Inspiration
Inspired by the Interstellar movie, sending gravity from beyond the event horizon of a black hole which helped in creating the overall game idea. Combined with classic puzzle platformer features, we create a game to save the dinosaurs.
What it does
The game starts when our protagonist dinosaur, Cole, falls into a black hole. The game merges the ideas of common puzzle platformer games with a new game mechanic. Our protagonist sends "gravity" to another timeline via a black hole to save a future generation of dinosaurs. His objective in each level is to protect a dinosaur egg by sending it to the safety area. Each level is timed and can be skipped to view each level of the game. The game can be played with keyboard inputs or a controller.
How we built it
To build our project, we utilized the Godot 4.5.1 game engine and its native scripting language, GDScript. We compiled sprite sheet and tiling assets from OpenGameArt, Kenney.nl, and freesound.org to build the looks of our game, then built reusable components for each level of our game. For our opening cutscene we utilize a picture of the M87 black hole and a GLSL shader to simulate our dinosaur's path to the event horizon. For the physics and movement mechanics of the game, we used Godot's native physics engine along with our own scripting to control the gameplay.
Challenges we ran into
Our team had very little experience with game development and using game engines going into our project, so we had a lot to learn in a short amount of time. This was our very first time using the Godot game engine. We also struggled managing the version control and merge conflicts between our versions of the game. It was hard to put together the main game loop, but we overcame that and were able to build 5 levels to complete for our game.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud to say that we managed to meet our goal of at least 5 levels for the game. We feel very proud of the level of polishing we were able to accomplish with the game in such a short amount of time. Getting such a complex idea into a game in this amount of time was a big accomplishment for us.
What we learned
We were able to get a lot of hands on experience and learn a lot of things about game development in general. We learned about many of the features of the Godot game engine and how to build a game with sprites and tilesheets. From the mechanics side, we also learned how to develop enjoyable game mechanics for our users that balance difficulty and reward. From the graphics side, we learned how to use shaders to make a pleasing aesthetic. Overall, we learned how to take a large, complex problem and break it into smaller chunks in order to create an enjoyable game.
What's next for Existential Override
Next for Existential Override includes more levels, cleaner and more reusable code, new tilesheets and aesthetics for levels, a finishing screen showing the dinosaur family reunited at last, and bug fixes.
Built With
- gdscript
- glsl
- godot
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