Cut Out Shoot Out

Cut Out Shoot Out is a dual stick side scrolling shooter.

Move	Right Thumbstick	WASD
Jump	Left Bumper/Up thumbstick/A button	Spacebar
Aim	Right Thumbstick	Mouse
Fire	Right Bumper	Left Click
Pause	Start or +	ESC

The original idea was "Trash vs Pompous," and it's based on how a beginner feels about their art versus "real" art. Your art is real art and whatever your skill level, you can nail a style.

I realized many beginning artists thought they lacked the tools they needed to make a game. And most believed they lacked the skills. I asked one to draw a stick figure. From there, I took a picture with my cellphone camera, and attached it to a basic platformer character controller. I asked them to add a few frames of animation and repeated the process.

For this jam, I developed this style into a workflow with Aelita. I would request an asset (like the slime guy), and she would draw it on paper. After a bit of back and forth with feedback and redesign, she would take a "good" picture by going outside in the sunlight and getting a shadow-free cellphone photo of the drawing. Then she'd load it into Gimp, cut out the asset (alpha mask the background), and send it to me over Discord. No fancy Wacom tablet. No expensive programs. Just cheap dollar store art supplies, a cellphone, and Free Open Source Software!

Toward the end of the jam (2 days left), we still didn't have a level. We had a test environment I planned on developing into a level, but that was it. I mentioned this problem on my "to do" list, and Aelita volunteered. After a few minutes of tutorial, and a few hours on her own, she came back to me with a brutal, but fair, level that scales difficulty very well. I was afraid my slime AI was too hard or too easy,, but Aelita managed to make them the perfect challenge at every stage.

I originally planned on making the "Pompous" art myself by cutting out famous art and figure out monster designs from that. But Alley stepped in and did an amazing job creating the Bunnies from scratch and also creating the final boss assets. She did an amazing job taking a classic work and meticulously extracting an iconic element without making it look like it's missing (sorry I'm being vague; SPOILERS!)

• Ryan Leverenz, Production, Programming, Design, https://greenf0x.itch.io/
• Alley Mitchell, 2D Art, https://itch.io/profile/flip63hole
• Aelita Mullet, Cutout Artist, Level Design
• Júlio Roque, Sound Design and Music, https://jotace.itch.io/
• Lowlande9000,  Player Character, https://lowlande52.itch.io/
• Sammy Mahmoudi, Additional Music, https://bagelo-masterson.itch.io/

Engine: https://godotengine.org/

Materials (cardboard, etc): https://ambientcg.com/