Making an Underwater Adventure Game! (Ludum Dare 48)

this video is sponsored by jason wyman get massive discounts to his game making courses using the link in the description more info at the end we took part in one of the biggest game jams in the world's la dundare we had 72 hours to make a small video game from scratch based on the theme deeper and deeper i joined forces with my brother liam jonas tyroller and yan four game developers each of us generalists being able to code make arts sounds and design for this project however i focused almost all my energy on art and animations liam on programming jonathan code design and some audio work and yeah on story audio and tons of level design this was the biggest team i've ever been a part of and it was a blast we began with a chunky two-hour meeting brainstorming game ideas that would fit the theme perhaps an underwater base slowly sinking into the deep ocean where you would place turrets to ward off slimy horrors or game where you would design cave-like levels by placing cards and then navigate those environments the theme that stuck the most was a game set underwater the deep ocean still remains a mysterious fantastical place right with alien-like creatures it's a great source of inspiration and we felt pretty sure we could make an interesting tiny adventure here when opening up a brand new unity project there's so many possibilities our game world was yet to be born so while liam and jonas began coding player controls some destructible terrain and enemies again busied himself with dreaming up a level design and story and i got to work on art the ocean's slight wave like wobble was effortlessly made with the all-in-one shader pack which i've talked about numerous times in the past because it's so damn good i mainly used the wave and round wave settings here which can create subtle watery ripples since the level would be quite large we needed chunky terrain pieces we could cobble together i made those of different shapes and sizes the protagonist is a squishy blowfish in its puffed up form it destroys enemies and terrain initially the controls although interesting on paper fell short when put into practice the player would float upwards and felt kind of unresponsive and quite frustrating to control it's only on the third day that we settled for a simple dash control setup less original very simple but at least it was a lot more fun to explore the underwater worlds and as we liked reminding ourselves the focus should be on that thrill of discovery we wanted players to curiously wonder what lay just around the corner what new creatures they would find or tiny secrets hidden i made a bunch of different sea creatures finding ideas was a piece of cake that really just skims the surface here liam did a lot of the enemy programming using the a-star solution to get sharks dodging obstacles and following the poor player there's also a simple patrol ai where a jellyfish moves from point to point most of these underwater monsters are easy to avoid or defeat again with the aim to focus on story and exploration with only three days focusing on simplicity is key we didn't have time to make deep combat or stealth systems for once i'm really happy with the game's difficulty we almost always fall in the trap of making our game jam games too hard so going down in fish story feels just right it takes about eight minutes to complete and hopefully won't see players quit in frustration due to ridiculous difficulty spikes i think a good rule to follow with game jams is make it short and sweet people don't usually want to spend more than 10 minutes on a single gem game especially when there's so many to play tests but the first day we mostly built different characters and systems placing everything together in a messy heap we have jellyfish and little parallax experiments even a massive spooky boss with three beating hearts jen took the leap and began assembling all these desperate parts into a cohesive interesting level i would be right behind beautifying the worlds this was done by placing little patterns like shells husks and rocks on the terrain for a little more detail adding background and foreground patterns also added a lot of depth and life to the ocean i made wobbly blue fish that would just swim nice and chilled out in the backgrounds i would often reference jan's level sketch looking for landmarks to illustrate such as this spooky vine corridor the happy breeding grounds or toothy horror making an adventure game even a tiny one can be an ambitious undertaking for our world to be interesting we needed variety different colors rooms and creatures duplicating the same piranha everywhere would have been a real bore let's make a tiny adventure sounded easy and fun and sure it was really enjoyable but very challenging to bring to life with such little time thankfully we were for and very well equipped to collaborate thanks to unity's built-in collab system i was happy to have a quiet adventure with no dialogue partly because i was concerned we didn't have the time and sure there's much to love in environmental storytelling or quiet protagonists began and jonas went above and beyond during the final hours working until two in the morning to complete the story again had written out and voice acted anyway the animated mini cutscenes and brought the characters and world to life jonas's sister clara also did some great voice acting for bubbling the player character which was a great long as we stay together nothing can stop us you're right let's never miss each other oh no by the way in case you didn't know jonas has an awesome channel and he'll be posting his own devlog on going down in fish story in the following weeks if you want to follow another awesome developer then check out yann who's working on glitch on with river forge games for future game jams i would like to focus on gameplay heavy systems that can easily be scaled or expanded on basically having a playable fun prototype after a couple hours would be the goal going down in fishery was a wobbly mess for a long time and only really came together at the very end of the jam it was a tough challenge and if it wasn't for the austin team we wouldn't have been able to complete the project on time you can of course play the game for free using the link in the description and the entire team would be extremely curious to hear your thoughts on the project this video was sponsored by jason wyman an industry expert he's the creator of various in-depth courses focused on the art of game creation as a special deal right now we're offering the blackthorne bundle which includes not just one but all three courses at the price of just one you can start with the programmer course which will equip you with the knowledge you need to bring your ideas to life using unity by teaching you the basics of c sharp vector math ai and even multiplayer the mastery course goes even further by bringing you through the process of creating entire games from scratch such as a top-down shooter or fps and after learning how to professionally structure your games with the master architects course you'll be able to use unity on a professional level once more you get life support from jason himself whenever you need help and will have access to the discord server to connect learn and get inspired by other game developers all over the world so check out the black thumb bundle by simply clicking the link in the description and this will give you access to every single course a free copy of my latest commercial game dashing fire and huge discounts on future courses from jason thanks a ton for watching stay tuned [Music] cheers you

Channel: Blackthornprod

Views: 30,723

Keywords: blackthornprod, unity, tutorial, noaCalice, c#, programming, art, animation, game dev, ludum dare 48, making of, going down in fishstory, making a video game, underwater game, water physics, making an adventure game in unity, Making an Underwater Adventure Game! (Ludum Dare 48), game jam behind the scenes, LD48, game design, game idea, story game, dialogue, voice acting, jonas tyroller, doing a game jam, how to game jam

Id: TXH2bh-6TbI

Length: 7min 21sec (441 seconds)

Published: Sun May 02 2021