiplayer endless runner in which a thief escapes from a cop, if one of the falls or gets caught, the other one wins.

I used assets I got in the Humble Game Making Bundle and I’m happy with what I have so far. I still have projects with higher priority, so it might not evolve into a full fledged game any time soon.

You can play money run here

Controls: Player 1: up to jump, Player 2: w to jump

Mistakes made and lessons learned:

  • Construct is nice for prototypes, but after a certain number of events, your head might explode and things will get more complicated than if you were using traditional code.
  • Mighty Editor offline version is a cool concept but needs more love.
  • It’s nice to be able to prototype fast, so you know which games are the best game you can make at the moment. Prototypes stop you from idealizing a game that is in your head.
  • It will be nice when Construct 3 comes out for linux, using a VM gets tiresome really fast.