Oscar Duffield

My fourth and final prototype for my Rapid Games Prototyping module was a top down game, we weren’t given much in this prototype, we were provided with the environment tile sheets with different themed environments, an animated character, and decoration for the scene.

Building upon the basic framework we were provided with I started by getting the movement to a state that would feel smooth and fluid for the player, keeping this a high priority was vital as the finished prototype would only have a small amount of functional and stable mechanics to display the direction that I wanted the prototype to go in the future.

Player Movement

Making the player movement as satisfying to use as possible was one of the top priorities for this prototype as getting it polished would help me in the future when adding extra features.

An extra feature that I added was a sprint, whilst simple, making it smooth and transfer easily between states was important as you may be able to see in the video later on in the game the sprint mechanic combined with a dash is vital to dodge and evade the enemies and stop the player from losing and being caught.

The dash was a feature I thought fit this style of game as the players movement needed to be purposeful and meaningful as a mistake could mean that the player would have to restart.

Enemies and Encounters

Originally, my plan was to include puzzle sections to the game to increase the diversity of encounters that the player faces but due to the small time frame of the project at the time I opted out of this, in the future diverse encounters will be added to help make the game feel more complete but the current build has island based encounters where you a locked in after you enter until you either survive long enough, or defeat all the enemies that chase you.

Using NavMeshPlus in Unity2D helped with the enemies pathfinding and made it so that the enemies would only follow paths that where available to them due to some layers being walls therefore being obstacles to not just the player. Having these solid blocks in the islands gave the player some room to outplay and outmanoeuvre the enemies even when they are outnumbered.

The first island was simple with numerous health pickups and no traps on the island, as an introductory island to the mechanics of the game it introduces the player to what they can expect from the game.

The second island was more difficult due to there being traps and less obstacles, the fewer number of health pickups also meant that the player had less margin for error, ramping up the difficulty and keeping the player engaged whilst also teaching them.

In the future the final cave will be a boss battle which will provide a more difficult challenge and will be the entrance to a new section of the game going underground and exploring the cave systems and solving puzzles and surviving.

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