Handy Man

Inspiration

We are a group of good friends who love all different sorts of video games, but we were mostly inspired by dungeon crawlers and the limits of our ability. Our different backgrounds and majors led ourselves to create a project that none of us could individually lay claim to, as our combined efforts lead to the inspiration and creation of our game. For the main concept of the game, we were inspired by the abilities of Kirby and Megaman, in which the different enemies would allow for differing experiences.

What it does

Handy Man is a simple game built to entertain and iterate. It shares ideas with many dungeon crawlers and rouge-likes, with a hand drawn 2D experience and smooth controls.

How we built it

Using the Unity game engine, GitHub and Google Drive for file sharing, and lots of YouTube videos, the game was created using the base concepts of 2D game design.

Challenges we ran into

Game Development is an often glamorized career, however stressful and intense it can be. Without a true right or wrong way to program and develop, sometimes brainstorming of how to effectively tackle a concept would take the longest. This unexpected time was trouble for the entire team, as we all relied on each other for critical systems of the game. It was also the first time that most of us had used Unity to program games, and the unfamiliarity with the systems was frustrating at times, especially the AI and animation systems. As the game got more complicated, we encountered GitHub merge errors and was unable to use version control for a time, so the stress of making mistakes was at an all time high.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

First and foremost, the game does run. It is fully playable, and while it does not live up to our original vision, we appreciate all that it has taught us, and are proud of the results we have delivered in the time and resources we have been given. The animation, player mechanics, and UI were all significant pieces of our work, and we are pleased to present them. All in all, we stuck to a strict schedule, and while we had to be flexible, our efforts were rewards with a game ready for playing.

What we learned

Unity was the largest thing learned, most of the team was learning it for the first time. The developers and artists had a difficult time learning syntax and Unity systems, but eventually were able to get the hang of it. Often times, the developers had to handle animation and the artists programing as the team was small, but many good lessons were learned. However, I believe that the most important lesson learned was our how we worked under pressure, as a team, and stretched to our breaking point.

What's next for Handy Man

We all intend to continue working on this project at some point in our careers, and continue iterating on the project until it is fully fleshed out game with stellar art and animation, intuitive UI and UX, cutting edge AI systems, a full soundtrack, and countless more enemies and levels.

Built With

• aftereffects
• clipstudio
• github
• google-drive
• unity
• vscode