FMV-FPS Made in GDevelop: Indie Dev Showcases Game at Game Expo

Today, we speak with Piotr Bunkowski, a developer from Poland. He's been making a game that's a unique blend of first-person shooter and old-school FMV. So, let's see what challenges he faced, how he took his game to an expo thanks to a foundation, and more!

Piotr with his GDevelop workflow.

For those unfamiliar with your work, can you introduce yourself and tell us about One Rotten Oath?

My name is Piotr Bunkowski. I’m a dev from Tczew, Poland. On a daily basis, I work as an internal video game reviewer for Forever Entertainment. In my spare time, I’m working on FMV games. I managed to release one already called “ A Trip to Yugoslavia” back when I was in high school.

One Rotten Oath blends FMV and FPS with thriller elements. What inspired you to combine these genres, and what were the biggest challenges in making live-action footage work with FPS gameplay?

I've had the idea for One Rotten Oath since my first project. I knew I wanted to experiment with FMVs further than just choosing one of the available paths and completing a few QTEs like in my debut title. At first, I worked on a FMV + point & click hybrid with the team that helped me with "A Trip to Yugoslavia". It was called Purgatorium: A Family Torn Apart. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out great. Actually, it didn't even come out (except for an overly ambitious demo). Due to creative differences, I stepped down from the project and gave up on GameDev.

After 5 years I started working for Forever Entertainment. As an internal video game reviewer, I saw all these ambitious great games made by solo devs or really small teams. One day on my way home, I thought to myself: "C'mon, if not now then when?". I came back home and got to work.

I've always had a soft spot for post-apocalyptic zombie titles and FMV games. As for my inspirations I'd like to mention Realms of the Haunting, Resident Evil series, The Last Stand flash game and Wales Interactive FMV titles. At first, I wanted to create a rail shooter, similar to Area 51 arcade game or Mad Dog McCree, but I couldn't quite pull it off. After some tinkering and Googling, I bumped into YouTube tutorials, which showed me that the FPS genre is in fact possible on GDevelop (shoutout to Queue the Game Dev!).

Queue the Gamedev's videos on GDevelop have been many people's introduction to advance features in the engine.

I also found out about Pandako's WithThreeJS extension. From there, it was smooth sailing (at least to a certain point but we'll get there!). One of the biggest challenges was definitely pulling off that FMV vibe. I've spent a lot of time on the visual side of things. Since almost every asset was shot on green screen, there was a lot of post-production in various photo/video editing softwares. It easily took about half a year. Whenever I close my eyes, I can still see the Photoshop checkerboard.

You shot the footage in Tczew and Gdansk with actors including yourself and your brother Paweł. What was the production process like working with green screen on an indie budget?

The production process was super interesting. Forest and bunker photos were actually shot on the old military terrains in Tczew. I took them around 2017-2018 with an old Nikon Coolpix L110 for a completely different project that never saw the light of day. Then I put them through a cutout filter in Photoshop, so that they'll look even more bleak. I did so with the in-game characters as well. Speaking of which, since we were on a really tight budget, we couldn't afford any professional actors.

These scenes were recorded ad-hoc.

I've bought a green screen, laid it out in our 42m2 apartment, dug out my Sony Handycam and got to work. All of the mutants are played by me and my brother. I didn't have the lightboxes or anything like that. Just three ceiling lamps, camera flash and one (almost broken) camera LED light. I took out a few shirts that I was about to throw out and repurposed them for mutant clothes. We've also used a homemade fake blood, but it was barely visible in post-production. I borrowed airsoft guns from my father.

I recorded everything in 50 frames-per-second. Most of the FMVs were also recorded in the apartment that I've rented with my fiancée in Gdańsk. What's also interesting, Olga composed the entire soundtrack for the game. She asked for screenshots and just let herself go on her Kurzweil piano. She recorded everything in one shot, which definitely builds up the game's atmosphere even more. She also drew a few UI/UX elements, when I was tackling the sprites. I can definitely say that it's a family affair, even though they would like me to be in the spotlight.

The development of One Rotten Oath is a family affair.

The game has a meta element where it "starts to fall apart to reveal the truth hidden in the code." Can you tell us more about this narrative layer without spoiling too much?

Dual narration is a big part of One Rotten Oath. At first, it seems that we're playing as a survivor defending the bunker. After a few introductory levels, players will start to notice that the game glitches out and shows the dev working on the game that they're currently playing. Whatever happens in the dev's world, affects the survivor in-game. That's all I'm gonna say for now!

Why did you choose GDevelop for One Rotten Oath? Many might assume an FMV+FPS hybrid would need a traditional 3D engine. What made GDevelop the right fit?

I chose GDevelop, because I've heard that it's beginner friendly. You see, 5 years ago I was working in Unity. I was writing the code in C#. After a long hiatus, I started to doubt myself. After I got back to Unity, I felt overwhelmed and I had a hard time remembering the coding language. I decided to create a simple project on GDevelop to get back on track. It's using JavaScript, which for me was something a tier lower that C#. As you can see, this simple project turned out to be One Rotten Oath. After 3-4 months of coding, I didn't want to rewrite the code to the different engine. It was never about the right fit for the game.

Since I've gotten this far, I decided to check how far I can push the GDevelop. Of course, I encountered a lot of problems that I had to overcome in creative ways. For example, GDevelop supports one video per scene. That's terrible for an FMV game. Instead of giving up, I decided to cut every mutant frame-by-frame in order to put them on the stage. The basic mutant is made of 237 frames, separated into 4 animations. Cutting all the mutants took a lot of time, but I'm happy with how it turned out. I've heard some people saying that GDevelop can't handle fully fledged games. I can say they were wrong, because One Rotten Oath just entered the advanced testing phase and I'll be announcing the release date soon.

You attended PGA 2025 with support from Indie Games Poland Foundation. What was that experience like showcasing a GDevelop game at such a major event?

When I noticed that Indie Games Poland Foundation was looking for indie devs to showcase their games, I sent the application right away. I wasn't expecting it, but the game made it through the registration. Poznań Game Arena 2025 lasted for a weekend and almost 70000 players came to it. Our stand was visited by a lot of people and I was surprised when players were standing in the queue in order to play the demo.

Piotr and the team went to the expo and felt great about showcasing GDevelop.

Lots of players and devs asked me about the engine that the game is running on. To my surprise, not many of them knew about GDevelop. When I told them how it all came to be, some of them called me a madman, because they'd do the exact opposite and turn to the other engines.

You mentioned the PGG Quest where people could "kick your mutants" and gathering lots of feedback. What were the most valuable takeaways from the expo?

You have to be ready for various types of players. Some of them are casual. Some might be critics. Others can also be publishers incognito. What struck me the most was that players were saying that the game is so unique that it's actually hard to compare it to anything they saw up to this point. Of course, some players wanted to see hitmarkers and rifle bullets that penetrated the enemies.

This is already implemented (but not released for the public just yet!). In some cases, players suggested adding things that would show up in-game on the later levels. I had a situation where one of the players during the barricade section asked me to add some sort of radar/sensor, so that he could check where the enemies were. He was quite surprised when that exact mechanic showed up a level further. I was definitely accused of some kind witchcraft then and there!

Mutants, mutants, mutants!

Of course there were also some less fun interactions. One of the players worked for a big gaming company here in Poland and straight up told me that a 20-minute demo is too long for an expo and it should last 5 minutes instead. He criticized that dual narration was promised, but he hadn’t found it during the first 2 minutes of gameplay. He also said that the game feels like a huge missed opportunity. This type of feedback is completely irrelevant and feels like a vent out frustration, but it happens as well.

How did it feel returning to a big gaming event after a 5-year hiatus? What differences did you notice in the indie game scene?

It was totally surreal to be back on a huge expo. You know, I’d never thought I'd get to do that again. In the span of 5 years a lot of things changed. What struck me the most is that there’s a lot less experimental titles out there. I remember that back in 2012, the scene was booming with a lot of creative ideas. Now it’s mostly Vampire Survivors or Balatro clones. Whatever gets popular, it’s cloned immediately.

Slow burn games are starting to be in the niche, due to how fast and dynamic the social media currently is. I kinda miss the good old days, but I’m here to tinker around whenever it catches someone’s attention or not. Fortunately, Indie Games Poland Foundation chose a lot of interesting titles that aren’t afraid to try something new. I’ve also met some old friends that were also showcasing their games back in 2016-2017. It’s good to see how they evolved throughout the years and how they managed to gain attention, while staying true to themselves.

The game draws from retro FPS and early 3D aesthetics while staying friendly to older hardware. How did you balance that retro look with performance, especially with FMV elements?

FMVs are short and compressed to 15 MBs. The sprites definitely gave me a headache. At first, I rendered everything at FULL HD, but the game worked for exactly 2 seconds before crashing. I have to rescale the levels to 1280x768. Enemies had to be resized to 640x360. Everything is then upscaled to the player’s resolution.

Would you go into the bunker?

Previously, I rendered the enemies in 960x540, but that turned out problematic in the later parts of the game. Since there were already so many frames here, I opted to give every mutant a single hitbox. This led me to tank-controls implementation. If you don't have to worry about headshots and limb shots, you won't have to implement additional frames to an already demanding animation (also the work on the green screen was significantly faster).

The full version is scheduled for 2025. What can players expect beyond the demo, and would you recommend GDevelop to other developers working on experimental games?

Players can expect a few more plot twists and a couple of additional mechanics including a new gun - a double-barreled shotgun. That’s all I’ll say!

I’d definitely recommend GDevelop, especially for devs that are creating experimental games. Even if I hit the roadblock on something, I found a creative way to solve it. I think GDevelop can really inspire you to think outside the box. I mean, at the end of the day, most of the people I talked with thought it’s impossible to pull off. Yet, here I am talking to you guys and it’s great to be back in the thick of it!