Dogglo is a grim, stylized platformer about a special dog named Blank, who is seemingly lost to time and has entered some strange, ethereal realm. You are met with a companion in the form of a little bat named Pip who helps you out and gives advice throughout your adventure. Blank has newly discovered powers that allow him to ward off evil and fight against harmful spirits and Pip’s powers allow him to reach parts of and interact with parts of the world Blank normally couldn’t. The player controls both characters simultaneously to navigate a weird world of challenging action and puzzles.
This was a really fun project I did in my last semester at Marist College for an advanced game programming class. This game was developed in a little over a month and half using the Godot 4 engine (that had just released at the time) and both my own created and royalty-free assets. This project was one of the biggest game project’s I’ve completed that was not in my familiar engine of Unity, which felt really good. I had always struggling with Python, so the scripting language was a bit of a challenge at first. I could also optimize everything a little or use much better programming practices in general.
One of the most unique factors about this platformer is the way the characters are controled. The keyboard (WASD) controls the movement and actions of Blank as you navigate platforming levels, jumping, dodging, attacking, etc. The mouse controls Pip freely around the screen like a cursor and allows the player to enter inaccessible areas to Blank, trigger switches, or collect unreachable items. This is a crucial tool for a lot of the puzzle solving and how you actually progress through a level.
Blank is also radioactive and has the power to glow! This fends off ghoulish enemies but more importantly, reveals a hidden world around you. This state is not infinite however, so you will have to manage your time in and out of glowing when in a jump puzzle or surrounded by a group of enemies.
There are only two areas so far, Wagwood Forest which serves as the tutorial area and Caudal Castle, meant to be a slice of a much later level. I had many more areas planned that would thematically blend into each other as you were lead deeper into this dream state. Cutscenes and dialogue with other friendly creatures would allude to information about the characters and world they now found themselves in.
This is another project that I would love to continue working on. The idea part is always the easiest so all that I’ve written in my little notebooks would just be instructions on what to build. Certainly one positive of working on a project as a solo-dev.
I hadn’t planned to release this game at all, but I got some great feedback from the few people that I did show it to. I think if I did a full release, it might be on Itch.io or self-published some other way. And I don’t think I would hit any sort of major commerical success, but hey you never know!
This project was only built for Windows at the moment but I think it’s simple enough to where it could be made for Mac/Linux as well as handheld devices like a Raspberry Pi. If you happen to download the game from above and give it a try let me know what you think!
