Lucas' Portfolio Website

ForestFoxDX

April 27, 2023

About:

On April 27th, 2023, I finished creating my first original game. It is a cheerful 2D platformer called ForestFoxDX!
In this game, you play as a courageous fox. You must overcome several challenges that the animals of the forest have prepared for you. Only if you can complete the parkour with its challenges will the king allow you to marry the princess.

Created by:

Engine:

Made in Unreal Engine

Platforms:

Windows

Screenshots:

Process:

Game concept

The idea of this game was to make a fun 2D side-scrolling platformer. I used Unreal Engine 5 to create this game. I chose this engine specifically because it is an excellent engine, so I wanted to get to know the engine a little bit and experiment with it. I started my biggest project yet by making some sketches with ideas.

This is a sketch of my first concept about a person who could attack by throwing hair, cutting it off, and automatically tying up enemies.

The person can also swing from objects to cross gaps. This could make for tricky platforming sections.

This is my final concept for this game, where you can see the assets I want to use for the levels.

This is a sketch of the character's movement in the game, including the duck mechanic, where the hitbox will be turned off, only when the player ducks AND is behind a bush.

Unfortunately, due to time constraints, I did not get the chance to properly implement this mechanic.

Lastly, I made a little storyboard, so the player knows why things need to get done in the game.

Building

I started by watching many, many tutorials on Unreal Engine 5. Because moving and jumping did not work, I kept experimenting until I eventually found a set-up that succeeded. This was the first part that I built myself. After this, I built everything myself. For the sprites, I have used the Sunny Land Asset pack by Ansimuz.

I chose to make this game with three levels. In most platformers, the layout of the levels varies, but the objective stays the same. Regularly the objective is to ‘get from point A to point B.’ I chose to work the other way around: I used the same 'TileMap' for all three levels but changed the objective for every level, with increasing difficulty. I did this to challenge my creativity and make the game more interesting and appealing to players. I wanted the last level to feel fast-paced and the hardest of the three.

ProcessPictures

The first screenshot demonstrates level 1, where the player must find the Lost Gem.

ProcessPictures

The second screenshot demonstrates level 2, where the player must collect all the cherries.

ProcessPictures

The third screenshot demonstrates the final level, where the player must avoid the eagle enemies that are constantly flying over in a fixed pattern.

ProcessPictures

For each level, I made a separate ‘WinWidget.’ For levels 1 and 2 it says Well Done! and for the final level, it says You Win! In these widgets, the player can see the objective of the next level, as well as their Best Time and High Score for this level. After clearing the level, movement is disabled. Only ducking is still allowed. This started as a bug, but when I figured out the solution, I thought it was more fun before, so I deleted the solution. Now you can dance when you win the game. This little detail improves the user experience and personality of the game.

I used color-coding for the buttons; I made the Next Level button green because that is what the player often wants, the Restart Game button is red because it is a bright color that generally means ‘danger’ (this is because you do not accidentally want to restart the complete game), and lastly, the Restart Level-button is orange, because it is still reddish; still not anything you want to do accidentally, but it is not as crucial as restarting the entire game. I chose not to give the widgets a background color because then the player would not be able to see their ‘achievement’ of passing the level anymore.

When I first made the enemy spawner, I implemented it in the first level. Later, I thought it would be better to place it in a later course. I made the eagle enemies fly in a fixed pattern; in the beginning, I had the eagle enemy spawn on a random location on the Z-axis, but I found most of my own fun with platformers comes from analyzing the patterns of enemies, so I can avoid them. It did not seem fair and fun to have them spawn anywhere and die, without you being able to do anything about it, so I created a pattern.

ProcessPictures

Here you can see how I created the pattern. I set the enemy spawners apart the right amount, gave the eagles the same speed, and used a timer to make sure the next four eagles would perfectly match the pattern (Time = Distance / Speed).

I finished my creation process by decorating. I had a basic layout of the TileMap, but I started to improve the level design. I also started to use decorations to make my game feel livelier. The last thing I did was optimize the placement of BluePrints like the cherries and the enemy spawners.

Because this was my first ever self-made game, I used the nodes system in Unreal Engine. This gave me a great introduction to how ‘real’ coding works and a head start in my future C#-projects.

Playtest

After creating the basics of the game, I started letting others playtest my game, gathering feedback, and improving my game.

I let my mother play my game and she told me she did not understand the final goal. In the second level, I told her she had to collect all the cherries when she did not know what to do, so she was collecting all the cherries, just like in the second level. But of course, that was not the objective of this course. This was before every implemented the ‘WinWidgets’ per level. I understood that the player should always be able to understand what the goal of the level is and the purpose of the game, without me having to explain it, because if I were to upload my game and strangers would play it, they would have to understand it without my additional explanation. Therefore, I implemented these ‘WinWidgets’ as shown before, with some additional features that give the objective for the next level. This makes it clear for every player what the next objective is and it even gives a more satisfying feeling when the level is cleared.

When my younger brother tried the game, I explained to him the controls: “I like to use A and D for moving left and right, and SPACE is for jumping.” After he tried to play it this way and not getting into it, I understood that different people like to play in diverse ways. Therefore, I implemented W to jump too, as well as the arrow keys, as well as controller-inputs. Afterwards, he enjoyed the game way more. I think that with these additional inputs, everyone can enjoy the game in their preferred way.

A first-year student noticed that my Current Time-timer only gave full numbers and no decimals.

He told me that if I wanted to better the speedrunning experience, I could change this to decimal numbers. Therefore, I changed my timer from an ‘integer’ to a ‘float'. Now you can see three decimals. This could be considered nitpicking, but I consider it a good addition to the game, adding to the fluency and experience of the game.

I made a table from the feedback I got. I categorized the kind of player, the kind of fault, the fault itself, and how I fixed it.

Conclusion

I started making this game by knowing nothing about Unreal Engine and building games. I only ever made levels. Now I have made a game that I want to improve by processing feedback, adding more levels with new enemies, an attack move for a boss fight, and a level selection screen that is unlockable after beating the game. Then, I want to create my existing game designs for real.

During this project, I developed my skills in Game Design, Level Design, Unreal Engine, Prototyping and Gathering and Applying Feedback.

Link:

Download it for free on my Itch page!

Download the Windows version for free on my Itch page!