Welcome to our page! Here we will be uploading weekly blogs for our game BoNana Bounce!

This game is being made for the course ‘Game projects’ at DAE.

There are 5 people in the team: 2 programmers (Adam and Joren) and 3 artists (Hannah, Joris and Yari). Our project is a 2.5D, fast paced, player-versus-player game where 2 players compete to reach the top of the level to score a point. At the start of the game the players get launched into the air. Both players need to use bouncing pads and a ‘dash’ ability to make their way up. While doing this, they can hinder the other player by colliding into them mid-air. The goal is at the top of the level.

In this blog, we’ll discuss some of the questions we’ve been researching this past week.

Theme

In our game each player controls a team of two monkeys in a lush jungle. At the start of the game the bigger monkey launches his smaller colleague into the air. The rest of the game revolves around the smaller teammember, who has to stay in the air and reach the top. We chose this monkey theme because it's recognisable, fun and easy-going. 

Art Style

In keeping with the light-hearted theme of our game, the art style will feature vibrant, saturated colors combined with ‘simple’, round shapes for our models. Think games like Crash Bandicoot 4, Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze or Yookalaylee. To further increase the readability of our game, we’d rather not put too much intricate detail in our textures. Instead we will try to make use of gradients to convey shapes.

The color palette of our game will feature analogous colors for the background, and a complementary scheme for the characters. Analogous means the colors are next to each other on the color wheel and thus look very balanced. Complementary colors are opposite to each other on the color wheel and so stand out more. By using these color schemes our characters will be more interesting to look out and easier to discern from the background.

Game engine: Unreal vs Unity

After making prototypes in both Unity and Unreal, we decided to go with the Unreal engine for our game. We had several reasons for this. All of our team members have more experience with Unreal, so this way progress will be faster. Our coders also found it easier to implement physics in Unreal compared to Unity. Lastly, with material blueprints, creating custom shaders suited to our needs is more flexible in Unreal.

Horizontal or vertical?

During our research we had to figure out if our game was going to feature horizontal or vertical levels. Vertical meaning the goal is at the top of a level, while in a horizontal level the players need to travel horizontally to reach the goal. For now we are keeping the levels vertical. While prototyping we felt the sense of height made the game more thrilling to play.

Next week we'll be sharing a prototype, so stay tuned! See you next week!