MDDN 242: Sky Climber

So, my game is complete! And it proved to be a lot of fun. Even though a horrible atrocity befell me three nights before the hand-in (I lost all my code due to my losing my hard drive), I managed to pull through with a little help from a stiff drink and some pumping tunes.

One of the simplest aspects of the game that I find the most compelling is the parallax effect that I generated for the various layers of the game. I wanted to give the game a much more interesting depth to it than is normally possible in a 2D game.

The entire experience was designed to be dynamic. The instructions fall away as you master the mechanics of the game, and the sun drifts down in the sky as you travel higher. Soon you grasp how quickly you're moving vertically as you hit the clouds though.

Most of the clouds are in the distance, while others are in between the viewer and where the game takes place, occasionally briefly obscuring the game, making things harder for the player. The clouds all move at different speeds, highlighting the sense of depth.

The game gets progressively harder, as the gravity constant begins to skew. It starts to make the ball fall faster, while the ball's rebound gets stronger, ensuring that the height the ball bounces stays constant.

I went for a very minimal aesthetic with the game, letting strong colours and shapes do the talking more than anything.

If there was one thing I wish I could have done to add to the game, it would have been to add a high score recorder, as the game actually got taken quite competitively in the in-class test. I loved this project, and I'm actually fairly disappointed that there isn't going to be a third-year coding class. Oh well, that's what free time is for, right?