The Journey

The Journey is a 2D adventure game following a character who fights enemies to get to a trophy

This was my first project ever made in Unity. Though familiar with C# previously, making this game made me approach the process in a different way.

Gameplay:

• The player must traverse a series of levels, each containing enemies and pickups

• There are also treasure chests in the levels, which, when shot by the player's projectiles, can spawn random potion pickups, each with their own effects

• Partway through the game, there is a level that will be selected randomly each time the game is played.

• To win the game, the player must reach the final cave level and collect the trophy inside

Skills developed from this project:

• Unity functionality: never before this project had I ever opened Unity, so nearly every skill needed to create this game was new. I learnt about prefabs, the animation system, tags, tile painting, and how and when to use different scripts.

• Two-dimensions: my projects prior to this had all been created in Unreal Engine, and so were made in a 3D space. As such, this was my first 2D game, so I had to ensure I was thinking slightly differently in how my designs and mechanics would work.

• Randomisation: I hadn't previously featured randomisation in a game with visuals - my only previous usage was in my text-based game, Funky Fishing. In this project, I used randomisation to choose which potions would spawn from a broken treasure chest, as well as the positions in which they would spawn, and the random level.

• Scene changes: my previous games in Unreal Engine had all been contained completely in one map, so this was my first time ever having to switch between different levels. Though I had issues at first with carrying across information between scenes, this is a skill that I am very glad to have gained, since it will be extremely beneficial to know for all future games.

• Timer-based levels: within The Journey is a level which features a timer in the corner. The timer counts down in real-time seconds, and, once the timer reaches zero, the level will be changed. I hadn't ever attempted this before, but I really liked how it was implemented, and decided that I would most likely do similar in future projects.