A Mazing Penguin [Indie Game - Ongoing]

Genre : Platformer, Puzzle, 2.5D, Isometric, Stylized

Tools : Unity, Photoshop, Blender, Github

Platforms : PC, Mac

Game Description

A Mazing Penguin is a single-player top-down isometric puzzle platformer where you guide a lone penguin along icy trials full of danger in order to reach the other side. Overcome many obstacles like rolling snow boulders and falling icicles, spinners and walruffians, and slide across floors of ice.

Inspired by a handful of Warcraft 3 custom maps, namely Polar Escape, Maze of Sliding Bunnies, and Area of Ice Escape. A Mazing Penguin attempts to stay true to the core game loop of sliding around on ice in order to reach the next checkpoint, while avoiding and maneuvering around all sorts of threats.

Astar Pathfinding

Even though the main core mechanic is sliding on ice, when not sliding there will be walking. And because the basic controls for the game use WASD to move the screen and mouse clicking for moving the penguin (similar to an RTS), pathfinding is essential for a more fluid, intuitive and easy to handle movement system. And Astar pathfinding works best for my purposes of moving and calculating for a single unit. Player movement will initially be direct vector pathing, going where you click, but once you bump into anything it will begin calculating a path for you and complete the move command. This is also being used for a particular boss encounter where it will chase and follow the player, and the player must run away to escape.

3D Modeling

Majority of the game art will be in 2D: floor tiles, character sprites, environment props. But the walls, or borders for a level, will be 3-dimensional. Models are created in Blender - they are to be relatively low in poly count (about 500 tris), modular, and sized to fit exactly 1 Unity unit. Once the UVs are unwrapped, I go into Photoshop to work on the texturing. The game will have a cartoon art style with minimal detail and a clean look with blending of colors. There will be themes with their own aesthetic: snow, cave (above), and temple.

Concept Art