Platform: Mobile (Android and IOS)
Language: C#
Tools: Unity
Duration: 7 months
Team Size: 4
A common way that games handle progression is to increase the amount of tools or abilities available to the player as they progress through the game. What we wanted to do with Zenith is reverse that and actually have the player lose abilities as they progress through the game, rather than gain them. This creates an interesting twist and makes players think differently about sections of the game as they progress through it. What once was a simple hill that could be walked up with the hiking boots will now be an undefeatable obstacle, without the hiking boots, therefore forcing the player to think of alternate ways to approach the level other than the ways they had become used to using.
The player starts out with 3 main items at their disposal which are hiking boots, a pickaxe and a rope. Each of the items have various uses which develop throughout the game forcing players to use their items in ways they are not used to. The hiking boots are used quite a lot at the start of the game and they are the first item that is lost. The hiking boots allow the player to walk on slippery surfaces such as ice and slopes.
The second item is the pickaxe and this is the other item that the player loses later on in the game. The pickaxe can be used to climb rocky surfaces and later on in the game can be used to smash through weaker areas of the environment.
The final item is the rope and this is the only item that the player does not lose through the game. The rope can be used to swing across gaps using hooks in the cave ceiling and create a rope bridge across certain gaps using wooden stakes. Later in the game the rope can also be used to pull floating platforms towards the player.
Once the player has lost the hiking boots, slopes and ice will become a problem and the player will slide down the slopes and across the ice. When the pickaxe is lost, blocks will become much more important and players will need to figure out how to move the blocks around the level and use the crates to climb on and reach higher areas.
Zenith was made in Unity by a team of 4 consisting of 2 programmers, including myself, a designer and an artist. Many of the tasks for this game that I worked on revolved around the gameplay elements. Some of the things I worked on were the blocks and all of the functions for the rope item, which included rope swinging, tight ropes and rope climbing. Rope climbing was basically climbing up walls that had a wooden stake at the top but was cut due to the similarity in functionality with the pickaxe climbing. The rope is also used for dragging floating platforms. The blocks can be pushed and pulled around the level and will fall down gaps and slide across ice.
Deciding on the correct type of input for the use of the blocks was actually quite challenging since what would usually be handled by just holding down a button becomes more difficult with a touch game. The fact that the game has point-and-click movement made the use of the blocks even more difficult since not only do the blocks need to be pushed around but the player is also able to climb on them. The end approach was to have the top half of the block used for climbing on top of the block and the bottom half used for initiating the push/pull state. This was still not a particularly intuitive way to push the blocks but along side a tutorial it gave the functionality that was required. This was another very interesting learning experience for how to approach the user input for touch games and what problems or differences can occur with touch based games.
The curve used for the rope swing and the players jump was created using a bezier curve class that I created that creates a curve using a start position, an end position and a height for the curve, with the height being negative for the rope swing. The curve created is a set of points that are then fed into our movement system to make the player move correctly.
Originally we had planned to continue working on Zenith after University but due to individual circumstances we did not continue development.
The Zenith Teaser Trailer.
Bryn Slack 