At long last, Sam is ready for takeoff! This is a game project I have worked on for over a year, the first post in the game development forum thread for this game is from February 2024!

Now the project is finally at a point where I feel comfortable showing it to all of Newgrounds. :-) Check out the demo for Savanna Sam:

I'm really looking forward to see people finally play this game, I hope they like it!

It's been a while since the last time I uploaded something to my Newgrounds profile. The last illustration is from 2022, after all.

However, I have a pretty good excuse, at least for the past 9 Months. In January, I started a new game project as a solo developer after taking a break from making games for the past few years. This has turned into my biggest solo project so far!

Introducing: Savanna Sam

Sam is a cartoon character I drew just for fun. I just enjoyed the idea of a giraffe flying in a way to small airplane and how they would have to evade obstacles both with their head and the body of the plane.

In fact, I liked the character so much, that I decided to model him in 3D:

And because I liked him in 3D even more, and wanted the 3D model to actually do something, I started to program a game around the character!

The Game

Months of work later, I'm getting close to a playable demo for the game:

In terms of gameplay, Savanna Sam is similar to the Star Fox series, but with less shooting and more evading objects. Sam is a flying package deliverer and you need to make sure he reaches the end of the level so that the cargo gets to it's destination.

On your way there, you can collect items and golden rings to increase your score. The gameplay is pretty straight forward, but I have a couple ideas to keep each level interesting.

The Art

It is my ambition to create as much aspects of this game myself, including the programming, the graphics as well as the music.

And I have already made quite some progress. The game is using low-poly 3D graphics with hand painted textures to depict it's world. These are a few examples for objects and characters you will see in the game:

Next Steps

As mentioned, I hope I will have a playable demo ready soon. If everything works out, I'll be able to upload the demo to Newgrounds next month.

Until then, I will keep posting updates to the Savanna Sam Development Thread over in the Game Development message board. I've been documenting the progress of the game over the past couple of months, so if you are curious about the steps the game has made already, check it out!