A new demo finished…

…but it’s not nothing too special. It’s called Icecape (as in ice and escape, go figure), and it’s the third and final game demo for my school course. I gotta say, though I felt very, very negative about it during most of the development, I kinda like how it turned out.

Crappy title is crappy

Grab it from this link if you like.

In a nutshell, you are a cute little penguin whose home island is melting/sinking and you gotta escape. But to survive your long trip across the waters you gotta gather some food. So get the foods and take off with your raft.

So, quite a few lessons learned from making this one. It’s really hard to make a game when you have no solid plan. Amazing discovery, right? Who would’ve guessed. When trying to come up with an idea for this demo, me and my two teammates kinda half-assedly came up with the basic idea of the game, but the real gamedesign was kinda left to the last minute. Sure, we had plans, but they we’re too un-refined to really execute without further work. So that and a few other things resulted in a very unfortunate situation: I had to come up and put together a demo in pretty much less than a week. While working my summer job. And I can tell you, coming up with interesting gameplay to a game like this while under pressure… not the easiest task.

Also, Unity can be a bitch some times. Haven’t gotten around to trying Unity 4 yet, but hopefully it’s better than 3.5. Some things about this just drives me mad. I’ve also gotten more into 3D-modeling. I would’ve liked to add quite a few things to the demo, but due to time constraints I simply couldn’t. Making models with textures and animations takes time.

I really should start updating this blog more often. Maybe I’ll have time for that once all my schoolwork is done (which is in a few days, if I don’t miss my deadlines).

More info on my other projects to come soon. I’ll not make this post longer than it already is 😛

First game project: Ice Breaker (WIP)

Let’s get some history out of the way so to speak.

Here’s my current game project’s title screen (drawn by my dear girlfriend Blackie). As should be quite clear, it’s called Icebreaker, though the name is pretty much a placeholder until I can come up with a better one.

This project began as a school assignment for a game development course over at school some time back. Me, Blackie (my girlfriend, for the demented) and our friend Tommi were assigned to create a 2D-puzzle game with Unity and this is what what we came up with.

As it happens, now that I’m writing this Blackie is sitting behind me and telling me not to forget to give her proper credit so let’s get that out of the way as well. Blackie came up with the general idea and made the art. Tommi was responsible for level design and sounds. I myself had to put the whole thing together and code all the required logic.

For those interested, you can get the original demo here.

Though the idea of this blog was for me to share things I’ve made (in addition to other things), the reason I’m sharing this piece in particular is because I plan to continue it’s development.

The idea of the game is simple: you have a tile-based level made of ice and you have to step on (and thus crack) every tile, before you can enter the exit of the level. But if you step on a tile twice, you lose a life. And of course there are some obstacles in your way. Wouldn’t be puzzle game if there was no puzzle involved, right?

If you’ve checked out the demo you might have noticed it’s rather simple. That’s true, but it’s just a demo and I have quite a lot of things in mind for the project. The core gameplay will obviously stay the same, but quite a few things will be thoroughly remade and expanded upon. As I’m working on the project on my free time (and by myself) progress will be slow, but I’ll do my best to keep you guys on track on what’s happening and what I’m working on.

Till next time.