Building my first game in 2017 made me feel like a game maker in the late 1990’s/early 2000’s: minimal models, simple setting,and very, very low quality, repetitive graphics and textures. Remembering the 2D foliage that followed your perspective and were about to be walked through, a plane with the same house twenty times, invisible walls that didn’t let you go on that patch of dirt for no reason whatsoever.. Ah the memories; I didn’t care and played those games over and over. With my first game ever, I’m happy with what came about even though today’s standards it would look only like a quick sketch of what something could be and not the final product. I say this, though Davey Wreden’s The Beginner’s Guide and Garry Newman’s Garry’s Mod, though made in the Source engine, look like they could be made in Unity. Today, graphics don’t necessarily mean a “good” game; many indie games don’t have fleshed out AAA graphics, yet convey some of the most interesting stories and gameplay. Though I would’ve like to flesh out my game Footprints quite a bit more, time and resources did set me back, but I’m not unhappy about the finished product.
In general, I like doing any project different than what the general or most popular theme would be. For a game about environmental storytelling, I wanted to, well, tell a story, but also have an end goal (or a definite yes this the end moment). First thing that came to mind was a beach environment. How could I tell a story on the beach? Footprints! The player would hopefully follow the footprints on the ground, getting contextual clues from the objects in each area and the angle of the footprints. I came up eventually with an idea of a group of 3 people coming for a beach trip. They do beachy activities for whatever amount of time (volleyball, sunbathe, then some time in the ocean), then all but one decide to leave. Then, this person would meet another person, and they would have an adventure of their own. When starting up Unity and vaguely setting planes and overlaying textures, I quickly realized that it wasn’t going to be pretty (and I love to make projects as aesthetically pleasing as possible). This is my first time ever making a game, so I was ok with that (and I’m a student; this is a learning opportunity of course). I changed my mindset to 2000’s and continued.
I wanted there to be much more different models and really set the scene more, but finding models (free and compatible with iOS) was a paaaaiiinnnn. I made do, but texturing was also hard; I didn’t have the experience to texture the leaves and trunk of the trees especially (the models did have textures, but it just didn’t work), nor were the Google images the perfect angle for what I wanted. If that didn’t take long, then accidentally deleting my textures folder 3 TIMES and having to retexture EVERYTHING AGAIN definitely made me preeettyyy mad. I also quickly realized that adding all these footprints and angling them to be decently realistic was incredibly time consuming (but satisfying once it was all done).
I wanted the two people at the end to have a longer adventure than just walking to the boat; I wanted them to go through a cave and end up on a mountain overlooking the scenery (where they were and possible other areas to explore), but my time, resources, and experience let that be just a distant dream. For this incredibly small and short game, it did tell a story and had an “ending”. Definitely a good step into game design for me.