Again, you would think simple 2D games wouldn’t take as much time as 3D games, but alas I was fooled this week again. My rhythm for making games for this class has been this: figure out the theme/topic (less than a day and maybe an hour or so brainstorming) and then create it (taking how many hours/days later). This time, it took me 2 days thinking about how to go about this 2D abstract game, because of the abstract aspect. As a visual person, I like to create things as realistic as possible, and trying to convey some deeper, “universe” meaning with some squares and circles made me veerryy frustrated. And as always, I try not to steer to the most popular idea/way to go about the topic, so being a bit more original + meaning = exhausted, vvvveerrryyy frustated me .__. .
I finally decided on a game that goes backwards.
- Instead of the usual left to right side scroller games, I thought that maybe a right to left would be interesting.
- Similarly, instead of having the game get progressively harder, I thought to make the game progressively easier.
- On top of that, I also thought that if the game overall was also backwards (End, Game, then Title), then there’s something fun to go off of and it ties everything together.
Now, what does this mean, you may ask. Including the game’s title, Just Keep Going, these 3 ideas I just mentioned is kind of like life: we usually think time on a timeline as left to right, life gets “harder” as you grow up, and you have a “beginning, middle, and end”. Focusing on the “middle” (aka life), things pile up (like work, school, relationships, etc.), making it “harder” or more complicated. By going backwards in the game, I wanted to convey that sometimes you have to get through the hard stuff to get to the easy stuff. It also may seem life gets harder (and it definitely actually could be hard or stressful), but sometimes by completing things and putting it behind you, it actually may make your life more easier; you just have to keep going, no matter how much you have on your plate. Sometimes, you may want to keep the hard stuff with you (past actions, thoughts, etc.), but letting go and focusing on the future is sometimes the better option. Now I feel like I went too deep with the meaning (since I was thinking of The Marriage and Lim for inspiration), but that’s ok.
I had one issue play testing this time, which was actually really annoying. My player (the rectangle) would always fall through the plane. I looked up suggestions for the fix, and others said to check the “Convex” box on the plane itself. My player didn’t fall through, but I couldn’t move my player in any direction. Thanks to Professor LeMieux, my plane didn’t have any height (y-axis = 0), so a simple y = 1 fixed everything.
Feedback from the class about the game was very exciting to hear! No one beat it unfortunately, but that may be due to the controls (there was “drag”/lag when keys were held for longer periods of time; ie they weren’t as precise), but I have completed it with the “laggy” controls, so it is doable 🙂 . People said that my game was very addicting and fun because there was sense of “I have to finish/get further”. Many people loved my font and color palate as well. The ending “level” wasn’t as easy as I wanted it to because of the testing issue (and subsequently no one saw the “end” as the “title”), and no one realized the R to L instead of the conventional L to R 🙁 . Overall, super happy I finished my game and that it worked.