Cake on the run
Plot
It’s your pet’s birthday and you decide to celebrate it in style by buying a huge cake, it won’t be an easy task to get it home because it’s so tall that at times it becomes a bit unstable.
How to play
Control the character with the WASD keys or the arrow keys. With the W-S keys or up and down arrow keys you avoid the obstacles in the street. With the A-D keys or left and right arrow keys you balance the cake, if the cake is falling forward press the D or right arrow key to accelerate and balance the cake again. If the cake is falling backwards press the A or left arrow key to slow down and rebalance the cake. Give the cake to your pet.
Developed for the Ludum Dare 49 Game Jam with them "Unstable" by:
Technical Details
Next we are going to review some information about the inner workings of this game and its mechanics, first of all it is a 3D project developed with the Unity engine.
Scene structure
This game is set up in three scenes, the first scene is the main menu which has two buttons, one to start the game and another button to close the game. By pressing the Play button we go to the game scene in which the stage and the character are set up. We go to the third and last scene when the character arrives home where his dog is waiting for him anxiously.
Character controlled by the player
The character to be controlled runs automatically with a preset speed that we can control by going forward or backward with the directional arrows or with the A-D keys, this will increase or decrease the initial speed to a certain value, the character can never go backwards, just go a little slower or faster, this movement serves mainly to balance the cake.
The character can also move to his left and right, this is achieved with the up and down directional arrows or with the W-S keys, this movement allows the character to avoid obstacles.
The unstable cake
The cake and the support tray were made in Blender and consist of separate pieces that are attached to the same skeleton, constantly playing an animation that makes the pieces of the cake jump as the character moves but also controls the angle of the bones of the cake to produce the tilt to one side or the other, The tilt of the cake responds to the character’s actions, that is, if the character accelerates the tendency of the cake is to tilt backwards, if the character goes slower the cake tends to tilt forward, in addition to this every now and then random events occur that take the cake out of its stable state and force the player to take action on it.
Music
The music for this game was composed by one of the team members. You can visit the Trepen el Paredón channel to see more of his work.
World obstacles
The main obstacles are construction fences, trees and cars, which are static elements; later on, pits are added in which, if the character falls into, the game is over. In addition, there are some cheerful workers who carry a piece of glass, these constitute a mobile obstacle.
The stage
The 3D models of the scenery are models that we made using Blender, the scenery materials have no textures, they only have applied flat colors. The character was modeled from a reference image of a low poly character that also had the position of the polygons and the topology.