Dark Skies

Inspiration

In creating this project, we took inspiration from another vertical jumper: Jumpking. While our project very obviously differs greatly, we saw a number of parallels between the game narrative of climbing up and falling down, and of the struggles of dealing with mental health problems. We tried to address a variety of mental health issues: unfortunately, the current state of our game does not address them as holistically as we would have liked.

What it does

Dark Skies is a vertical platformer about climbing up through various challenges. For example, in the second level, the jumper is affected by a debuff, which affects the movement speed and jump distance and height of the jumper. In the third level, we planned to have the camera invert and have the user complete the stage upside-down, a metaphor for one's world being turned on it's head. Along the way, we planned to have friends and family provide words of encouragement -- in our long term vision this interaction plays a crucial role in actually climbing the tower.

How we built it

The game was made in Unity, with a number of the sprites coming pre-made. We also designed some graphics in Adobe Illustrator, and published the final site on Weebly.

Challenges we ran into

The main challenges we ran into were of completion of all the ideas and mechanics we came up with within the allotted time. Group availability was also a problem we ran into, as our group members were often engaged in various activities during the project period.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

While the game wasn't exactly finished to the plan, the substantial amount of work we completed in the short time period is remarkable. The research we conducted about the topic of our interest, as well as the research we did to resolve problems that occurred when we were actually making our game is certainly valuable experience for the future.

What we learned

As only two of our members had used Unity at all previously, this was an incredible experience to get closer to and better at using this game design engine.

What's next for Dark Skies

We'd like to more fully incorporate our central focus of mental health into the game. This problem is so hard to address, and as such, it is the central aspect of any project that attempts to undertake it. For us, we feel like we could have done a better job representing the issues, and we hope that we can build a more complete game with more levels and more DLC in the future. We hope to make this DLC payable, and donate the money to charities involved with mental health.