This project was meant to test the player’s reflexes and ability to make decisions. The core mechanic of launching yourself off of walls and floors replaces traditional platforming mechanics in order to test the player’s reaction time and ability to look ahead in the game.
Project Timeline:
01/21/2019 – 04/29/2019
Team Size:
Solo
Role:
Systems Designer, Programmer
Development Tools:
What I Contributed
As the only person who worked on this project I fulfilled most every role. My main focuses were Systems Design and programming. When making this project I wasn’t as confident in my programming skills so I tried to make a simple game while still having it be satisfying.
Changing the Controls
One of the most impactful decisions I made during this project was to change the controls from mouse to controller. The previous control scheme was to have the mouse cursor’s position around the character set the direction that the character would be launched in. Throughout my testing, I found that people did not like the mouse controls. Moving the cursor around required too much motion for it to be efficient. Testers would often find themselves with their cursor off the screen or the cursor was too far away from the character to quickly change the angle they will launch from.
So I moved from mouse controls to a controller. Instead of using the cursor position to find the orientation of character I directly used the orientation of the left joystick. This change gave much better results when I next tested the game. The responsiveness and decision making of players was up due to the fact that the physical joystick range is confined. This means that players don’t have ridiculously long way to get a different launch angle.
Wall Sticking/Sliding
Another Important part of development was getting the physics right on surfaces the player would be in contact with. The goal of the prototype was to create a fast paced game, but there still had to be some elements that helped the player. One of these elements was wall stick/slide. Having the walls slow down the player’s descent helps them get a bearing on their surroundings.
Wall slide also helps give the player a sense of impending doom. Since the player does not stick to walls they will eventually hit the ground, which means good launch opportunities will eventually pass the player by and require them to reposition themselves.