We'll Only Make It Together (obby with friends)

The starting area, with your frozen ship.
One of the waypoints for your journey - a small shelter in the middle of a frozen lake.
You can play alone, but the journey will be tougher.

Inspiration

I wanted to build a world around pro-social cooperation. There needed to be danger, drama, and excitment, but I wanted players to experience and overcome the challenges together. I was inspired by games like It Takes Two and Split Fiction for the co-op platforming elements.

What it does

The world places you near a frozen shipwreck, with a mission to get to safety. Once you leave the starting area, you begin to freeze (as indicated by your heat meter going down). The only way to warm up again is to make it across dangerous obstacles to a waypoint campfire. However, traveling with a group will make the journey easier, as you lose less heat when near others. You can also help friends over the dangers, by holding rope bridges or moving barriers. There are checkpoints along the way, mysteries, as well as story journals to discover. A speedrun mode can be turned on for the extra competitive.

How we built it

I used a combination of asset library assets and AI generated assets to create the world. The skybox and most of the ice cliffs are AI, and create a wonderfully haunting expansive environment. I also used Overlay UI to create the frost effects on the edges of the screen when a player enters the freezing zone.

Challenges we ran into

Creating a world where players perform a series of actions to get past obstacles but remained accessible and fun on mobile was difficult. To avoid just having a bunch of platform jumping, I made it so that, even though the player inputs are simple (stand here, jump here), their effects are varied and elaborate. In this way, players can easily accomplish a variety of feats like holding up rope bridges, working an elevator platform, surfing down an ice ramp, melting a giant snowball, and more.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

It's the most emotional world I've build, with a narrative running throughout the journey. While the game can be played alone (and it's a pretty challenging and rewarding experience), it really comes alive when you travel with a crew to help you along the way.

What we learned

How to use the GenAI features to their maximum benefit.

What's next for We'll Only Make It Together (obby with friends)

I would play around with the new LOD and visual frustrum culling features to reduce the draw calls, which would allow me to make an even longer journey.