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The Way to
School

Platform Adventure Game

This is my graduation project. I completed the development of the project alone, including art resource production, level design, logic scripting, UI design, opening and closing animations. This project is based on my experience of supporting education in rural Gansu, China. I hope that people will pay attention to the living and learning conditions of children in rural Gansu.

Demo Video

Project Info

  • Platform: PC Windows10

  • Date of Completion: 2019.07

  • Category: Platform Adventure Game

  • Controller: Mouse&Keyboard

  • Art Style: 3D Lowpoly

  • Preferred Resolution: 1920 x1080

  • Contribution: Individual Project

  • Download Link: The Way To School

  • Install Instruction:

    • Download all the files and save them in one folder.​

    • Open "TheWay2School" and choose resolution 1920 x 1080.

    • Start the Game.

Background

During the summer vacation of 2017 and 2018, I went to rural Gansu, China as a volunteer, teaching local children. The children there need to get up early and walk a long way to go to school. The mountain roads in rural Gansu are very dangerous, so children need to use flashlights to find their way to school before dawn. I hope everyone can learn about the life and learning of these children. Therefore, I chose this to make a game as my graduation project to call people to pay attention to these children.

Art Design

I like the Low Poly art style very much. It allows independent developers to produce impressive works in a short time and at a low cost. Therefore, I chose this art style for this work, and I have produced many art resources for it. And I chose to use Maximo to make some of the character animations. Here are some of my prefabs in Unity and Maximo.

Gameplay Features

Because this project is based on the stories of rural children getting up early to go to school, the flashlight they carry is a necessary tool for them to walk in the mountains. Therefore, I made "use a flashlight to explore the road" an important feature of the game. Players must collect flashlight batteries to illuminate the road ahead, overcome various difficulties, and reach the school. Therefore, the main game loop is:

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In addition, I referenced the characteristics of other platform games and designed level elements such as bamboo rafts, small rivers, animal obstacles, and falling rocks to further enrich the game content, and these obstacles are also encountered by rural children in reality.

Main Loop.png

Level Design

I designed 7 levels for this project, gradually increasing the content of the gameplay and the difficulty of the game. The following is an introduction to the content of each level.

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In addition, I also made level sketches for each level to help me design the level before I started building them in the game engine, the following is one of them.

Scratch.png
Level Design.png
Scratch Level.png

Code Sample

I wrote all the code for this project, including character control scripts, state machine, obstacle logic, UI logic, archive system, etc. In addition, the sound effects, post-processing, and particle system are also made by me alone. The following is a part of the flashlight control code, showing how I control the brightness of the flashlight through mathematical functions.

Code.png

What I Learned

  1. How to make a game from 0 to 1.

  2. How to design a game and its features based on a real story.

  3. How to make art resources for a game.

  4. How to write all the code for a game.

  5. How to design the levels of a game, and make the difficulties of levels change according to the player's learning curve.

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