This week I might be stretching the definition of “game”. While what I made certainly has controls, there’s no real goal to the game or mechanics outside of “if you crash your submarine into terrain, you bounce back”.

So yes, this week I made a small level prototype just to play around with Unity’s lighting and fog settings, as well as just trying to get a certain feel in a level without relying on mechanics. It’s not something I do usually, but earlier in the week I was playing around with the Skyrim Creation Kit and I wanted to do something level design-y.

What went well

I’m happy that I was able to make something that looks and sounds like an underwater environment. If I had more time and motivation I would have pushed it further. For the time I spent on this small project, I’m happy with the atmosphere it exudes.

What could have gone better

As I mentioned earlier, I spent a good few days earlier in the week doing the tutorials for the Skyrim Creation Kit to change pace from programming. When I started work again on 1GAW on Friday, I realized I once again hadn’t really taught up a game idea. This meant that I was just playing around in Unity aimlessly until I came up with something material. I then picked something I wasn’t super sure of or passionate about, and this is what I got out of it.

Also the lighting broke when I tried to make a WebGL build, so I had to resort to a Windows only build. I’m sure I could have figured it out, but I don’t think it’s worth it for a throwaway project like this.

What I learned

I learned how to write a simple 6DOF character controller with Unity’s Physics Engine. It was nice to actually have a use case to use the built in physics for a character controller. I’d like to play around with vehicle gameplay another week when I give myself more time.

I also learned how important sound design and VFX are for making a game space feel real. Mechanically, all that’s happening is I have a bunch of BoxColliders attached to a Rigidbody that moves around a space with a lot of drag. But adding in the particle effects and dark lighting really makes it feel like the character is underwater. I could probably replace the assets with space assets and not change the controls, and the player would feel like they’re flying a (very slow) shuttle.

Summary

Overall I’m happy with what I got out of my limited amount of time spent on this project. It’s definitely not a game I would recommend anyone play, but I’m now a bit more interested in learning how to make game spaces more immersive and interesting for players.

Thanks again for reading my post-mortem!

If you want to try out the game yourself on Windows, the link is right here:

If you wanna play around with the code, I also have a link to the GitHub repo if you click here!