Famine Forest

Inspiration

This game was inspired by retro arcade games and their minimalistic low bit graphics and how those graphics can inspire exploration despite being so low in detail.

What it does

Famine Forest is a game where you play as a lost hiker who is dying in starvation trying to find their way out of the forest with only a light source and a map to help figure out the way out. The game loop consists of the player exploring the forest more and more each run they do learning more about the layout of the forest and using the games drawing mechanic to try and draw the forest around them, giving them more information the next run they make as the map data persists if you die and restart. to help prevent starvation the player can find and eat wild berries in the forest to replenish some of their hunger bar. eventualy the player will have figured out the best route to get them out of the forest without starving.

How we built it

This game was built using the Unity game engine this was beccause of its robust tilemap system which we utilised to create the retro graphics art style and lighting system. Aseprite was used to draw the pixel art for the game. And Garage Band was used to produce the music track for the game, which was made with the intention of making a tense and mysterious experience for the player, with the track having forest sounds littered into the background to help the player feel immersed in the game

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge we ran into was the Unity editor crashing and buffering when we tried to export the game causing us to miss the deadline, this was due to some code left in the scripts that refrenced the unity editor causing the final build to fail and crash the editor.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are particualy proud of the custom lighting system we developed for the game, as instead of using the game engines built in lighting system we decided to develop our own that utilised the manipulation of a tilemap to change the lighting states of particular tiles around the player. This had the desired effect of replicating the arcade style cell shading art style that we originaly set out to encapsulate, making a more unique graphics system for the game

What we learned

The main skills we learned from this game jam was discovering how we could manipulate a tilemap in a myriad of ways to achieve stylised game mechanics and graphics.

What's next for Famine Forest

One key feature we wanted to add but didnt have time for was sound effects for the game, such as sounds for: walking, eating, drawing on the map and other general sounds that gives aditional audio feedback to player, creating a finalised polished game.

Built With

• aseprite
• garageband
• unity