Documentation

Documentation:

My initial vision for Spearbound was a multiplayer combat-focused game with the main mechanic revolve around throwing spears to both traverse the environment and fight each other and a range of enemies. As development progressed the main mechanic stayed the same, however from play-testers feedback, players found the experience a lot more suited for creative platforming than combat. This led me to pivot directions over to more focus on spear traversal and interesting level designs. This led to the conditions for winning being to find all the orbs scattered throughout the map, rather than kill all the enemies. A few enemies are still included to add a sense of threat and add a more dynamic feel to the game, without it being overloaded with difficult combat.

During the Week 12 testing session, many players found it difficult to figure out the different controls and mechanics in the game, most notably using the spear as a platform. This led me to create a tutorial level, that displayed all the controls, with some having graphics to go along with them. I also included similar hints in later levels to teach players more difficult game mechanics if they haven't learnt them already. Most of the feedback boiled down to players hoping for more content than the two that were provided in the particular session, so the last week was mostly focused on level design, with now 5 level of increasing difficulty and more ways to utilize the spear throwing mechanic, like climbing walls and using it as means to view the entire map at once. I also added more particles and sound effects to enemy hits so it is more clear that enemies are taking damage, as some people did not know some enemies were invulnerable.

The asset list is as follows:

• Player object, includes scripts to control player movement, determine the player health and detect how many orbs are collected in a level.
• Spear object, includes scripts for rotating, throwing and retrieving the spear. Includes a SpearTip child object to detect collisions. When spear collides with a wall it creates a collider for the player to stand on, and if thrown almost vertically it will instantiate exactly vertical.
• EnemyYellow object, the enemy object that instantiates projectiles that chase and hurt the player. Has 3 health and instantiates an orb on death. Includes Radius child object that detects the player and will trigger the parent to begin attacking and floating. 
• EnemyOrange object, that hurts the player when touched, but otherwise harmless. Has just one health and instantiates an orb when killed.
• Collectable object, when collided with the player destroys itself and increments the collected variable in the player. Can be hit wit a spear.
• VirtualCam and TargetGroup, used to capture both spear and player on screen at the same time by resizing the camera accordingly. Bounds object makes sure the camera does not go outside the level.
• Door object, when all collectables are collected, it changes its appearance to open, and when the player collides with it, it switches to the next scene/level.
• Terrain/Grass/Hanger, used to make up the level. The terrain and grass are tilemaps, the only difference between them being that the terrain has a collider, whereas the grass doesn't. The grass appears in front of every other object. The hanger acts similarly to the terrain, however the spear cannot stick to them and is not a tilemap.
• Explosion particles, instantiated every time the spear collides with the environment or enemies. Bigger explosions appear when enemies are destroyed. Play sounds when instantiated.

All sprites are made by me using https://www.piskelapp.com, and most sounds were created with https://sfxr.me. Music is called Threat - Shoreline by James Primitive, and comes from the Rain World OST.

Screenshots:

Title Screen: Pressing the play button begins the game at the tutorial.

Tutorial level, teaches the player the controls, while still providing them with problem-solving challenges.

The cavern level, a very low risk level getting the player more used to traversing the more vertical challenges.

Introducing the harder to defeat enemy, and a slightly harder platforming challenge.

More orbs to collect that are tougher to reach, requiring a heightened knowledge of the mechanics.

The final level, teaching the player an advanced wall-scaling technique if they have not learnt it already.

Referencing:

Piskel: Free pixel art editor, https://www.piskelapp.com

SFRX: Sound effect creator, https://pro.sfxr.me

Rain World OST, https://downloads.khinsider.com/game-soundtracks/album/rain-world-selections-fro...