CPS lesson 8 Time as a material

THEME

Time as a material

CONTEXT

In most of the time when we play a game (not the narrative part), it’s in real-time. A question raised up in my mind “ how can I make use of the time and make an interesting game?”. 

I looked for references to solve this question. In the minigame developed by candidates of the Ludum Dare, the players have to pass through some moving obstacles at perfect timing. On the other hand, the game “Afterimage” made use of the afterimage after people staring at something for a long time to make the invisible ‘walls’.

https://www.bilibili.com/video/av18259666 (start from 38:29)

The game “Afterimage” from Global Game Jam 

https://ramiel.itch.io/afterimage

METHOD

I create the shapes in Adobe Illustrator and then import them into Unity. The movements of the blocks are scripted by Playmaker.

RESPONSE

Last week, I had my folio game tested by some other people but they found it not interesting enough. Therefore, I started to look for different solutions and inspiration to make my game more engaging. Fortunately, while working on the topic of this week, I got some ideas for it. In the minigame developed by candidates of the Ludum Dare, it gave me an inspiration for making different moving obstacles that require players to pass through obstacles at good timing. Moreover, the minigame “Afterimage” gave me the inspiration to twist the invisible ‘walls’ a bit and make the objects disappear and then appear overtime. With reference to the following two games, I combined the two ideas to make a map with moving objects and flashing objects. The players may need to wait a bit and have to catch perfect timing in order to pass through all obstacles. I tested out the time intervals of spawning and destroying the obstacles to make it difficult yet achievable to finish the level.