Indiana Stone: The Brave and the Boulder
A premium indie mobile game developed using Unity.
Role: Design, Programming, Sound, Art
Trailer
About the project
This one’s at the core of my current career in game development. It’s a passion project developed in the evenings while working days at a litigation software company as an Install Wizard.
It’s hard to explain, but I had my heart set on some kind of Indiana Jones parody using a voxel art style. While learning Unity, my “hello world” project to test basic collision and player input was a simple action game called Pogo Stone where the goal was to smash as many Indiana Jones-esque characters as possible while guarding a golden idol.
Once I felt confident in my abilities to make a fully realized game for profit, I noticed app stores were inundated with infinite runners due to the wild success of Temple Run. Clearly, this was the perfect opportunity to leverage my concept as the world’s first anti infinite runner.
Challenges & Solutions
Finding the right design
It can be tricky to find the right mechanics when the player character is the antagonist. You can’t leverage exactly what worked in the genre you’re riffing off of.
💡 I decided to play off classic video game tropes, but in reverse. The “Indy” character has a lives counter, but in this game the goal is to get the hero’s lives to reach 0.
Random, challenging but fair obstacles
When placing random obstacles and power-ups, it’s easy to end up with unfair situations that cause the player to take damage no matter what, especially if they go for the power-ups.
💡 This game uses a complex “tunnel chunk” system with hundreds of hand-crafted segments. They’re pieced together in a way to keep high tension (based on difficulty level) with designated “safe spots” that power-ups can appear.
Surprising depth with clever onboarding
The trend at the time was single stage games with minor rewards to slowly grind for. My goal was a simple premise with a surprisingly high skill ceiling. All of this serves making the game truly memorable for those who dedicate their time to it.
💡 The game’s embedded achievement system unlocks extra boulder types with different attributes, extra difficulty modes, and additional one-off challenges. The one-off challenges are secretly tutorials for the game’s advanced mechanics, which lead to additional unlocks, including a super secret stage, boss, and ending. The result is a smooth experience that has something new to offer for hours upon hours, without any grinding.
In-game footage
The first 20 minutes.
Post-Release
I was lucky that the App Store decided to feature Indiana Stone under two prominent lists: “New & Noteworthy” and “Games We’re Playing.” This gave me ample time to enjoy the spotlight.
Aside from the modest profits and glowing reviews, I later found that execs from Cartoon Network were thoroughly enjoying it. This led to them seeking me out. Soon after, I enjoyed a professional relationship with them for many years.