Pick the Pea

Game Description

Press 'SPACE' to move the pick towards the left <--- (ˇ⊖ˇ)

In order to move the other direction -> you must go all the way left until your pick hits the left border, and then your pick will BOUNCE off, but there is no way to create a rightwards movement with direct player input (°૩°)

Each round is 17 seconds, and at the end of the round your pick must be ON TOP OF the PEA or you will lose ):

The location of the pea will be randomly generated each round! 

I actually don't like peas btw

I made this game because it reminded me of some of the simple silly (sometimes gimmicky) games that used to run amok the world wide web when flash was king 

( ͡♥ 3 ͡♥)

I remember queueing up dozens of games on the shared family computer and binge playing them for hours...

The main mechanic is a careful balance between adding force to the pick, letting it bounce of the borders, and knowing when to wait in order to have the pick be directly on top of the pea at the end of 17 seconds ( ఠൠఠ )

I'm pretty novice when it comes to coding and navigating around unity so despite how simple the game is, I actually had quite a few bugs that I needed help with fixing (arigato to fake alex and pants). One of the things that was kind of wonky was with the 2D colliders, where if I gave the pick a polygon collider than the game would be too hard since you had to be super precise. Giving the pick a box collider I felt made the game sometimes too easy, but I would rather have a winable game than an impossible one. 

Also, I could not figure out how to make it look like the pick was actually going through the pea. 

One Button Approach

I think that this game is a combination between the timing and reaction type. I say this because players have to react quickly when the timer is winding down if the pick is currently in a state of motion and will be not above the pea when the timer runs out. At first I thought it was just a reaction based game, but since the timer aspect is also pretty important I now think it is both. 

Originally the game was going to be a little different mechanics wise -- the space bar was supposed to push the pick either left or right in alternating order every time you pressed, and a long press (instead of a tap) would result in the pick dropping. However, after some thought I realized that with the long press mechanism there would be potential for misinputs leading to a lose-state and I could see this becoming annoying really quickly. The reason why the movement mechanic changed is originally because of my lack in coding knowledge resulting in the pick only moving one direction and then getting stuck on the game border -- but while I was playing with this bugged version of the game I realized that if I could instead have the pick bounce off the borders and the 'space' input only create a movement to the left then I could create a different type of experience than the one initially planned. 

Design Details

• Communication
• I hope that the the combination of background music and accompanying images invoke an emotional response from players appropriate to the game condition that they achieved and the effort taken to get there. I thought that the contrast between the simple game sprites and then the fine art would be funny and interesting. All of the fine art chosen is currently a part of the public domain, and the music is from license free libraries. 
• Iteration
  • With what tools I had available to me, I tried my best to balance the game so that it isn't too easy nor too hard (and also is fun and not boring). At first I was going to have the pea always be in one spot, but then the replayability of the game would be severely hindered. I've been taught that game designers aim to design only the first experience, but since this game is so short I think that it would have been worth it to add some degree of randomness and increase the odds of somebody coming back a couple of times to see if they had gotten any better at the game. 
  • In hindsight, I'm pretty glad that I changed my "long press will drop while tap will change direction" idea because I myself find it really annoying when a misinput ruins my play experience. I've also found that unintunive or overcomplicated controls can ruin a game for me, so hopefully the space bar only being able to do one sort of action with differing power/force levels will lessen this problem. 

Submission Form Link

Github Link