Published Games
Here are my two published mobile games, both available on Android platforms. Developed during my six-week placement during my final year at AIE at Mini Mammoth Games, a mobile game studio based in Adelaide, South Australia, these titles—Cave Swingers and Highway Surfers—highlight my proficiency in game development and design. I was placed into a team with one other student who was a programmer. We had six days of development time across a three week period for each of the two games.
Highway Surfers
Highway Surfers was the second game that my team and I made. Highway Surfers is an infinite runner where you change lanes to avoid obstacles. The score is tied to how far the player traves with the goal to travel the furthest distance.
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Highway Surfers was the second game that my team and I made while doing placement at Mini Mammoth Games. Highway Surfers is endless runner where the player is speeding down a city street and has to dodge different on coming vehicles. we added physics to the cars and objects scattered around so that when the player interacts with them they will go flying or stop the players car.
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Our biggest achievement with this project was making the random generation of the city. To do this I made a number of different pre designed prefabs that can be called upon to spawn ahead of the player. This came with a number of issues where certain combinations of prefabs would result in impossible sections that would result in the players run end. To fix this issue I had to ensure that the beginning and ending of each prefab allowed enough space for the player to react to any new obstacles on screen that will end the players run.
While making the random generation we had to keep in mind the platform limitations. As we were designing the game for mobile we ran into issues with the game starting to lag as the player went for a longer time. Our workaround for this with such little development time was to delete prefabs that are two prefabs behind the player so that the player cant see them being deleted. The next issue was loading the prefabs ahead of the player. We found it jarring when the players render distance will make sections of the city pop in, but turning up the render distance to avoid that issue would cause the game to lag and run poorly. I decided to make a shader that added a curve to the level. The curve made it look as if the player is driving on flat ground but the city is appearing over the horizon. This allowed us to spawn in only a few prefabs ahead of the player without the player being able to see them spawn in.
Cave Swingers
Cave Swingers was the first game that my partner and I made. Cave Swingers is another infinite running high score based game where the player can grapple onto lights to stay above the laver floor and dodge different objects.
The player must time when they attached their grapple as the length of the rope when attached cant change. In order to progress deeper into the cave the player must continuously attach and disconnect to the next light ahead to keep their speed up to be able to reach the next light. The player in unable to attach to a light they have already disconnected from. The player receives a point for every light they pass and can earn an additional point for every diamond they collect throughout the run with the goal to have the highest number of points.
Just like with Highway Surfers we designed random generation by creating a number of different prefabs that are called to spawn. This took up a large majority of our development time as it was the first time either of us have tried to work with random generation.
The swinging mechanic allows the player to carry high momentum and fly through the cave but is also extremely punishing if the player either losses all of their speed or is unable to pass an object due to their rope being to long or short. This allows for a high skill ceiling and makes the player want to continue playing as when they fail there is always something they could have done in order to keep going.