In the fall of 2021, I had finally started my time at Neumont College of Computer Science…
For the final I decided to adapt a choose your own adventure book I had written in a creative writing class in high school. “Retro Metro” just comes from the name of the book, which I still dont remember why we called it that all those years ago.
I had a friend of mine, Brandon as a partner on the project and we decided to not only make an android app in java with branching pathways, but also throw in 4 different battle encounters with a very basic turn based kind of system. We had about 2 weeks and I was right in the middle of moving apartments. I rewrote the entire story to be well, better and had to tie together the two systems we built in one app.
I also made some visual assets and spent a good couple hours making the app look real pretty. In the end we got something I was pretty happy to see working.
In the future I would love to expand on the world established in this game. Retro Metro is certainly a unique idea, basically playing off theories about hollow earth/agartha and particularly the conspiracy theories believing that Tolkien’s works are actual historical works about what he saw in the earth’s core. Playing into the concept of the societies of both worlds becoming interconnected into a semi-cyberpunk future.
I had quite a bit of fun, despite how tedious it was, programming all the branching paths in java, and all the bug squashing I had to do after inserting the battle system. I would in the future like to study more about balancing in turn based RPG games so that when I make something like this in the future, I can make battles interesting but fair.
To read the presentation we showed with the demonstration click here
To download the free apk of the app click here
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