Description
Adventure of Blobby is an 2D side scroller platform adventure game with its gameplay built around the unique mechanic of shape shifting. Here, the player acts as little Blobby who got left behind by its family and becomes lost in the mysterious forest. Throughout the game, Blobby has to overcome dangerous beast and difficult puzzle to reach to its family. Through the shape shifting mechanic which allow blobby to transform into different shapes, players can bring Blobby back to his family by utilizing the special properties associated with each of its shape form.
Roles
In this project, my main role was the programmer. I had to build the game mechanics such as character transforming, parallax background, the interactive obstacles elements and many more. With some help from my teammates, the effort transforms into smooth character control and polished visual effect.
Process
Since this is my first project working with a game engine, I am new to most of the concept being thrown at me. Unity provide tools such as sprite sheets, property editors and anim animators, learning each of those new concepts is a very time-consuming but enjoyable. Implementing the main game mechanics is fun and easy because of our simple mechanics. However, the quality control and user-experience part is full of obstacle and detering.
Problem + Design Decisions
I have encountered numerous problem with the character transformation regarding each shape transforms’ unique properties. The blocky style provide the player immune to crushes, and allow them to slam down on top of enemies to defeat them. Whereas the spiky style allow user to stay still and defeat enemies dropping down onto your sharp spike top. The main problem is associated with the ball form, which is supposed to allow users to roll and move much faster while having a lighter and smaller body to pass through tight tunnels. In order to provide the feel of smooth rolling, I had to temporarily switch the method of moving the character across the along the map to a different one. I switched from using x = x+1 to unity rigidbody.addForce. One is constant velocity change while the other allow dynamic speed ramp. Addforce also provide free form rotation for the ball rolling effects which I did not expect. Solving this problem resulted in smooth and rewarding experience, playtesters are all hooked on the ball form and consider it a pleasant form that they wish to be able to transform to infinitely.
Outcome + Reflection
Working through a game project in a tight time constraints allows me to maximize my effort in researching and solving problems, thus it improved my problem solving skills and made me a more valuable teammate in my future projects. I have also became self-motivated in other projects because of my eagerness to learn what technology can help us achieve.
