Tiny game #1: Elsie in the woods

Thinking more about how to unify my interests in programming and art, I’ve been turning to games again – it’s been a while! After spending nearly two months on a prototype platformer game, I had to realize

  • it would take a lot longer to properly finish the game with nice artwork and really smooth gameplay
  • even though developing the game was a lot of fun, I really don’t have that much experience with game design, so ultimately it wouldn’t even have been all that interesting to play.

Inspired by a video on “a game a week”, I decided to abandon the big project and go for way smaller, focused mini games that could actually be implemented in a short time. This is the first of them – situated in what used to be just the intro of my original larger game.

My main goal here was to have a “complete” game – with a beginning, middle, and end, revolving around a simple core game mechanic.

click on the image to open the game in a new window – webgl-enabled browser required!

Despite its simplicity, there were quite a few interesting technical bits here to experiment with:

  • importing the rigged player model from Blender into Unity
  • an outline shader for the player
  • some postprocess bloom in the background
  • Cinemachine virtual camera controls
  • a particle system for the exploding mushrooms
  • 2d physics