Toss and Hop

Game Description:  Toss and Hop is a game I made as my capstone project during my final semester of college. Toss and Hop is a 2D co-op puzzle platformer where players must work together as Toss and Hop in order to reach the top of the building and put their graffiti tag on the roof. Hop has the ability to jump and activate/interact with objects like electric boxes, ladders and AC units while Toss cannot, but, Toss has the ability to pick up, drop and throw objects in the level. Players must use the characters unique abilities to help each other reach the next floor of the building.

Design Goals/Inspirations: I made this game entirely by myself with the exception of my friend Logan Castro who did the title screen art and the character art. My goal for this game was to create one well made level that would involve fun and collaborative puzzle solving. For the level design I took inspiration from games like Bokura and It Takes Two. I really liked how players had to rely on each other and their abilities to progress in those games and wanted to make something similar.

Post-mortem: Working by myself on a game was hard. I ran into so many issues that I had to learn to solve on the fly and some I couldn't that I had to adjust the game around. The biggest challenge I ran into was getting local multiplayer to work. I couldn't get both players to work at the same time and almost considered making the game 1-player with the ability to swap characters. I was able to find a solution by manually spawning in each character and assigning a player controller to them in the Game Mode when the game started. Another huge challenge I ran into with this game was finding play testers. I was unable to ever get two people to play the game blind together and mostly had to play test by myself. This is my biggest regret with the project as I feel that not having outside input made it difficult to adjust the level/mechanics and improve the game for the enjoyment of others. Making this game helped me not only to learn more about Unreal Engine and game development but also helped me to network in the community. I had to reach out to many people and would not have learned what I have without them. The game didn't turn out exactly how I wanted it to but I learned so much more through development and talking to people than I would have if I made something else or worked on a team. Overall I am satisfied with how the game turned out and I can't wait to use what I've learned to make something new.