Inspiration
Given our group members' general interest in video games and 2D platformers, we decided to make a 2D platformer. The two main games that inspired us were Hollow Knight and Cuphead. We took the idea of having a side-scrolling sword-based game from Hollow Knight. And our teammate Marco used Cuphead's art style as inspiration for his drawing. Cuphead also led as the main inspiration for the use of inanimate objects coming to life. Our main idea of sand ( and time) being used as a resource was only inspired by the theme and our team's own creativity.
What it does
You are the hourglass equipped with a sword. You must progress through the level, fighting your enemies as you pass, until you play the final boss (the clock). You need to ensure that you finish quickly before all of your sand runs out and you lose.
How we built it
We built it using Unity as our game engine. Special shoutout to Mr. Sharrik for being the reason that three of our five members already knew how to use Unity. But for the portions that we didn't know how to do, we used a lot of Unity tutorials on YouTube. AI was used to help debug. Marco made all of our visual assets using Krita.
Challenges we ran into
Our biggest challenge was having two laptops that worked to use across five members. Our other laptops were either too slow or couldn't use GitHub. Managing how to make sure that all five members were being helpful was difficult, but we were able to have multiple minds work on the same laptop and have some people do stuff off of laptops, such as brainstorming. Within the code, our biggest problem was getting the parry knockback to work. It turns out that after all our effort trying to debug, we were just applying the force to the wrong object.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Being able to use all original art instead of importing assets or using AI-generated images is something we're very proud of. Being able to manage both at once through our workflow took a lot of coordination, especially considering our laptop considerations. I also think the ideation of the game is very unique and implements the theme very explicitly, and in a fun, unique way to think about time and implement it in a 2d platformer.
What we learned
Throughout this project, we learned how to use Unity to create a 2d platformer game and how to code the attributes of the characters in the game - such as attacks and a health bar. Additionally, another really cool component of the game that we learned about was the physics and adjusting parameters like how high you jump and how much force you exert on objects, and tuning those so they mimicked the real world. Finally, we tried to implement the basics of pathfinding, where we were able to use raycasting to adjust how enemies behaved as we got closer to them by adjusting their speed and size.
What's next for Sands of Time
In the future, we really want to create new levels of the game where the hourglass moves through different sections of the antique shop before meeting the clock (final boss). Through this, we would be able to introduce new enemies into the game, such as toys, books, and furniture. Additionally, we would want to fully implement polish aspects such as music, SFX, particles, and animations. We would also want to make new bosses and a ranged attack for the clock. It was also our original intention to make the dash cost time to use to add a kind of trade-off for a faster speed. Finally, we would want to add a menu, a game over screen, and a story so that it feels like more complete of a game.
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