Heart Traveller

BSc. Games Programming Year 1 Term 2

Project for Games Project 1

Heart Traveller is a puzzle-platformer, in which you play as a Cell. As you play, you try to find your way to the heart while also collecting oxygen to learn new skills or upgrade others. You will encounter bad cells which you may or may not ignore to go further or collect more oxygen. 

HOW TO PLAY:

• Move left and right: AD keys 
• Jump: W key 
• Go down platform: S key
• Attack: I key
• Dash: O key
• Other shortcuts may be described in-game

ASSIGNMENT REQUIREMENTS: 

• Theme give for the game: ♡ (heart emoji):
  • Instead of going for a theme around the health of a character or a theme around love, we decided to go for a more biological approach. 
• Create a game and implement it in Unity from scratch
• Work in a group (optional): 
  • We made a group of three since group management is a great skill to acquire. 

WHAT I WORKED ON: 

• UI (visual and scripts):
  • Menu, in-game UI and others.
• Sprites and animation for the main character, oxygen and enemies. Sprites for the tilemap and other objects (done in Photoshop).
• Co-worked on the camera and talent scripts.Worked on the boundaries. 
• Enemies script 
• Worked on the 1st level and tutorial.

SKILLS LEARNED: 

• Working in a group:
  • Communicating/Organisation
  • Keeping a structure work schedule
  • Co-programming
  • More creativity and ideas emerged from a group
• Creation of sprite animation which demands meticulous work
• Creating an upgrade system
• Using Scriptable Objects
• Playtesting is important and should be done regularly and early in the process.

POSSIBLE IMPROVEMENTS & REGRETS:

• Platforming can be better. The character's size, compared to the platforms, is huge. This gave little flexibility of positioning, which then turned platforming not fun. We had to accept that "jumping inside a platform" is a mechanic, since it was too late to fix.
• Making it clearer to the player of where he should go or what to do by adding some camera movements with cut scenes. 
• Making the skills more meaningful for the player to upgrade by adding more difficulty. The skills were great but not much use to them.