Falling Leaf

Overview

This is the prototype of a straightforward arcade game where a leaf falls down between two trees, collecting floating seeds for score and avoiding contact with branches that take away score as a forgiving "damage" system. It was created very rapidly under time pressure and was my first time using Unity Visual Scripting, so it's not incredibly advanced. Still, it features a fully functional top 5 leaderboard system, giving the gameplay some purpose and direction, with the potential for expansion if a lot of effort was put into it. Despite lacking a lose state other than a low score, it still has a full game loop, with the most frustrating thing about it being the lack of a quick restart button, which could reduce a lot of frustration when the player knows they won't get a high score partway through playing through the levels.

Video Playthrough & Commentary

Documentation (GDD)

Contents

⬤ Introduction

• Summary

• Key Features

⬤ Game Mechanics

• Core Gameplay

• Scoring

⬤ Interface

• User Interface

• High Score System

⬤ Art & Audio

• Artwork

• Animations

• Sound

Introduction

Summary

This simplistic arcade title aims to create an accessible and unlosable yet addicting cyclic experience that ties scoring tightly to level design to incite a score attack showdown between players. Players control a leaf weaving through point-deducting and slow branches to collect seeds on their descent through an autumnal forest.

Key Features

This prototype features one continuous stream (split into three levels) of gradually increasing difficulty wherein left and right movement, as well as the option to speed up, are presented. There is a simple title screen to not get thrust right into gameplay (and to simulate inserting a coin), and a fully functional score system and high-score leaderboard screen visible between each playthrough.

Game Mechanics

Core Gameplay

A leaf slowly falls down through a thin valley between two trees which cover most of the screen and act as walls. Inputs on the left and right axis (A and D, or left and right arrows, thumbstick motions etc) move the leaf at a speed chosen for precision without being sluggish – the leaf is meant to feel lightweight to control, rather than heavy and bulky. Holding the downward axis (S, down arrow, etc.) speeds up the leaf drastically, to the point where more difficult levels aren’t safely navigable, especially not while collecting all of the seeds. This introduces some delay in slowing back down after releasing the input, creating strategy on the release timing when approaching dangerous territory after speeding through easier areas.

Colliding with the few solid wooden blocks in Level 1 just lets the leaf slide along them leniently. Colliding with branches causes the leaf to be bumped upward and also affects horizontal movement to create a brief moment of panic that highlights the impact of the branch, while also slowing the leaf down to ultimately reduce score while giving the player breathing room to regain their bearings.

A considered mechanic was brown leaves falling down from above as additional moving obstacles upon hitting certain trigger points. Another was the introduction of vertical fans that launch the leaf significantly upwards to create situations where verticality must be timed to go over or under larger obstacles in the narrow space.

Scoring

The incentive of scoring is what makes the key motivation and verbs of the game – “avoid” branches and “collect” seeds in the limited span of the level, while being as fast as possible as a tertiary incentive.

Collecting a seed grants 20 points, but seeds are limited in quantity. Hitting a branch deducts 20 points to cancel out a seed in theory – however, the impact of branches is more severe in practice as they also waste time, which reduces score by 1 point per second to only slightly incentivise time in the short levels but still have it as a tiebreaker impact.

The benefit of one point being assigned to one second is that the balancing creates low overall point totals which are easier to parse at a glance than scores that are in the thousands and above, typical in other games. While smaller numbers may be less visually impressive, they are equally satisfying in gameplay as each point is more valuable and the impact of each point is better felt.

Interface

User Interface

The UI is extremely simplistic in this prototype. The title screen menu is simply the background of the game with large white pixellated text to show the title, controls (focused on WASD as the expected playstyle) and the instruction to press any key to start. The in-game HUD is simply the score number in the top left corner, again in plain white text, placed in front of the giant tree wall to avoid visually interrupting gameplay. The leaderboard/high score screen at the end is comprised of plain brown boxes, brown selected to invoke the autumn forest theme, with more plain white text to display the scores.

The simplicity of the interface allows for interaction to be extremely snappy for a gameplay focus. A more specific input, the unused-in-gameplay spacebar, is selected as the key to go from the leaderboards to the title screen, to prevent accidental skipping of the leaderboards. However, the title screen can be bypassed with any button push, so players seeing it for the second time or later can ignore its existence by pressing space again or pressing a gameplay key to get right back in.

High Score System

The high scores/leaderboards screen shows the top 5 previously attained scores, as well as the currently attained score underneath. 5 was selected for ease of implementation in visual scripting, as my solution needs to be handmade for each high score, featuring its own variable and if-statement outcome to manually shift lesser scores down and insert the current score.

Art & Audio

Artwork

The game’s art is sourced almost entirely from nature – CC0 sources of an autumnal forest background and a leaf were found and edited to fit a 32-pixel colour-limited appearance. The trees either side of the level were CC0-sourced from a more manufactured piece of wood, seamlessly curving and repeating a pattern to create an artificial contrast while still being largely natural. Shading was added to this manually with a gradient and branches were hand-drawn using its colours with additional shades of dangerous red to further the artificial uncanniness and to frame the branches as dark and hazardous.

The only non-CC0 artwork is the pixel font, called DPComic, which is free for use unless republished in a font collection. Relevant credit to zone38.net was added just in case on the game’s title screen.

Animations

Animations are not present in the prototype, but the first aspect to be animated would definitely be the leaf character so that it more peacefully flows through the air, with extra impact on collisions as well as when speeding downward which could add to the experience heavily. By attaching the camera to the player, enough motion is created to serve gameplay.

Sound

The game features background “music” of a CC0 ambient wind sound from Freesound, which is compressed to better fit the 8-bit feel. In keeping with this ambience, the title screen and leaderboards are silent. Sound effects for collecting seeds, hitting branches and arriving at a new level were custom-generated 8-bit sounds with the goal of being fast jabs into the soundscape. The soundtrack’s ambience contrasts with the usual peppiness of chiptunes to create a deliberately sombre feel, inspired by the dread created by the Jaws-like approach noise of enemies in Space Invaders.

Documentation (LDD for Level 2)

Contents

• Pacing & Flow

• Level Elements

• Map

Pacing & Flow

The level’s flow features three distinct phases: a tutorial section, a complication, then a challenge. (This is on top of it being the “business as usual” level as a whole, sandwiched between the tutorial before and the challenge after.)

• Tutorial section: for beginners, an introduction to the pickups and easily avoidable branches with seeds forming simple leading lines to ease them in. For experienced players, a section skippable by speeding through it, creating a unique challenge in speed over precision.

• Complication: for beginners, a more precise fare likely to cause damage and score loss, especially if veering towards difficult seeds. Experienced players need to balance when they speed up and slow down, through extra difficult paths, particularly the triple seed as the biggest payout in the level.

• Challenge: for beginners, uncomfortable to safely get through the first time if chasing seeds, but bypassable if necessary by precisely staying in the middle column. For experienced players, a section necessitating fully slowing down and weaving through thin gaps with maximum precision to avoid losing the effort from the rest of the level with high tension and stakes.

Pacing Chart:

Level Elements

• Wooden walls: Two walls constrain the level to a thin, perfectly vertical passage that’s five tiles wide for obstacles to be interspersed into.

• Seeds: 13 across the stage granting 20 points each, for a potential maximum of +260 points, resulting in around +250 in a theoretically perfect playthrough with perfect use of speed to complete the level in 10 seconds. Brightly highlighted to use for leading lines and traps.

• Branches: A whole host of branches, many floating in mid-air, remove 20 points each and bop you on contact to slow you down.

Map

As before, green is the beginner route and blue is the experienced max-score route.

Tutorial section:

Complication:

Challenge: