#gat251

[macklinguy]

Aquarius is a 2.5D action exploration game. You pilot a small sub that must find various tools to go deeper into the ocean and identify plantlife and hostile aliens.

Download and play at: http://www.macdguy.org/downloads/aquarius.zip

The game was a 4 week long project and is one of my first adventure games to date. I am planning to return to the project in a month and up fix any issues and bugs related to the project.

[autobzooty-blog]

Orchard

I talked in my last post about my idea for a game where you play as a tree. My instructor advised that I wait and execute this idea for the strategy game assignment, and so I did.

One core dynamic that is common to almost all strategy games is the concept of resource management. Resources in games can be almost anything, with time being the resource that you are most often managing. Managing resources and making tough choices about what to do when you don't have enough resources is what make a game feel strategic.

In Orchard, you are attempting to grow as many trees with as many animal nests as possible in the time limit. The resources by which you are limited are time and the space allotted on a given tree. Leaves make your tree grow faster, fruits make more trees grow, and nests don't directly help you in any way, but are effectively this game's equivalent of "points."

A lot of work went into the polish for this game, even before I had a strong grasp on where the design of it was going. I tried my best to make the complex menus look slick and fancy, while also working very hard on the dynamic soundtrack for the game. And even though I'm no artist, I did end up spending more time on the art for this project than any other project I've worked on at DigiPen. I wanted it to look and feel pretty.

This focus on polish over design ended up being evident in the final product in a lot of ways. I actually had no idea what the actual objective was going to be for this game until about a week or two before shipping it. And as such, the objective feels arbitrary and not harmonious with what makes the player feel good about playing this game. Additionally, the Orchard had potential to be a great pastime game, where players could just relax and play it at their own pace, but the ticking clock ended up leaving players feeling agitated and anxious in what would have otherwise been a very relaxing experience.

This was due in part to some technical limitations I ran into. I didn't want to have to program camera controls or teach those controls to the player and add complexity to a simple game. So the size your orchard could reach was limited by the camera's perspective on the field. If I took away the time limit, trees would eventually start growing off camera, and the game would feel janky and broken. I also had to work really hard on the tree's growth patterns to make sure that trees wouldn't grow behind other trees and not be visible. This meant that in addition to programming a good pattern of growth, I had to space the trees out from each other quite far, which further limited the potential number of trees in an orchard. The time limit I set for the game was pretty much as long as I could make it before players would start rubbing up against these problems.

The ending of the game was also quite weak. When the time limit ran out, a score screen popped up to let you see how you did, and then it dumped you back to the title screen. Kind of unceremonious for what is otherwise a pretty thoughtful and engaging experience. I was trying to encourage players to play a second time with this ending, but there are obviously better ways to do this than a score screen and returning to the title.

Despite its problems, I'm very happy with this project. I had an idea for something really weird and I executed pretty well on it. Yeah it could have been better, but the beauty/terror of doing something weird is not knowing how it's going to turn out. This certainly could have been way worse.

Here's a download link if you want to play. Feedback is appreciated, etc etc.