Prehistoric Hunt
May - June 2022; September - November 2022
Download (Windows):
Video demo:
Prehistoric Hunt is the first project that I have worked on at DePaul. I worked on this game during the spring 2022 quarter and the autumn 2022 quarter. My professor for the classes gave an assignment to create a game within the 10 weeks of the quarter. In this 2D game, the player goes around and hunts prehistoric mammals that spawn randomly throughout the map. The main goal of the player is to hunt these animals and gain points. I worked on this project by myself, but I did download free to use art assets to use for the tiles, the plants, and other obstacles. The player, gun, animals, bullet, and the house were created by me.
I came up with the idea for this game after scrapping a project that would later on become TerriBull Time. I went with this idea because I found it both interesting and easier to code and design. I had envisioned a wild open space that players could explore to hunt the animals that periodically spawn throughout the map. As I designed the map, I came with the issue of the map being too barren with trees and bushes sparsely populated the area, so I added a few different sub locations within the map, like a lake, a forest, a lion’s den, a maze with rolling enemies, and a bear cave. I used art to destinate these areas as their own with different titles and sprites so the player knows that they’re in a different area, like how the forest has a higher concentration of trees than the rest of the map and the lion’s den having a darker tile set.
I integrated a few gameplay mechanics into the level, with one being the spawning mechanic of the animals and the inclusion of more difficult enemies. The sub locations of the lion’s den, bear cave, and the maze have exclusive enemies that are more difficult than the smilodons and direwolves the player has encountered. The lions in the lion’s den are numerous and fast, so the player has to make use of the environment to navigate. The bears in the bear cave have high hit points and deal high damage. The placement of barriers in these areas can be a hindrance to the player as the player could easily get cornered, but also due to the poor AI of the enemies, the player can also use the barriers to their advantage. Another example in the game is the forest which has trees the player can’t pass through and can easily get cornered by the dire wolves, but the player can use the trees to their advantage and easily take care of the wolves. And the rolling glyptodons are very fast and unpredictable, making the maze more difficult to navigate. In each of these three locations, there are different golden animals the player can collect to serve as incentives for the player to visit these areas. It is also important to add that the players will need to rely on visuals to navigate the whole level, as there is no sound at all, which adds to a new level of difficulty as the player can easily get ambushed.
While designing the level and working the game as a whole, I encountered many problems. Most of the problems dealt with the programming and getting things to work as I had planned. Time was also an issue as I had other classes and had to deal with work and life. But, despite these problems, I enjoyed working on this project and learned a lot about how to design a level and to work on games. I learned to keep my scope of the project low, how to navigate unity, how to manage my time on different aspects of the project, and deciding which ideas to keep or scrape depending on time. While there are things that I wished I had done differently from the start, I was able to gain knowledge for future projects and knowledge on how to make a fun and engaging game.