Out of Space

A funky, flighty, and fun pixelated top-down shooter set in space! Fight aliens that thwart your progress as the walls around you slowly close in.

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Who We Are

Our team, Wizard Inc., is made up of four Baltimore high-schoolers with a diverse skillset encompassing programming, graphic design, concept art, and video/photo editing.

The Spark at the Start

Because of the multiple possible interpretations of this year's theme, space, our team decided to utilize the ideas of outer space and metaphysical space to represent the gimmicks we wanted to implement. Several development statements were experimented with as well, such as "Space Invasion" and "Edge of Space", but were eventually discarded due to their general vagueness.

Positively Purposeful

As a game, it is a member of the top-down, shoot-em-up, side-scroller genre. By maneuvering your mouse cursor and clicking, the player character will shoot a jet stream and propel themself around the area of play. As time goes on, the walls will close in on you and the void will slowly rise. This mechanic effectively forces you to move around the incoming platforms and defeat enemies in your way by spraying them with your jetpack exhaust. To combat this inevitable defeat, clock powerups will appear throughout the stage to push the walls back and give you some extra time. The duration of your play will constitute your overall score, while your best score overall can be visible at any time.

Pronto Production

During this production, we spent a lot of time understanding the movement of all our assets using physics and mathematical formulas. After that, formulating the scripts describing the interplay of each gameplay element brought a new dimension to the game. In general terms, we used C# scripts and pixel art assets to code our gameplay while also utilizing several features such as scenes and buttons to bring more interactivity to our gameplay.

Obstructing Obstacles

Due to the fact that Unity and C# were novel for most of our group members, it was difficult to involve the total attention of the group towards some of the more important areas of the project. The lack of gravity in the space setting also contributed majorly tedious calculations to understand the propulsion of the jetpack and the collision data between entities.

Success!

In the end, the pixelated aesthetic that we've brought to the game elevates the arcade genre that many other space-themed projects attempt to convey. Not only does the platforms and walls provide pressure to the player, but the various enemies placed into the game bring a whole new obstacle for the player to learn and defeat. Obviously, fixing all the small bugs at the end of our journey and understanding the physics and simulations that come with a zero-gravity mechanic really lifted our spirits.

Digital Discoveries

Understanding more about game development in Unity increased our ability to make these kinds of projects, while giving us a better in-depth look into C# as a language. As well as that, mapping out our physics simulations on graphing websites definitely made us understand linear algebra a bit more. The planning and implementation of the pixel art and sprites also brought us into the fundamentals of animation and highlighting the important sprites.

What Comes Next

It's obvious that the 24 hours spent working on this game fails to completely give the best of our idea, "Running Out of Space". If we were given the time and resources to fully create this game and release it, a separate level-based system and a diverse set of enemies would give it the variation that is often lacking in a hackathon. Other powerups that make you go faster or freeze time would be an interesting addition to throw off the player as well. Extra achievements for customizable character jetpacks and medals for reaching specific times in Endless Mode would also be a welcome addition.

True Inspiration

Our fundamental aspects of the game were loosely based on a famous video, which you can view here.

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