"Something to be proud of"
Sebastian Thomes
Game Designer
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LiNK CMGT Game Jam (2021)
Unity
C#
1
The "LiNK CMGT"-game jam was hosted by the "LiNK"-group, a student group at the Saxion, online during May. In this game jam participants had only 2 days to create a game with the theme "slow".
To test my current skills and abilities I decided to participate alone in this game jam. My goal was to create a platformer with a unique setting, which utilizes a "slowing down"-functionality. This would force players to learn the movement in the game and manage the "slowing down"-functionality.
Functionality - Movement
I started by creating the player movement first. To make the controls feel more "monkey-like" I decided to add a climb feature. I also utilized the Unity Input system to allow the usage of controllers.
Basic Movement
Climbing
Functionality - Slow down time
The player unlocks the "slow down time"-ability after collecting the "spirit banana". It allows players to slow down time for a short time, which affects moving platforms and enemies.
"Spirit banana"
"Slow down time"-functionality
Functionality - Lifes and checkpoints
Next to the "spirit banana" there are also other bananas, which function as checkpoints. They also increase the life total of the player and if the player is damaged, he will be moved back to the position of the last banana. Players get damaged if they collide with water or with the weapons of pirates.
Checkpoint - Banana
Player colliding with water
Functionality - Pirates
To give the player another obstacle I added pirates. They quickly move between two points and will damage the player, if he collides with the daggers on the side.
Pirate colliders and waypoints
As you can see the pirate has two different colliders. The lower ones are for damaging the player and the upper one is used to beat the pirate, which means players can jump on their heads to beat them. Together with the possibility to also slow them down with the "slow down time"-ability allowed interesting level design opportunities:
Battle against a pirate
Level Design
My goal with the level design was to teach the player each part of the game one after another. To achieve that I cut the level into different parts. In the first part the player learns the basic controls with climbing being the final challenge. The player is then awarded with the "spirit banana", which the player then needs to utilize to proceed to get a feel for the ability. This part then ends with a challenge, where the player needs to utilize both the movement and "slow down time"-ability. In the next part the pirates are introduced, which force the player to use his newly gained knowledge. The end goal is a treasure room, which will then lead to the "game over"-screen.
Level overview
Asset creation
For the music and sound effects I edited sounds I found on freesound.org, which were public domain. For the environment I drew a sprite sheet, which I then used as a tilemap.
Basic environmental sprites
For "monke" and the pirates I created sprite-sheets, which were used to animate them:
"Monke" sprite-sheet
