The Meteor Has A Name Now

So the meteor game has an actual name now. It’s called Rex Summons a Meteor.

Which is much better than the old working title, partly because it’s shorter, but mostly because it actually has the word Rex in it - which you’d think I would have remembered to include from the start given the studio name, but here we are.

Anyway, quite a lot has changed since the first devlog. For one, you no longer get obliterated in 1.2 seconds, which my playtesters (well, me) agreed was an improvement. But more importantly, the game has grown from “vague prototype with a falling rock” into something that actually looks like a finished game. Kind of.

Three Islands Instead of One

The original plan was a single island. Just a quick little beach where you run a couple of errands and leave. But then I started dressing it with ferns and palms and rocks, and before I knew it I’d placed over a thousand props and built three separate islands.

There’s the tutorial island where the Shaman’s ritual goes wrong (twice, because he doesn’t learn), the main island with a fern hollow, a pirate cove, and a massive cliff-ringed peak, and a third island you reach via a dinosaur ferry. I keep telling myself this is a small game, and then I keep adding things like an Elasmosaurus public transit system.

Still No Words

The no-dialogue thing is still my favourite part of this whole project. Nobody says a single word. There are no subtitles, no text boxes, no helpful popups telling you what to do. Every single conversation is pure cave-painting emoji.

The Shaman asks for ingredients by showing you a picture of himself looking angry at a rival dinosaur, followed by a list of items with ticks and crosses. A Triceratops wants socks, so she shows you a picture of her four feet and three socks, which is going to be mechanically awkward for everyone involved.

Working out what they actually want is the whole joke, and honestly it’s much funnier than any dialogue I could write. It also means I don’t have to translate anything into other languages, which is a massive bonus because localisation is expensive and I’d rather spend that money on more dinosaur asset packs.

First-Person Snout

You play as a juvenile T. rex, and because it’s first-person, I wanted you to actually feel like a dinosaur. If you look down, you can see your snout, your tiny arms, your legs, and a tail trailing along behind you.

The camera sits inside the skull, so the head is the only bit we don’t draw (otherwise you’d just be staring at the inside of your own teeth, which is a bit much). There are six different ground surfaces now - grass, sand, rock, dirt paths, shallow water, and dry flats - and each one has four different footstep sounds with random pitch variation so it doesn’t sound like a metronome when you run.

The Big Rock in the Sky

The meteor itself isn’t a painted skybox or a flat sprite - it’s a real 3D rock sitting 1,600 metres out in the sky. As you walk across the island, the angle actually shifts with parallax, and as the game progresses from act to act, it gets noticeably closer.

The lighting changes too: the sun dims down, goes deep orange, and the sky turns this bruised violet colour with a weird warm horizon. It gives the whole island this tense, end-of-the-world atmosphere while you’re running around trying to find a skateboard for a raptor.

What’s Left to Do?

Quite a bit, honestly:

• Act 3 climax. The final island exists, but the big finale scene needs to be hooked up properly in Godot.
• Music. I have a dynamic three-tier music system designed to get more intense as the meteor gets closer. Right now, all three tracks are completely silent. So that’s going well.
• Steam page. I’ve written the description and picked the tags, but I haven’t paid the $100 fee or cut the capsule art yet.

It’s getting there, though! It’s still meant to be finishable in a single evening, which is the whole point. I just need to stop adding new dinosaurs and actually finish the ones I have.

Until next time!