Client: Columbia College Chicago (Indie Development Team)
Genre: Action, Arcade Pinball
Overview On an unmarked island, lay the ruins of a tropical kingdom. Those who travel to this isle attempt a certain trial: fight back the spirits who reside with the sacred orb. Do you dare take this ancient challenge?
Player: Single Controls: Keyboard/ Game pad
Team Myself (Production, Programming, Design), Greg Levinson (Sound), Johnny Bell (Game Art)
Contributions
As the only game designer and game programmer, I held responsible the direction of the game. The core function, the game-play, the interconnecting systems, all of it was my handy work. This became my second game I've designed and produced.
Highlights
When tosser was more or less done at the end of winter break, I needed to work on another project. Racked for an idea, I started to think, "what if brick break was more like pinball" and went from there. The game would have been if the brick break bar could act like a set of pinball paddles adding more control for where the ball would go inspired by indie pinball games like Rollers of the Realm. So gathering my previous team we begun work on this new venture for the spring semester.
So within the first three weeks I spent working on the functions of pinball. I found out how surprisingly difficult it was to understand the basic controls of a pinball game. Unity's physics was both finicky with how it wanted the flipper mechanic to function but at the same time to make it work more like a pinball machine, it had to be done in a certain way.
The menu was an entire piece of work in itself. I remember how difficult it was to make not just the menu, but also design the controls to make navigating the menu intuitive. Then there was also the tutorial to make which is always a hassle. Then I had a clever idea. What if the menu was also the tutorial. So I designed the menu to look similar to the game level, with functioning paddles and launcher. The controls would be displayed over each part to help the player learn as they navigate.
After four months, the first and I decided final level was finished. While my game was shorter than the other indie development projects, I felt a smaller scope was more appropriate in the span of this development. I learned from my previous games to focus more on polishing an experience than tacking on more features.