Designing Indiana Bones

Indiana Bones started from the simple desire to create a 2D Platformer. This game was not the first platformer I've made, but I went in intending to create set pieces and tap into environmental storytelling. The straightforward narrative of spelunking in a jungle seemed a good fit for my first foray into using level design to convey a narrative. This narrative alludes to the opening of the first Indiana Jones film, which creates the next logical question of "how can I make a pun out of the title Indiana Jones?" Thus the basis of Indiana Bones was born from a pun. The controls of Indiana Bones arose from this pun, with bones being your weapon of choice with a risk and reward mechanic through the ability to throw bones at the cost of health. The other main feature of playing dead to avoid attacks also fit within the pun and was inspired by the dry bones shell power-up in Super Mario Maker 2.

After creating this core moveset, I planned out the level structure and all the level gimmicks I wished to implement. I planned for four sections with Indiana Bones exploring a jungle, waterfall, and mountain, before reaching the temple and being chased by a boulder as another allusion to Indiana Jones. Before I started the level design, I programmed all the level mechanics ranging from keys to fire enemies to moving platforms. Some mechanics were added later, such as spiders and TNT to add more variety, but implementing most features early on allowed me to design Indiana Bones with a clear vision of the final product.

Throughout development, I still made significant changes to Indiana Bones to create a better game feel. For example, the enemies of Indiana Bones initially took three hits to defeat, which was lowered to two hits before I decided to make all enemies take one hit to defeat. The larger health bars disrupted the fluidity core to platformers, especially for Indiana Bones, where the primary attack also served as a dash. This large-scale change had significant ramifications on the game's balance, but the result was a game with a much better game flow.

Indiana Bones is a game that, due to its origins as just a pun lacks a strong twist on the well-established genre of 2D Platformers but served as a good experience for me in developing a solid design process.