This one changed a lot in its two week development. I'm writing this in case any fellow developers are interested in the creative process.

My previous project didn't garner much attention, which I attributed to being a slow-paced text game, so I wanted my next game to be the exact opposite. Lowrez Jam was a great opportunity because the 64x64 restriction meant that I could create graphics very quickly.

My initial inspiration was Paradroid (1985). In fact, the Influence Device has a cameo in the finished game. I started by simply making a clone – you are an AI which hops from one robot body to another. I then came up with a story about the AI having its original body destroyed and now it's out for revenge... then it hit me: isn't this the plot of Hang 'Em High (1968)? That's how the western element got added.

Eventually, I scrapped the body-hopping because I grew too attached to the first character I designed. So I made them change colours instead. With that, the whole revenge plot was dropped but I still wanted to keep the sci-fi western theme.

Originally, there was a hacking minigame similar to Paradroid, although it would've involved using a digital revolver to shoot through a firewall. The protagonist didn't have "gun" animations back then, simply firing from their body, so I wanted a gun to appear in some form. This was originally prompted with a short-range zap but it felt uninspired, so I came up with the lasso idea. Realising that the lasso was difficult enough to use and the hacking minigame just slowed the game down, I scrapped the minigame altogether. The aesthetic was kept for the map screen instead.

Besides Paradroid, Berzerk (1980) and Atic Atac (1983) were further inspirations. One of the enemy types, and their behaviour, is directly based on the robots from Berzerk. The map design and collection-based gameplay was all Atic Atac. There was an underground layer you could use to quickly travel across the map but I scrapped it due to time constraints.

As development time ran out, I had to half-ass certain elements, like the objective and the results screen. I wanted the CDs to be guarded by special enemies, who would've been presented with wanted posters before the game starts, and to return to the starting room once you have them all. The finished game has 12 weapons... but I wanted 22! I had to scrap 10 enemies, some of which were fully animated!

I will absolutely do a post-jam update to fix some of the things I'm not happy with, but I will be moving on to other projects instead of adding the cut content back in. Maybe I'll do a sequel some day, who knows.