Last time, I told you how I had officially kicked off a new project in the Unity game engine, so I’m sure the big question is, “What are you making?” The simplest way I can describe what I’m working on is that it’s a hovercraft game set in another world. I wanted to do something within the racer or runner genres and I want the creative flexibility of a scifi/fantasy setting especially because I can make something glow. I won’t get into the grand vision for this project right now, so let’s just discuss what I’ve done so far.

Hovercraft Design

Obviously, the main thing I needed was a hovercraft, so I built a little placeholder. I had at first intended to create only a primitive, featureless shape so that I wouldn’t get bogged down in artistic design, but having a clear front, side, and back seems useful for perspective. Plus it gave me an extra excuse to create trail effects which I think help communicate the movement taking place. It still looks like a “flying potato”, though, or so I’ve been told, which means I didn’t go too far.

High Speed Movement

Because movement is the main activity planned for this game, I spent a fair bit of time building the system that controls that behavior as well as integrating it with a third-party tool I had never used before called Cinemachine to handle the camera view. While I’ve not 100% achieved the feel I want, I will continue to dial it in, and it already seems close enough for someone testing it to understand what I’m going for, which is simply a very high speed, smooth experience.

Crystal Strewn Arena

I built an arena to test the gameplay within. Instead of a fixed track or a long path, I went with a large, round space. I filled it with abstract obstacles and placed a boundary around it. I also fashioned large crystal growths, not unlike The Dark Crystal or that travel montage in The Neverending Story movie. I wanted to try energy crystals that could affect your hovercraft, such as give you a speed boost when you pilot close enough to them. To help communiate the speed and boost aspects, I introduced some on screen information.

Darkness & Effects

I did possibly stray a little too hard into aesthetics because I started making the world darker and glowier and I refined the look of surfaces and added visual effects. However, I do maintain that these things serve important core gameplay communication purposes. For example, I put some hazy particles rising from the ground in a ring around the large crystals as well as casting a circle of light onto the ground to help you see exactly how close you must be to gain a boost. I guess I could’ve done something simpler, but it wasn’t a big diversion and I used the method that came to mind first and that I have a lot of experience with.

Cat & Mouse

Once the world was darker, another core gameplay idea I’ve planned was going to work even better. I added in a threat for the player in the form of a huge searchlight. It is an enemy that looks around the world for any trespassers and will destroy you if it finds you. It’s basically a death ray version of the Eye of Sauron. It even sits at the top of a tower and emanates from a large, fiery mass of light. The visible beam effect called for another third-party asset to create volumetric light and it’s not perfect, but close enough to get the idea across. There is now a health meter that drains as you take damage and the screen will say “Hidden” if the tower cannot see you because of an obstacle. It’s kind of exciting and spooky to hide from this thing.

Collectables

I then gave the player a task by adding little gems that can be collected. It’s not part of the original vision for the game and is a bit too much like Mario coins or Zelda rupees for my taste. You can see how many you have with a little “Gems” counter. I have more organic ideas I wish to try, but this will do in a pinch and it does look great and is fun, so maybe it’ll stick around in some form. Now you have a reason to go out into the world despite the watchful death beam.

Pointless Fun

So far, this playable prototype is pretty fun and challenging. You can zip around a dark world, grab up glowing gems, slingshot around the large space using boosts from energy crystals, run from a menacing searchlight, hide in the shadows, and that’s about it. If your hovercraft takes too much damage, you explode and any gems you were holding are dropped for you to try to scoop back up once you quickly reappear elsewhere with a fresh vehicle. If you grab all the little gems, nothing happens, you can just feel good about yourself.

Want to play?

With no menus and no clear purpose, I’d like to flesh out the prototype a bit more before I put it into anyone’s hands. I’m going to want feedback from lots of people so I can gauge how much interest there is and how well it plays. Watch this space for more info when it’s available.