General Information
Role: Lead developer
Duration: 2 months part-time
Team-Size: 4 people
Software used:
Experiences gained
- Further understanding of Unity, especially Unity3D mixed with 2D art
- More C# knowledge
- Group work and collaboration
- Shader programming to combat Z-fighting
- Optimization
- Creating systems and teaching others how to utilize them
- Time prioritization
- Unity UI development
- Serious Game Design
- Working with people from different backgrounds
- Story writing
- Using Unity Collab for source control
A short walking simulator story game where you have to help clean a town in 5 days.
Project Background:
This was a project requested by a teacher at my university, GCU. It was done in collaboration with 3 others, including 2 from a Spanish university. The game was presented at GCU’s COP26 event as an example of serious games about climate change.
The idea we came up with was a game where you clean a river, and recycle that trash, but a major part of the game is paying attention to what happens as well as talking to the townspeople to get a bit of a narrative. It touches on the futility of individual action and how consumerism has infiltrated the sustainability movement with green washing.
Challenges along the way:
We decided early on creating a 2D look in a 3D, and using bone animation for those 2D sprites. This ended up being a bit demanding and took a lot of extra time. I created the base setup making custom shaders to avoid Z-fighting, and then optimized it using Unity’s burst system.
Due to our target audience , we decided to focus less on having tons of complicated gameplay features and keep it more simple, making it focus on the narrative and how stuff happens, which is different from the standard focus group game developers have.
The game was still not an entirely complete game missing some UI and expansions, but ultimately is a product I am proud of.
Link to Game:
https://crocolocobear.itch.io/hoover-game