Cyberpumpk
"Cyberpumpk" might be my best game yet. Why? Because it is highly addictive, fun to play, and it has an cybernetically augmented pumpkin with a magnet rifle.
The concept is simple: you play as a robotic pumpkin falling down an endless tower. To prevent crashing into obstacles, you get a magnet gun. With this gun you can shoot magnetic blocks that randomly appear throughout the game.
The concept is simple: you play as a robotic pumpkin falling down an endless tower. To prevent crashing into obstacles, you get a magnet gun. With this gun you can shoot magnetic blocks that randomly appear throughout the game.
Gameplay
You can use your magnet gun to move around and prevent yourself from crashing into the walls and floors. If you shoot a blue block, you drag yourself closer to it.
If you shoot a red block, you push yourself away from it. The goal of the game is to avoid crashing into blocks for as long as you can, which will earn you a higher score. However! The longer the game goes on, the faster you will fall!
We noticed that players got hooked on the game instantly. There's so much to say about this one. The adaptive music track, the special effects, the increasing tension and the wobbly score going up... when everything comes together, it's a mesmerising experience.
We noticed that players got hooked on the game instantly. There's so much to say about this one. The adaptive music track, the special effects, the increasing tension and the wobbly score going up... when everything comes together, it's a mesmerising experience.
Issues & Fixes
Arcade Controller
This project started out as an arcade game project. For the purpose of the exercise, the teams working on it were asked to create a custom controller. This made it difficult to determine how the magnet gun should be aimed. In the end, the decision came to checking if the input was through controller, and then having a stick that could rotate in all 360 degrees determine where the gun was aiming. The crosshair would then take a fixed distance from the character. When no controller is plugged in, it would follow the mouse. This solved the aiming problem.
Magnet Gun
The ideation and design in this project were tough. For a project of only two weeks duration, I think it's amazing what got done. The cyan and red colours are inspired on cartoonesque magnets showing a blue and a red side to them. One is positive, the other negative. This idea was used to form the cyan and red blocks that attract or repel the otherwise stationary pumpkin. Together with my designer friend, we devised a strategy, allowing holes at random in the neverending layers of the tower, through which the player has to navigate. To really sell the whole theme, I created a beam between the barrel of the gun and the blocks whenever the player would shoot, and spawned outwardly growing effects upon hitting a block.
Teamwork
For the ones among you who have run team projects before, I am sure you are familiar with the projects where you have that one person. You know, the type who doesn't show up, doesn't deliver any work, but at the end, still tries to get the credits. Sadly, this project had one of them. Altough patient at first, the team could not overlook this behaviour, and eventually came to the conclusion that this person was not doing their part, and had to be let go. This is not an easy thing to do as a student, but it's a lesson I won't forget. I will take it with me into any professional career.