About the creation : 

It’s a school project in group, made with Unity in C#, in 2 months, in which we were ask to make a mid-core mobile free-to-play game, with ads and purchasable items.

For this project we were a group composed of 3 Game Design & Programming (GDP) and 4 Game Design (GD). The objective was to create a mid-core mobile free-to-play game and therefore the gameplay part closely related to the economic system. The guideline of our concept was the pure destruction of food in a time limit, effective concept, based on this premise, the economic system revolved around the help and tools we could give to a player in search of destruction. The result is a system of consumable and upgradeable power-ups, a collection of ship with starter pack more and more generous and of course customization: aiming reticule, game background, missile skin. Explosions don’t just stop at missiles, we wanted to have an explosion of juiciness and feedbacks, mandatory content of the concept, so for the little input the player must perform in game, just a few swipes, the player is rewarded with trails, particles, explosions, gauge filling and destruction, which influences retention.

But even behind this funny and messy looking concept, there is a deep thought about how to make good destruction. First, we had a good RLD from GD, so that LD of the different levels, made with GD friendly tools, compensates the player’s destruction power gain, and encourages him to gain some if he lacks it, so we had control on the destruction level from a macro point of view. In terms of handling, the game wants to be playable with one hand, in portrait mode, and therefore most of the buttons of the menu and the entirety of the gameplay in game is accessible to the thumb, to be transport/movement friendly and thus increased the size of the potential public and the retention.

I would like to focus on one of the things I conceptualized/implemented that is invisible outside the development team, but which is the heart of the gameplay and therefore used by the players: the missile firing system. There are two logical planes in the game, one at the center of the structure, which is also the center of the world in 0,0,0 and the other a few units in front of the ship. The missiles make their way to the plane in front of the ship, then by a system of raycast and perspective with respect to the camera, destroy a cube of the structure located much further in the world of the game if the colors of the missiles and the cube correspond, it is almost a 2D reflection. This has many advantages like precision, the reticle is aligned with the center of the structure, in addition to the automatic adjustment of the center of the structure after destruction of one of its parts, which guarantees the impact at the position of the sight. Another advantage, the size of the missiles and their travel time remain constant, which allows to use another thing I implemented, the reproduction of the mechanic of objects in Superliminal (Pillow Castle). The LD having a different number of cubes and proportions, it allows to adapt the scale of the structures to restore the rendering that the game designers, having made the LD, had during their creations, to take the available screen space, no more, no less.

Tips for resolving levels :  

Go around and analyze all the visible areas of the structure and their colors, some will be discovered after destruction of areas, do not worry the missiles have only visible area colors. Then rotate the structure according to the colors of the current missile, so keep a maximum of different colored area in sight to facilitate the swipe to come.

Thanks for reading about this game.