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Aztec Mining Game Design
Project Summary
One of my favourite game features in a Role Playing Game (RPG) is the mining system. I enjoy these particularly for the powerful and straight forward satisfaction game loop. The player walks up to a rock, breaking it, a potential item is discovered, repeat.
Another aspect I enjoy in these type of games is the crafting system. Combining these, I started a new project using the coding skills developed from the Into Games FastTrackers C++ Course. For this I wanted to making my own cosy, adventure game using a similar mechanic and as a way to display my UI skills.
Skills used
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Researching skills for solutions and Aztec history and art
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Problem solving
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UI art asset creation in Blender and Adobe Illustrator
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Creativity
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Figma prototyping
Project Objectives
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To create a cosy, adventure mining game seen similarly in other RPG games like Harvest Moon
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Experiment with creating an inventory and craft system mechanism based on Scriptable Objects
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Create UI assets and icons according to an Aztec theme
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To practice coding skills developed from the Fast Trackers course especially Lists and For loops
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Implement accessibility design practices where possible
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Experiment with scene transition and retaining data between scenes
What went well
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I was able to achieve my project objectives
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The game was fun to play and gave a sense of excitement and relaxation
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The satisfaction cycles worked well with there being a strong shorter cycle of break rocks whilst longer cycles of creating items and upgrading tools
Challenges
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One feature I decided to use was to generate randomised mining levels with dynamic map sizes. This was great for building excitement but made it possible for potential bug situations where a player might get stuck.
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When collectable items would appear within the game there was a design challenge on how the player would interact with these. Should the player be able to collide with the objects and these scatter around the level? Should the player be able to walk straight through them? In both cases it felt that this would reduce the player experience by either frustrating the player chasing items, or by making it feel less real.
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An idea that I wanted to design for those who might have challenges with dexterity or mobility was to create an auto equip mode. This would equip and unequip the required tools to perform an action. It would reduce the amount of button pressing needed and for the player to focus more on the map. One challenge to this powerful feature is that it bypasses the need to equip and unequip the correct tool and would be used by all players.
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A clash which occurs during creation was using multiple layout groups. While this seemed to have no errors within Unity, when the build was exported the image and text layout were out of proportion. It took a while to figure this out and was eventually deconstructed and simplified.
A video showing manual equipping vs using auto equip when breaking rocks.
Learnings, outcome and improvement
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A well designed game built upon straight forward mechanics can have a greater impact compared to something more complicated.
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Collectable pickup items were only allowed to move up and down on collision. This became a humorous and fun solution to the gameplay while retaining the planned emotional design.
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Auto equip mode was adapted to cause an extra stamina penalty when an action occurred to deter players from using this. Alongside this a shortcut manual equip button was added to reduce the time taken for equipping an item like the hammer if it was used previously.
Footage of player collision with mushroom items
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