Spacetime Scavenger

Game Overview:

Take on the role of an interstellar treasure hunter, leaping from world to world in search of a lost civilization’s technology. Explore underground ruins and temples, avoid their ancient security systems, and recover ancient devices with the power to manipulate the forces of space-time itself.

In Spacetime Scavenger, you must pass through a series of challenges and puzzles that will require you to traverse areas where gravity may change from one zone to the next, platforms may fly in all directions, and your path may be obstructed by curtains of lava or acid, laser beams, or even the occasional security drone. Avoid obstacles through skilled platforming and careful use of the Gravity Gun to bend physics to your will, positioning objects to jump off of, obstructing lasers, and bashing security devices out of your path. Uncover the secrets of this ancient race and earn your place in the Galactic Hall of Fame!

Post-Project Reflection:

What went right?

-Mechanics: One of the most important things in any game is that it is fun, and, after a few minutes messing around in our coding test room, we knew we had hit the nail on the head. Primarily, the combination of the gravity flipping on objects in all 3 axis and the gravity flipping of the player character allow for incredibly high amounts of creativity and player expression that dare the player to test the limits of their imagination. 

-Progression: The game has a very prominent sense of progression, as a major new mechanic is unlocked every planet, which is very frequent. This keeps the game and puzzles, a key part to the flow, fast paced and fresh, always challenging the player to quickly learn new mechanics.

What went wrong?

-Time Management: Due to scheduling issues between team members as well as high general workloads at the end of the semester, a large amount of work was done last minute. This led to a few aspects of the games feeling rushed, specifically some blocky level design and a handful of not fantastic textures. This problem certainly could have been avoided by getting more work on large projects done earlier in development to avoid intense crunch towards the end of the project.

-Version Control: Github has a lot of tools that makes working with unity very simple to understand and quick to integrate, but it has certainly come with its fair share of heartache. Multiple times throughout the project a small handful of progress would be lost due to merging conflicts or simple errors between github and unity. Luckily we didn’t encounter too many of these issues as we learned the hard way in a previous game jam.

What changes were made and why?

-Animations: Originally animations for the player were planned to make the game feel more immersive. While there were attempts to add in animations for the player there were issues and they weren’t working properly. As a result, the decision was eventually made to remove them entirely rather than take up too much time working on them.

-Level Reorganization: A few levels and abilities were swapped around in the game progression in order to make the levels flow better and have a heightened sense of progression.

-Final Level: There was originally a concept for a sixth level to act as a finale for the game. It would have gone through harder challenges from all five of the other planets in sequence as a final test of everything. Due to time constraints, this was not possible.

What did you learn?

-Level Design: When designing a level for a game it is very important to remember that you're not the one who is playing the game. This is especially important when it comes to puzzle games. Since you are the one who is making the game/puzzles, you know how to solve them. Considering this you need to keep in mind that the player will be seeing the puzzle for the first time. 

-Time Management: In the beginning of the project, we set out a plan of what all we wanted to do with our project but over the weeks we realized how much more time some steps would need. Time would also get away from us when bugs would come up that we wouldn’t expect. This made our time go by much faster. So now we know to plan for bugs to occur because more than not, bugs will occur. 

-Version Control: Once we learned about version control, fixing bugs was a lot easier. These bugs could come from two people being in the same branch and then pushing. The bugs could also come from merging branches wrong or other various things. But now that we know about version control it makes it a lot easier to avoid or solve bugs that come up.

Credits;

Jonah Craven

-Team Captain, Level Design, Coding

Brent Julius

-Coding, Level Design

Ethan Vander Veur

-Coding

Luna Wilkes

-Level Design Lead

Michael Shaughnessy

-Sound Design, Art Direction, Composition

Dakota Kantner

-Coding, Level Design