Game Designer
title: The Adventures of Captain Space Helmet
created: 2017
development time: 6 weeks
team size: 1
engine: Unity
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For my first game of Year 2 I wanted to challenge myself and do something I'd never done before. Most of my projects to this point had been first person, so I decided to make a fully hand drawn 2D side scrolling platformer!
This was always going to be a huge artistic challenge, as every single thing in the entire game was drawn by me. I probably hadn't done any drawing since I was in school, so it could have gone either way, but I was happy to take it on. I knew they wouldn't be the most amazing drawings in the world, but I think that's a good thing and combined with the intentional leaving of the notepad lines, gives this game a really quaint and unique style. It also taught me a lot about animation and having to draw each frame of a characters movement. I was still drawing the final enemy (the weird eyeball on legs thing) the night before it was due, and implemented him and all of the sound effects into the game on the final day!
On the programming side, it was another big challenge. Having never done anything 2D before I had to learn a lot of things including character control, camera tracking of the player and platform behaviors. This was all new and uncharted territory for me in which many an online tutorial video was followed to make it all happen. I admit that some of the controls are a little janky and it would have been nice to add controller support, but given the workload between art and code, I'm happy with how it turned out.
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Quote:
"A very well scoped project. The concept for the game involved learning new things and stretching your abilities while also being well planned and achievable. The perfect example for this sort of assessment. The game has an original art style and the art, sound, and gameplay all work together well... Awesome work Dan, had a couple of teachers impressed watching me play your project."
Adam Bailey, AIE Design teacher.
