Lunar Resonance

Inspiration

This game was inspired by the interplanetary movement from Super Mario Galaxy, as well as the hackathon prompt, which references space and alludes to the famous jazz song “Fly Me to the Moon.” We wanted to make a game where music was part of the world, not just something playing in the background.

What it does

Lunar Resonance is a pixel-art space adventure where you travel between 24 moons, each with its own musical landmarks, creatures, puzzles, and challenges.

You play as a traveler trying to restore a lost musical score. Along the way, you can collect musical seeds, rescue singers, bring them back to your home planet, grow a garden, unlock a piano, and perform the restored song.

How we built it

We built the game in Unity using 2D URP. The player can walk around small circular moons, jump into space, and use a flute boost to reach other moons. The moons are generated with seeded layouts so the world feels different while remaining connected and playable.

We created the pixel-art planets, animated plants and creatures, musical landmarks, layered space background, and synthesized instrument sounds ourselves. The game also includes five larger challenges, local progression, a map, a journal, and a final musical performance.

We used Claude and Codex, specifically GPT-6 Astra, GPT 6 Sol, and Opus 5.5 to help ensure time efficiency and improve our skills in agent orchestration.

Challenges we ran into

One of our biggest challenges was making movement around small, curved planets feel natural. We had to tune gravity, jumping, flight, landing, and respawning so that traveling through space felt exciting without becoming frustrating.

We also had to make sure the challenges used the actual movement and physics systems instead of being easy to bypass. Keeping the procedural moon layouts readable while adding more activities and visual detail was another challenge.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that we were able to turn the original movement idea into a full playable journey. The game now has 24 moons, five main challenges, twelve optional discovery activities, musical creatures, a growing home garden, a restored piano, and a final festival performance.

We are also proud of the atmosphere we created with the pixel-art worlds, layered space background, original sounds, and musical interactions.

What we learned

We learned that small changes to movement, animation, camera framing, and sound can make a big difference in how a game feels. We also learned that procedural generation needs rules and limits to make sure the result is still fun to explore.

Most importantly, we learned that music can be used as part of gameplay. It can guide the player, provide feedback, solve puzzles, and make the world feel alive.