I have now reached a point where it feels appropriate to start recruiting a team to continue with the development. I am looking for a 3-D Modeler / Animator, and a concept artist. If you believe you have one of these skills, please email craftedexperienceph@gmail.com with examples of previous work, and why you want to join the team.
Since the last post, development has come a long really nicely. Most of the systems from previous builds have been reworked into this one in a much more streamlined fashion. As well as this, additional features have now been added such as World Tokens, which will be a collectible purely for completionists, and a settings menu where the player can change setting such as sound, graphics quality, and hopefully control mapping, once a new 3rd party input manager has been implemented instead of Unity’s in-built one. I now have a clearer idea of the game’s gameplay style, presentation style, and story, however, these are not final and there is still a lot of room for improvement.
Story
Set in the future, there is an abundance of intelligent life forms around the galaxy, and they have all evolved from earth. In fact, no other life has even been known to naturally exist outside of Earth. Because of this, Earth has now been put in to protection to allow life to naturally evolve once again, meaning that no activities can take place in the Solar System. However, a large company shadily obtains Earth and plan to harvest its water, believed to be the key to life, and sell it as bottled water throughout the universe. An activist group gets wind of this and drafts in a Space Corps Astronaut (the player) to help them banish the company from Earth. However, funds in the group are running low, forcing the player to take the outdated Universal Teleportation System through different worlds to reach Earth, instead of a spaceship direct to the Solar System. Despite their low funds however, a scientist in the activist group believes they have developed a pill that changes the player’s DNA to match another member of the group, so that the player can use other member’s abilities (e.g Frog – jump higher, Bird – flight, Fly – fit into small spaces). The player will have to collect Cash in order to fund Research and Development into these pills, so that they successfully make their way to Earth, and fight off the company’s Board of Directors (bosses).
Gameplay + Collectibles
The player will explorer a web of different worlds. Each world will have multiple entrances and exits to allow for a great amount of exploration and different paths to take. The player will have to collect different items to progress through the worlds.
CASH
Found – Around the worlds in abundance. Will be used to subtly guide the player in the right direction.
Usage – Fund the activist’s lab so that they can develop different pills for various abilities.
POWER UP PILLS
Found – Around the worlds, usually in crates. Although they can be found without Cash being spent on funding their development, they can not be used until the development of that particular pill has been funded.
Usage – Each pill transforms the player into a different animal with their own abilities.
ELECTRODES
Found – NPCs will award the player with an Electrode when they successfully complete a mini-game / side mission. For some missions, the play might find they need a certain Power Up Pill to complete.
Usage – Used to fix broken teleporters. Each broken teleporter will need a specific number of Electrodes to be fixed, but they will not subtract from the total number of Electrodes.
WORLD TOKENS
Found – One World Token will be hidden in each world. The World Token will resemble the level in some way (e.g Mexican themed world – Sombrero)
Usage – Will unlock some sort of extra at the end of the game.
Presentation Style
Despite somewhat of a small resurgence of collect-a-thons in the past year, the genre still remains a relic of the 90’s and I think it is important to reflect that in the style of the game. However, if the graphical style completely reflected 90’s 3D games, the game will look ugly when compared to modern titles. I believe that fusing a retro style with modern rendering techniques will be the best option. Whilst Planet Hop will make use of low-poly models and extremely low res textures, it will still make use of modern techniques, such as dynamic lighting, normal mapping, and post-processing to get the best results possible. Mirroring the story of the game, I also think its important for the style to remain light hearted and cartoony feel to it.
Planet Hop Development Blog 