This week, we focused on brainstorming and narrowing down our project idea. We initally proposed a magic island / Little Alchemy style game, but after some initial feedback from the staff, we realized that our idea was too complex and not clearly defined. We pivoted our brainstorming to focus on one core mechanic that we could implement well and came up with our Penguin Flying Game!

We also learned the basics of Unity and VR development. Here’s what we each created for our demo apps:

  • Arthur: archery simulator!
  • James: darts game!
  • Manan: water balloon fight!
  • Taylor: water trees to make them grow!

New features and functionality

After lots of brainstorming and multiple rounds of idea refinement, we settled on our project idea!

Overview

We want to create a novel experience that will allow users to be a penguin that wants to fly. We will deliver this experience through a game, Penguin Flying Game.

  • POV of a penguin that gets launched in the air and glide
  • Your controllers are the flippers. You can flap your hands to control the height, tilt your hands left or right to veer
  • You get launched with some initial velocity and your goal is to get as far as possible for a high score.
  • The flight ends when you hit the ground.

Mechanics

  • You slowly lose altitude (like drag, but at a reasonable rate to avoid nausea and motion sickness)
  • You collect items in the air that give you stamina to flap that you need to navigate toward
  • With stamina, you can flap increasing your vertical height and increasing speed
    • Can even have mechanic where your controller motion determines what happens
    • I.e controller up/down in flap motion grants you height, controller in breaststroke motion increases speed
  • When you hit the ground you lose and you restart
  • Can change difficulty setting to decrease speed and make game more relaxing and just a way to fly and explore
  • As you get better, you can upgrade your launch / your stats so you can fly further

Uniqueness

  • Players use hand motions and gestures to control their penguin’s flight and get to enjoy a flying experience

Milestones

Stage 1 (MVP):

  • Figure out way to launch camera in a projectile path (for the initial launch)
  • Tweak a nice flying speed (angle and gradual loss of height) that makes for an enjoyable experience
  • Add game model for flippers
  • Have a long track of ground that the player flies over
  • Track distance traveled from flight and save the high score
  • Add controller tracking to move penguin side to side if you tilt controllers left/right

Stage 2:

  • Add items that spawn in your flight path
  • Add colliders to those items so you can pick them up and give you stamina
  • Add controller flapping detection
  • Have more scenery of ground (procedurally generated! potentially different themes so it changes after you go a certain distance)
  • Add obstacles that when collided with slow you down / make you lose height
  • Add more complex obstacles that require some action (that get introduced as you get farther and farther away)

Files for review

None

Blocking issues

We’d love to get some feedback on our project idea and development stages! In particular, we’re thinking about how we can make sure our project is a novel and exciting experience for users, as well as refining the scope of our project and feasibility of our feature list.

Goals for next week

  • Work on project pitch
  • Write PRD and refine milestones
  • Prototype flying in VR