Play Cyber Theater
I began learning Unity 2D in October 2021, curious to build on my game dev knowledge after some previous experiments in text-based games. At first, I only wanted to create a very small-scoped game, just an interactive art piece, of just a room where a player could click around to make items animate with no real objectives. But as I did research into what I could do with Unity, I decided to expand the scope of my game and turn my one-week project into a four-month one.
In the end, I created a short demo of a game with dynamic lighting, a web of dialogue, and a working inventory system that I made from scratch. It allowed me to exercise my UX skills as I tried to playtest in the mindset of my audience, tailoring the content to communicate to the players what should be interacted with next in an unobtrusive way. I especially wanted to find a balance between telling the player what they're capable of and letting them figure out interactions for themselves.
I'm proud of where the game ended up, and that I was able to finish it in time for the Finally Finish Something Jam deadline. I'm excited to take what I've learned in this process about how to make (and how not to make) a functioning game and apply it to future projects. Now that I understand how a lot of the systems within Unity work, I'll be able to complete the basics even faster next time and create bigger, more complex projects.
I began learning Unity 2D in October 2021, curious to build on my game dev knowledge after some previous experiments in text-based games. At first, I only wanted to create a very small-scoped game, just an interactive art piece, of just a room where a player could click around to make items animate with no real objectives. But as I did research into what I could do with Unity, I decided to expand the scope of my game and turn my one-week project into a four-month one.
In the end, I created a short demo of a game with dynamic lighting, a web of dialogue, and a working inventory system that I made from scratch. It allowed me to exercise my UX skills as I tried to playtest in the mindset of my audience, tailoring the content to communicate to the players what should be interacted with next in an unobtrusive way. I especially wanted to find a balance between telling the player what they're capable of and letting them figure out interactions for themselves.
I'm proud of where the game ended up, and that I was able to finish it in time for the Finally Finish Something Jam deadline. I'm excited to take what I've learned in this process about how to make (and how not to make) a functioning game and apply it to future projects. Now that I understand how a lot of the systems within Unity work, I'll be able to complete the basics even faster next time and create bigger, more complex projects.