Inspiration
We took inspiration from games like stickman hook, our idea was take this smaller concept and give it a grander scope, we wanted to keep the idea of being able to play it on many devices though, which led us to hosting it on a website for anyone to access.
What it does
We utilise the zero-gravity atmosphere of space in order to make the normal grappling hook gameplay more complex and challenging, the player has to swing through a solar system in order to reach a portal within a certain time limit. As well as this, players can also instantly load up the website to play the game whenever they want to.
How we built it
We utilised the unity game engine as well as html with JavaScript in order to make playing online as smooth as possible. We integrated procedural generation in order to make each new run more interesting, as the game gets more intense as you pass more and more portals.
Challenges we ran into
There was some difficulty with the procedural generation and deciding the different variables that would control how the solar system would be laid out. For example, we had to figure out the range of values for the distance between planets, the scale of planets, the rotation and lots more. Getting the grappling feeling difficult but fair in a zero-gravity environment was also quite challenging.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
The game has lots of small visual effects and other small touches that make it infinitely more satisfying to play, from the field of view changing with speed to the complex sound and music design, we had to craft everything with care.
What we learned
We learnt a lot of simplified and refined ways to do lots of tasks, especially procedural generation. At first, the procedural generation had hundreds of lines of unoptimized code, but we leant to refine and streamline our code.
What's next for Planet Plunger
We definitely plan to include more planet variety, various hazards that can cause damage to the player and maybe a traversal system through a set of different solar systems.
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