Mason Crochetiere
Technical Designer
2D Platformer
Over the school semester, I took Game Technology I, a class designed to get me started making game prototypes. This class gave me the opportunity not only to improve my programming foundations but also to truly begin designing games - the 2D Platformer project was my most successful.
The core gameplay here comes from two mechanics: The player’s grappling hook and an objective-based level system. The grappling hook is combined with basic movement mechanics - standard left/right movement, gravity, and a cooldown-oriented jump that can be used in midair - to give the player freedom of movement based upon their ability to manipulate the grappling hook’s ability to make any force omnidirectional.
I felt that the most satisfying way for the player to use these movement mechanics was to use short levels that could be restarted frequently, angling players to work towards mastery of the game. This is integrated with diverse objectives in each level to create a space angled toward both play and mastery.
From a programming perspective, I learned quite a bit about how to structure scripts and code in Unity. The game levels are all instantiated using the same scene & use a dynamic instantiation system to cleanly bring levels into and out of existence. Additionally, I spent a lot of time utilizing class inheritance to make standardized UI across the program inspired by the mobile game I was taking gameplay inspiration from already: Bad Piggies.
This 2D Platformer was also the first big project I decided to take into the summer. I took the opportunity to get used to designing and programming new material off of a pre-existing project rather than just putting together systems myself, as that was a majority of my work done in Game Technology. Within the span of just a week, I put together an entire second world with 10 additional levels, a variety of new mechanics, and UI systems built to support the expanded game scope.
