Cloud Runner

Main screen
Gameplay
In-game store

Inspiration

Inspiration came after watching a video of a pregnancy test running Doom. We were joking about commercetools being able to run on any device that can connect to the internet. Following this conversation, we were curious about how feasible it would be to integrate commercetools in a video game as many games today include an in-game store where you can use real money to buy content for the game.

What it does

The game is a simple 2D endless platformer with a MACH theme: you can earn coins in the game so that you can spend it buying items in the “Microservice Store” in order to get advantage against the enemies. Available products can be managed directly from commercetools’ Merchant Center and you can see how they appear and disappear in real time from the in-game store. Every time you buy a product in the in-game store, you can see created orders in the Merchant Center so that you can check them if you want.

How we built it

We used the Unity engine for building the game and for interacting with acommercetools we used an adapted C# SDK from commercetools in order to run in Unity. We modeled product data in the Merchant Center so that we can fetch it in the game.

Challenges we ran into

Our initial idea was submitting the game and making it available through a URL, so we were aiming to compile the game in WebGL using a CI integration in our repository. We were able to compile and deploy the game in a Github page, but due to some decisions we made about the commercetools’ C# SDK, the game was crashing. So, foreseeing that we wouldn’t be able to properly update the C# SDK by the deadline, we decided to submit the game as a standalone Windows and Mac executable.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re quite proud of the game we built given that nobody in the team released a game previously and some of the music and artwork are the very first attempts to do something like this. We’re also quite proud of pushing a little bit further the boundaries of what can be integrated with commercetools.

What we learned

We learned the basics of how to develop and publish a video game. From the initial concepts, to creating the art we wanted, through integrating the game with commercetools, to finally automating and deploying the game through our CI pipeline.

What's next for Cloud Runner

We want to update the commercetools SDK we used in order to be able to compile it in WebGL so that we can share it in a website for everybody to play it.
We would also like to expand the amount of items available in the store including different kinds of consumable items that enhance player’s speed, the possibility of buying different skins for the player and add some extra weapons.
Moreover, we’d like to use commercetools’ Customer entity to allow users to have a personal account for purchasing in the store.