Inspiration
Squirrel are everywhere. We wanted to highlight an ongoing drama that exists around us that we may not always be aware of, as well as to highlight the beauty of nature.
What it does
Game, play as a squirrel and collect nuts, which are spawned at random locations at random times around local trees. Bring your nuts back to your base and deposit them, but be careful -- the more nuts you carry, the slower you become! Other squirrels will collect nuts around them and bring them back to their bases. An angry dog also inhabits the local park, and will eat you if he gets too close. If you need more speed, you can always drop your nuts on the ground and collect them later! The goal of the game is to collect as many nuts as possible.
How we built it
GameMaker Studio 2 was used for the game development and coding. Aseprite and Krita were used for the creation of assets and animations, all of which are original and created by us during the timeframe! We also used GitHub Desktop to collaborate and share files.
Challenges we ran into
We had some trouble coordinating at first, but once each of us found our individual projects, things went relatively smoothly. We tried to learn new programs and techniques, and there was definitely a learning curve. Some of us even learned animation for the first time! For the programming aspect, the artificial intelligence of the enemy squirrels could be a struggle. The squirrel would find and declare a nut upon creation or deposition, preventing other npc squirrels from going for it. The coordination of declared nuts was definitely the largest challenge in terms of programming.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
The game works, and has no game-breaking bugs. It's also pretty fun, managing your speed as well as the location of nuts and enemies. The art style is also very cohesive and blends well into the general theme of the gameplay. It's peaceful and natural.
What we learned
Many things (see Challenges)
What's next for Do NUT Die
If we had more time, we would flesh out some animation and art, maybe adding more animation cycles like idle animations or animated backgrounds. We would also add more enemy types (we considered adding a cat as well), and an ability to climb a tree to hide from predators, like squirrels do in real life. We could also have the dog aggro on the squirrels, and add general balance and polishing to text and gameplay.
Built With
- aseprite
- gamemaker-studio-2
- krita
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