Ocean Oasis

Main menu and Loading screen

Inspiration

Ocean Oasis is a level based challenge game where player would complete level challenges. The levels are actually real life world river and ocean location that are currently suffering with high waste pollution. For our current progress, we are able to plan out 5 main locations which are mapped from Level 1 to 5 correspondingly

Level 1 - North Pacific Ocean (Complete gameplay)
Level 2 - Mississippi River (In progress, coming soon)
Level 3 - Ganges River (In progress, coming soon)
Level 4 - Yellow River (In progress, coming soon)
Level 5 - Citarum River (In progress, coming soon)

What it does

Ocean Oasis is a video game intended in educating the players , the importance of waste management and raise awareness of the pollution level in the sea , ocean and rivers around the world.

As mentioned earlier, each level is referring to a specific locations, where players will be able to complete challenges for each level. Each level mainly have two type of challenges that is

"Ocean CleanUp"
"BossFight Challenge".

The "Ocean Cleanup" challenge would mainly compromise a gameplay where player would control their character and swing their tools to collect specific type of waste that are highly in abundance in the specific location. Do note that only specific tool can be used for specific type of waste. The collected waste will be then deposited by the player at the "OverWorld" where the specific machines and waste management equipment that players need to interact with to deposit specific type of wastes in which player will be rewarded with in-game currency that can be traded to get more cool stuff from the shops.

As for the "BossFight Challenge" , is actually gamification idea of introducing an enemy that is spawned due to a result of high waste accumulation in the area. Players will have to defeat the enemy to clear the challenge and in order to obtain full level completion.

How we built it

For the game plan, first, is deciding the type of game genre, that is, we went for a mix that is educating, exploration and casual games. Next, is deciding the type of game can be achieved with Flame Engine as of it current state that is with 2D games and using Firebase as our backend . Finally, by deciding the main target platform that is Android .

We also did version for Windows, but the backend is not completely supported with our Firebase, that means game is not playable for Windows at the moment.

The game was mainly built with Flutter Flame game engine and the targeted platforms are Android and Windows. (You can access the game downloads at the following link to try it out) : link

Challenges we ran into

One of the main challenges is ensuring the game to have a proper input system for player for better user experience. We are mainly referring to the movement of player with Joystick in most of the gameplay for Android (mobile platforms) , where we tried to ensure it has the same experience as playing the desktop Windows version which have a better input system upon first attempt.

Next challenge, is the current state of the game is that it maybe slightly dependent on assets in order to introduce new types of challenges and keeping the gameplay interesting. We managed to complete Level 1 to full execution due to availability of the assets to us. Some of the assets were drawn , that is about 40% of the assets in the game, the others are imported from open source and copyright free parties.

And the main challenge that we are looking forward to implement in coming version , is to incorporate a social elements in the gameplay for player interaction which we believe can be achieved by integration of Google Wallet API with our existing shop system

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Able to support platform that we currently have access to develop and test that is Android and able to achieve a desirable gameplay. We are also expecting that the iOS build would work with just few modifications

Delivered the main two gameplay of the game with one of the game level to picture the whole game flow and story.

What we learned

First , is the general principle of how game engine works, as our team are quite new to game development with Flutter. The capability of Flutter is not limited , that is where we realise the transition of producing a build from android to windows build was not complicated even with the use of Flame engine, it only requires a few lines of code in order to achieve the desired behaviour

What's next for Ocean Oasis

General ,

Our main goal is integrating and enhancing the existing shop system with Google Wallet API in order attract players interaction in the game
Completing the remaining 4 Levels as much as possible.
New target platform to support iOS

Technically ,

Improving the backend implementation that is working on cloud functions for querying Firestore (currently is via direct query from application)
Refactoring of the code utilizing flame_behavior and supporting proper game state managemennt with flame_bloc`
Game asset management , trying to migrate accessing and remote downloading the assets seperately from the executable builds upon launching and also the use of atlas sheet as much as possible.
Finally, to make the game more realistic, we are looking forward to explore the current support of Flame physics engine , Forge2D to include physics effect to produce a better gameplay experience.

We are really looking forward for you to share us your ideas and suggestion in order to make the gameplay more interesting , please email to pixelmindgame@gmail.com