Askewers came out of a project to create a third-person minigame in 3D using Unity Engine. The game had to be quick to learn, had to last at least 30 seconds, and couldn't take longer than a minute. After multiple false starts involving a racing game with platforming, I had the idea of a game where the player character has a spiky head that they can use to stab enemies. After designing a simple character that could be quickly drawn and modeled in 3D, and with some inspiration from games like Katamari Damacy, I decided on a fast-paced platformer with jousting-like combat where your goal was to become a shish kebab. From there, I quickly made a series of sketches to explain how the gameplay would work and compiled them together with a brief pitch for the game and a systems list to create an informal "design document" to show to my professor. Originally, the idea was that the player fought other "players" (controlled by AI) and whoever skewered the most other players at the end won.

After the concept was given the go-ahead from my professor, with the note that having it be multiplayer or having AI-controlled fake players would be very much out of scope, I went into creating the minigame. Without the goal of skewering other "opponents", I instead had the goal be to skewer large bits of food while avoiding simple AI-controlled enemies that can stab you--instantly killing you. I would end up replacing the proposed flutter jump with a ground pound after deciding on a slippery control scheme for the player. The skidding/drifting idea was cut for time, but otherwise, the controls were fully implemented as imagined in the pitch document. The main issue I ran into in creating the game was the level design. 

There are two scenes in the prototype created for class: a tutorial on a small island that utilizes concise floating text and a "learn-by-doing" style of teaching the player; and the game's one level, which is a series of wackily-shaped floating islands. This level is more of a sandbox than an actual arena, as I would simply keep adding and moving around things as a way of testing what I could do with the engine. Because of that, and combined with the ice-physics and bounciness of the player, the level is a bit too difficult for a player to maneuver around, beit their first time playing or otherwise. With only 45 seconds or less to run around, they don't have time to get acclimated to it. If I were to revisit this prototype and flesh it out into a larger game, I would absolutely redesign or outright scrap this level, alongside rewriting scripts to be less amateur and prone to bug-causing.