For my brother’s 21st Birthday I wanted to create a gift as special as my birthday present from him, the result - a mobile adventure with Owen, the Boy wonder at the centre. A short trailer for the Adventures of the Boy Wonder I designed the game to look as much like comic book as I could while integrating into a classic 2D platformer.

Artwork

All the artwork was hand drawn with a digital tablet (with many iterations - drawing is hard) inspired by the style of the JL8 comic by Yale Stewart and the platformer, Hollow Knight.

Website

In order to gift the present the game to Owen I spun up a quick website using a GatsbyJS theme at https://adventuresoftheboywonder.com.

There’s some of the initial artwork there including my very poor attempt at creating a sprite sheet for an idle animation before moving to a skeletal animation player.

Some of the artwork from the game

Development

The game was built using the Unity 3d game engine - there are great tools and resources online to guide a newbie through 2D game design basics. YouTube channels such as Brackeys and Blackthornprod were excellent in getting the game from an idea into it’s current form.

More to Come

The game isn’t quite finished just yet, I had no idea the amount of time it would take to piece together but I intend to keep developing until all the initial ideas are in the game and it’s ‘complete’ - I’ll keep you posted with updates.

Available for Download

The game is available for download now on Android and iOS