unity3d

Game Jams, White Rose

Synesthetic Beat-’em-up | Ludum Dare 34

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Synesthetic Beat-’em-up | Ludum Dare 34

In a world created by sound, play as a boy with synesthesia as he fights the ever growing darkness with music and his fists, painting the world in color with every damaging blow. Destroy the monsters before they spread the ever-growing darkness. Turn up the beats and enjoy the visual experience.

Check the game out on our Ludum Dare 34 post! Or, play the game directly on our Itch.io page!

Screenshots:

White Rose gameplay gif 7 - Combo

White Rose gameplay gif 3 - Parallax

White Rose was actually one of the first concepts we came up with when we got into game development, so we were really excited to be able to turn it into something playable. Unfortunately, due to time constraints for this jam we couldn’t implement all the features, such as combo-ing to the beat of the music and adding a rhythm element to it. Check out the game and have fun!

Game Jams

Game Submitted for the Itch.io Loading Jam!

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One and a half weeks later, this game jam has been conquered. You can find the download link here. You can support us by playing the game, giving us feedback, and rating us on the jam site! It’ll be greatly appreciated. In the meantime, check out some screenshots below.

Paradigm is a visual novel, mystery thriller with alternate endings. It features puzzles, humor and pixel art.

TitleScreen_poster

Games

Week 6: We’re Participating in the Itch.io Loading Screen Jam!

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Hey Everyone!

It’s been a couple weeks since our last update and we hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. We took a little break this past week to spice up our creative juices by attending the Itch.io Loading Screen Jam.

Do you every wonder why loading screens are, well, just loading screens? Do ever wonder why you just sit there and watch a spinning circle as you wait for the next level to load?

Well apparently, Namco filed a US patent 5718632 back in 1995, which forbid interactive loading screens. It’s 2015 and the patent has finally expired, so the theme of this jam is what creative things can you do that involve leading screens.

All we’re going to tell you for now is that our game is going to be a mystery visual novel with small puzzles, humor, and pixel art. Staying true to our studio values, we took the theme to a whole new, deeper level that will delight fans of the thriller genre.

I know we broke some rules that we mentioned in our “How to Make a Game in One Week” post (specifically, don’t waste time learning new skills), but after playing Undertale last week, we just couldn’t resist. So for this jam we picked up some tips and skills on how to write mystery stories and draw pixel art. Here are some screenshots:

 

Games
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We’re on our way home from Davis! We got ourselves a nice hot cup of Cocomo (dazzling chocolate, coconut infusion) from Dutch Bros Coffee. Yea, say that once without saliva coming out of your mouth.

dutchbros

Aside from the terrible, waking-up-ever-hour sleep with plastic bedsheets at Motel 6 and the mentally draining Epic MegaJam that literally just finished the day before yesterday, the game jam was a lot of fun. It was hosted by the UC Davis Gamedev & Arts Club as a fun ice-breaker event for all the new members to start learning how to use Unity and work in groups. The more experienced members, including ourselves, spent the day mixing between making our own game, answering questions and mentoring the students. You can imagine the excitement on their faces when they won more than half of the award categories! They had ridiculously creative concepts.

Wispy Willows

New Level Complete

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Woo!!!!!!! Just finished up the design for a new level of #WispyWillowsGame. This one caused me some especial pain. Lots and lots of unseen bugs came up during testing. I’m quite happy with the layout. All art are placeholders at the moment.

Level15

Wispy Willows

Fishes, Water and Rain

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Woohoo FISHIES! And RAIN!! MOVING WATER!!

Fishies

These are kept simple because they’re so small. The models were made in Blender and have no animation. The movement is done in Unity by script using “Random.insideUnitSphere”. Each fish uses this function to swim around random points in a sphere of a pre-determined size.

I may add waggling tails at some point… You can’t have fishies without waggling tails…

Rain

This is done via a really neat tutorial that teaches you how to take advantage of 2 particle systems working together—one to create the rain itself, and one to simulate the “splashes.” I highly recommend it for a nice raining-and-splashing effect.

Water

This is actually the same gradient color shader that is used on all objects in the game scene. The only difference is that this one allows for transparency. The “waves” or “white caps” were drawn in GIMP on a png texture, which was then added to this transparent, gradient color shader.

We would love to hear your thoughts!

Here’s a bonus screenshot in case anybody wants to use it as phone wallpaper:

Wispy Willows

Ambience and Scenery Concept

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We really like Monument Valley’s philosophy of making your game poster or wallpaper-ready, so this piece utilizes Vignette (dark, blurred corners) to focus the viewer’s attention on the center. All objects are arranged in a circle and the background is relatively dark—there is nothing out in the distance to distract the viewer.

This scene actually uses no lighting. All objects use a shader that provides color depending on which direction the object’s surfaces face. In addition to that, the shader overlays a gradient based on the height of the object.

The floor is a splatter of different paint brushes done in GIMP. I lightened up the center of the splatter to give the illusion of light shining on it.

Here’s a screenshot in case you want to use it as phone wallpaper. Enjoy!

Ambience and Scenery Test 2

Wispy Willows

Testing Color Combinations on a Low Poly Setting

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Testing Different Color CombinationsSince this game focuses a lot on aesthetics, we used https://coolors.co/ to come up with some nice color combinations that would give the eerie yet mystical vibe we’re trying to go for. All the models were made in Blender, while the shading and particle effects were done in Unity. Every single object, including the background, uses a gradient shader with directional coloring.

We love to hear your feedback. Any criticism would be greatly appreciated!