Overview

A Walk in Dry Winds is a game prototype of the time I spent learning various Unity Engine 2D toolkits circa. 2020/21 ~ 2023. Original Scope/Expectation Originally, the project was planned to be several learning prototypes, consisting of:

• UI

• Scene transition

• Asset management

• Object pooling

The purpose was to study more about general practices of Game Development, and how to work with 2D projects in Unity Engine. The scope extended to - create a vertical slice of a 2D game using the tools that I learned from developing the prior-mentioned prototypes.

The scope consists of :

• An option menu, via a keypress

• A tutorial menu, via the option menu or title screen

• A game level, consisting of the core gameplay loop

• A title screen, to transition to the game level, and access the tutorial.

Game Genre

• 2D Turn Based Tactical Game

• Desert Traveler

Core Game Loop

Explore map>> obtain items >> use item/skills to defeat obstacles >> Explore map>>…

Core Mechanics

• Grid-based movement, each movement costs an action point, which regenerates every turn.

• Turn-based control - enemies act after the player ends their turn

• Fog of War hides some positions on the map

• Player obtains items when interacting with encounters set on map positions

• Combat requires using items

• Time - using items, movement, and ending turns will consume time, the player needs to reach the destination before time runs out.

Thoughts & Evaluation

There have been several changes to the original genre and mechanics involved in the game’s development cycles. Namely, the change towards real-time control from turn-based; coupled with a countdown timer triggering “toll” mechanic, and the decision to use a card-play system.

My intentions behind the changes:

I wanted to experiment with a real-time card battler system, similar to titles such as “One Step From Eden”, and “Megaman Battle Network”, but increasing the size of the gameboard for each combat loop.

• The reasoning behind increasing the gameboard size was to add intermediate safe pockets, events and encounters for decision-making and give windows for the player to manage their cards and resources.

• Adding the countdown timer is thought to create pressure to push for progress and prevent playstyles that require actively stalling the game state.

• The “toll” system extends the countdown time at the cost of player resources. The feature was made as I sought to add another factor to decision-making tied to a soft constraint, similar to a time-based difficulty progression in “Risk of Rain 2”.

• Using a card system is to generalise “skill” and “item” mechanics into one system. It also introduces Resource Management into the game without spending too much time designing items and skill systems individually.

Critiques of results & evaluation:

• The larger map required more level design effort

• The Encount/Map Event Countdown and toll mechanics break the tension and pacing of the faster real-time card battles.

• Toll mechanic could trigger in the middle of combat

• Toll mechanic options lack a way to quickly “give up” and start a new run.

• Some cards spend time to activate, which drains the countdown timer, this interaction can bring unwanted complexity and limits design space for the cards

• Some cards have cooldowns tied to the countdown timer, which brings additional complexity to all systems involved in the interaction.

• Cards in hand/inventory can be twitchy when a player tries to slide the cursor across the collection

• Some UIs still obscure the player’s view when the camera is zoomed out

• The lack of an active introduction/tutorial to guide players through UIs does not make the experience accessible without a biased tester’s guidance. It seems the general issue with the changes was related to how the systems had superfluous interactions.

Possible Design Improvements

• Removing the interaction between the countdown timer and the card system to free up design space of cards.

• The toll system could be selected randomly and triggered automatically instead of interrupting the game loop.

• Card play UI design needs to be refined to feel more responsive

• Adding active tooltip guides and UI highlights to guide players to the intended flow, in addition to actively showing the tutorial menu when applicable