Underwater Exploration Game - Rapid Prototype
This underwater exploration game was made for a class project; our prompt was to make a game utilizing a controller with 6 degrees of freedom (forward/back, up/down, left/right, yaw, pitch, and roll).
I love aquariums and aquatic environments, so I went with an underwater theme. For the player character, I thought otters were well suited for this type of controller- they often seem like they're having fun swimming around, doing barrel rolls and tricky maneuvers. I wanted the game to be a calming, casual experience.
Most of the art assets are from Awessets. I created the otter model out of a Probuilder cube in Unity, and made the bubble particles. I also sculpted the terrain with Unity's Terrain Tool.
To create the visual underwater effect, I added fog and post-processing effects- a depth of field blur and some blue color grading. A before and after comparison is shown below:
Game Features:
-Collectable shells that play a sound effect and particle burst when you pick them up- they are hidden around the level to encourage exploration
-Bubbles that get louder as you get closer and fade away as you are out of range
-Smooth movement, tweaked through multiple iterations of user testing
-Variety of underwater plants and creatures to hang out with
Total development time so far is 18 hours.
I really enjoyed bringing this underwater scene to life, and hope to set aside more time to work on it in the future.
Plans for further development:
-Make all movement control sensitivities adjustable, as well as a toggle to invert Y axis
-Make a 'den' for a home base where you can bring back your collected items
-Add animations to otter
-Add AI to fish schools so they can interact with player
-Expand level to be larger, with more variety in shape
