Frigid

gameplay
jumping!

Inspiration

Inspired by games like Flappy Bird and Temple Run, we wanted to create an endless scrolling game depicting the race against time with climate change. We set our game in Antarctica, with melting ice blocks to create a sense of urgency as our penguin races across the screen collecting coins to fundraise for organizations related to marine conservation.

What it does

Frigid is a 2D platformer game featuring Penguino, a baby Emperor penguin that you help to traverse the treacherous expanses of the Antarctic. Set in a continuous scroll of an ever-changing, procedurally-generated landscape, Penguino must stay on the move to avoid the rapidly melting ice behind him.

How we built it

This game was built with love using Unity 2D, C# scripts, PhotoShop, Pixel Studio, and more. All assets are original and handmade by us!

Challenges we ran into

As primarily beginner hackers, we had trouble navigating GitHub with the Unity interface because of the large amount of temporary and background files. We didn't understand how to utilize branches and .gitignore files to compartmentalize our code and prevent merge conflicts. Due to time constraints, we had to prioritize certain mechanics over others and focus on the most crucial components before we could add APIs and additional functionality. We had to do a lot of learning as we went, from familiarizing ourselves with Unity and pixel art platforms like Pixel Studio to Frankensteining tutorials together to create the functionalities that we needed, such as procedural generation of the terrain and character animations. After establishing these features, we ran into other challenges, such as ensuring constant camera movement on one axis while tracking the player on the other and with reinitializing the game once the camera eclipses the player and Penguino is lost to the sea.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We had a lot of fun creating assets, such as the pixel artwork and animations for our penguin character and the Antarctic landscape for the background of our game. We're proud of the cohesiveness in our game's aesthetic and of the amount of functionality we were able to achieve given our beginner background with Unity and GitHub and with the time that we had to learn, troubleshoot and debug. We're proud of the fact that we asked for help, learned a ton, and that we came together to create this project!

What we learned

After spending a considerable amount of time with the Bandwidth mentors, we learned the value of branches and left with an overall better understanding of how to use GitHub effectively. We were able to implement a lot of cool features, including adding a coin counter, creating jump animations, and resetting the scene once the player "dies" by hitting the left side of the screen. We also learned a LOT about game development, creating mechanics in Unity, and that we can create anything we dream of if we put our hearts into it <3

What's next for Frigid

We have so many dreams for the future of Frigid! Firstly, we'd like to work on fun features like adding music, adding oil spills to the terrain that slow Penguino down, and bringing in new characters for Penguino to help out as a side quest (e.g. Alfonzo the albatross, whose wings are trapped by plastic debris), thus drawing further attention to environmental issues. We'd also like to use Firebase make this game available on mobile devices and integrate Google Cloud APIs like AdMob to generate revenue that we plan to donate to marine conservation efforts. We also have lots of ideas for integrating Twilio, which we would use to send out fun facts about the environment and links to support conservation efforts after players reach milestones within the game.