Rapid Game Prototyping
- Role: Sole Developer
- Team Size: 1
- Game Engine: Unreal, Unity
- Tools: GitHub, Sketchfab, Acesprite
- Development Time: January-April 2025 (12 Weeks)
Rapid Game Prototyping, or “Game-a-week”, was a game jam like course where we made a series of small games, each with 1 week of development time, with a further weeks break in between. For each game we were given a prompt that defined the genre or general boundaries the project should follow to help
with ideas. Participants needed at least 3 submissions out of 6 to pass, however I submitted a game for all 6 weeks.
MechaMania
For “A Sport From Another World”, I made a 3D fighting game about giant mech boxing. The game’s main unique mechanic is the destructible environment. Using Unreal 5’s chaos simulation physics, I was able to create a destructible city which the 2 mechs are able to launch each other into for high damage.
Out of the 6 projects for this course, MechaMania was my personal favourite. I am a major fan of the genre and style and I think it has the highest potential for further development.
Grappling With It
For “Puzzle Box”, I made a 3D platformer based around the player swinging through the map using a grappling hook. Out of my collection of games from this course, this one received the most praise from friends and tutors about the fun and addicting gameplay.
Potion Commotion
For “____ Hero”, we were each given a unique card with a random word to use as the basis for our games. I got “Potion Hero”, as such I made Potion Commotion; a 2D tower defence game based around wizards fending off an army of goblins with a variety of potions.
This was the only game of RGP I made in Unity, since I felt it was more conducive to a 2D project than Unreal 5. This allowed me to expand my horizons for this course and practice working in Unity, which was helpful in later projects such as Jet-Tron.
I also experimented with systems I hadn’t interacted with in Unity before, such as splines, pixel art and highlighting materials.
VaporWaves
For “A Virtual Being”, I submitted a fishing game based around an 90s “Vaporwave” aesthetic. The gameplay loop revolves around catching the largest and rarest fish to sell for upgrades, allowing the player to catch more fish easier for more money.
British Museum Simulator
For “Making a Collection”, I made a tongue-in-cheek collection RPG about the player sailing the world as an explorer working for the British Museum and “acquiring” artifacts.
During this project, I used systems in Unreal 5 I hadn’t interacted with before, such as heightmap importing and widget inventories.
World Whack One
My submission for “Small but Fun” was an arcade-like whack-a-mole game. It is designed aesthetically to look like World War One, with the moles as soldiers climbing out of the trenches as the player hits them with their shovel.
The game is fast paced, with the enemies moving more quickly and more able to damage the player as time progresses.