Dirt Stooge is essentially a slow and atmospheric platform shooter. The shooting is interrupted by game maker text boxes which usually have few words, saying things about characters you encounter or describing the shotgun firing. I added this at first because I wasn't sure if I wanted enjoyable combat in the game. I also just like seeing text boxes. I like how the text boxes jar the shooting and make things appear a bit more narrative based; the combat seems to disappear slightly and I think text boxes (hopefully) give impression of something going on. I also decided to try and abstract the combat more by making sounds more chirpy and old gamey, rather than having loud banging guns and explosions; I ended up wanting to turn the action into being less satisfactory I suppose, and also be less relevant to fighting.
The game is based a lot on my old game maker games when I started using game maker, and also the early clunky scrappy game maker work by other young developers found on yoyogames. I wanted dirt stooge to feel half jarring in it's graphics, animations, text boxes, and movement but also have it run smoothly amongst that so it doesn't give too much of a headache to player. The player moves smoothly but also teleports, so it's sort of dodgy looking but hopefully doesn't give headache to person looking at screen too much.
The game is slow and boring because I find that really appealing for some reason, so I tried to have that while trying to make it detailed at the same time. Although I don't really want people to spend much time in the game, so I sped up the walking speed a bit. I think I slowed it down a bit again. I supposed fast movement is good because you then have the option to spend time in the game or just run through quickly. I did try this, but it made the text boxes more jarring and annoying and didn't suit my intention. It's not really supposed to be fun in the end, I was more interested in getting the right feeling and atmosphere.
Still, there are a few long levels to walk through but unless you're getting something out of it just stick with first and first half of second level.
The music I have used is originally by http://sixshadowsix.newgrounds.com/audio/
I have altered it and messed around with it and other sounds in audacity
