You know that one-day game that sucked, the one I didn’t finish because it was taking me more than one day? Well, I’m stubborn, and I hate not finishing things. So I completed it. It took me almost 4 days, but here it is, a 3 levels prototype.
Überbleibsel
Here is the official page, where you can play it.
It’s a simple “sneak around unnoticed” game, inspired by a game that I once loved, Commandos. You are Fabianguy (any allusion to Fabian Smith – to whom I totally stole the title for the game – is purely causal) and have to examine the blue boxes in search of your spoon. While avoiding the field of vision of those red guys (the fearful Inhabitants!). If you’re stuck, you can shout (actually, it’s more of a shriek), and they’ll come looking, allowing you to go around them. When you get caught, a casual end tale appears, created by randomly mixing various phrases in a puzzle-like way. It’s weird!
The main idea erupted when Baroni let me try his great Simple Waypoint System (which now implements HOTween for curved paths). Then Fabian mentioned the word Überbleibsel, and everything fell into place. Not to mention that Fabian also sent me a picture of his IKEA spoon (so I could choose what to add to Holoville Games’ partners section), and since I didn’t use it in our main website, I HAD to place it somewhere else.
Technicalities
The main issue I had was with the field of vision. Calculating it via code was a breeze, but I wanted it to be actually visible, while being correctly cut by walls, corners, etc. I thought that spotlights would be perfect for that, and quick to implement. But ouch, I discovered that in Unity they can’t project shadows (and thus be correctly occluded) when using orthographic cameras – mainly because deferred lighting isn’t compatible with ortho cams. After some searching around, I found that you can add a fullforwardshadows option to a custom shader. Whew.
But then, the problem was that I wanted a bright ground. And the light cones didn’t shine enough. Thus I needed to delve deeper into custom shaders. Instead than learning more Shader code, I went the lazy way: Strumpy Shader Editor. Which is awesome – and free. With that, plus some contrast effect applied to the main camera, I finally reached the result I was looking for.
To have the player walk around in point&click style, I relied on Unity 3.5 mesh navigation. For the sprites I used the always wonderful 2D Toolkit, Smooth Moves for the minimal character animation, and HOTween for all the tweens (first screen apart). I also – and obviously – made intense usage of the awesome Simple Waypoint System, which allowed me to quickly set paths for the evil Inhabitants. I really liked it, and plan to use it in future games. Finally, for the startup screen I got to use Animator, a Unity plugin which allows you to create cutscenes in a Flash-like style (Blake lured me into buying it, and I’m happy he did). I wanted to create something like that for the next version of HOTween’s Visual Editor, but since absameen already did it, I’m glad to avoid the hard work. It’s still in its infancy, but already quite powerful, and Unity definitely needed something like that.
For once, I didn’t use SFXR for the sounds. I just went to freesound.org and had fun choosing some free-to-use stuff.
All in all, it was a fun and frustrating experience. For a prototype 
Though now I have another idea I’d like to realize. But I’ll resist! Back to Journeyballs!
Whoa! This is FANTASTIC! I totally dig the art. You make minimalism look sexy, which as anyone who has attempted minimalism knows, is incredibly difficult to do!
I’ve been absent from the gamedev space for a bit, and I was hoping there was something interesting going when I logged on today for a poke around: Thanks for the pleasant surprise!
You have a rare gift: The ability to solve problems both technically AND artistically. I envy your awesome brain candies. Well done my friend! Just the thing I needed for a motivational boot in the bollocks this fine morning
Also, awesome sense of humour
You’re back! Seriously, I was getting worried that Diablo 3 had eaten your soul, and you were somewhere playing it eternally while being fed with a flebo
Glad you’re rolling again, I missed you. And glad I could contribute with a motivational boot. And thanks! – sexy minimalism is all I ever wanted from life 
Though I have to accept that prototypes should have an easier gameplay (my woman is still trying to go past the first level – that is, unless she’s lucky and finds the spoon in the first box).
A fun little game, would be interesting to see where you can take the gameplay in later levels. Finding the spoon in the early boxes (happened a few times) was a bit anti climactic, so you may want to have a way of limiting the possible locations to make sure the player actually gets into the level, but this is the type of thing you prototype to find out!
Love the look of it – I’m going to claim you where inspired by my little avatar here
Aha, I actually love your avatar, so I definitely might’ve been subliminally inspired
I made those levels so difficult that I thought the chance of finding the spoon in one of the first boxes was almost needed. But I agree, it’s very anti-climactic. Also, another big mistakes I found – for now – is that the slightly inclined ortho perspective is confusing. My lady (also known as Miss Gaming Guinea Pig) often thinks she’s hidden when she’s not (when being on the upper side of a corner). Better to use a full top-down perspective in the future
Nahaa, it’s not the perspective. It’s your fulloffailurecoding
What frightens me is the fact that I could have sworn I’m playing a 3d game right there O_O
Also I’m not sure how it helps to shriek, when the bad guys come and get me
This is still the greatest game in a world. And everyone saying different things is WRONG. I go and spread the news now !
And while that travelerprince believes he was inspiration, I kinda feel like the colors are a hommage to the blues, the beiges, the red of dropppinbombs. But I’m just getting delirious there over being the hero of a game
You rock !!
Ahaha you’re right with everything, how to deny that?
And the shriek is useful for two reasons (look, I’m playing the expert):
)
- the bad guys go where you shrieked, allowing you to go somewhere else in the meantime
- it interrupts the bad guys cycles, so that when they resume their patrolling they won’t be “synced” anymore, and some place who was constantly observed by either one or the other will instead be free
(I know I know, these are all excuses for making it too difficult
‘travelerprince’ makes me sound like a villain from a Disney movie… lol
I shriek (as in real world), stay in my place and wonder why they catch me
Has something to do with me being described as a little girl in tooo many situations anyways !
the link to the game seems down to me
Thanks Baroni for the warning
I changed various addresses on my website, and forgot to update the blog ones. Done!