Pygmy's Descent

Inspiration

We were inspired by the 2012 indie game Fez. This game was a puzzle solver in which the main character could only move horizontally in a 3D environment.

What it does

Pygmy's Descent is the blend of a dungeon crawler, infinite runner, and puzzle game. Each level Pygmy explores contains two keys and a door in a procedurally generated maze. The player must collect both keys before being able to end the level and they must do so in 60 seconds or less. Each level the player descends causes the maze to grow larger. Our game also features the unique aspect of featuring a full 3D environment presented in such a way that the player only ever experiences it in a fashion akin to Mario and other side scrollers.

How we built it

Our game was created in Unity and written in C#. The music was created using MuseScore, and Asperite was used to create the graphics. With the exception of two sound effects found on a royalty free website, all of the assets within our game were created by us.

Challenges we ran into

Harmonizing Unity's camera system, our maze generation, and player movement proved to be the most difficult aspect of developing Pygmy's Descent. As our game works currently, a maze is generated and dynamically updated with player movement in order to create an environment that can be explored. Unity's camera is used in such a way that the player is alway in focus and the parts of the maze which may obstruct view of the player are ignored. We are pleased with how our system turned out.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of how far we have come in terms of game development. In the 2020 Pickle Hack, tutorials were used extensively in order to achieve what we wanted in our game. For Pick Hack, we rarely had to turn to an outside resource in order to implement our desired aspect and could instead rely on our problem solving and troubleshooting skills.