Mako (MedericCardon)

I made this project during my first year of game design study.

What's Mako ? 

Mako it's a 2D platformer, you play as a monkey with different abilities. Your goal is to defeat the evil that is spreading in his world. To achieve this, you will have to face various enemies.

Subject of the project :

"Making a platformer using the basic mechanics of Super Mario Bros (1985), changing the theme, the story and the aesthetics. You will have to integrate a singular feature (USP)".

Mechanics :

Movement :

The platformer subject made me think of an agile and fast character. That's why I chose a monkey. My character choice therefore defined the movement mechanics :

• Make long jump
• Climb some walls
• Horizontal movements

Abilities :

Now that the movements were defined, I needed an offensive ability to eliminate the enemies. I'm Not very good at programming, so I needed something simple and effective. So I opted for a projectile that launches from the blue crystal above the character's head.

This ability consumes energy with each use, because I wanted the player to be able to manage his resources to be more proactive, he will have to choose to shoot or dodge the enemy.

Pick up power-ups :

• Blue crystal : allows you to reload your energy bar

• Yellow crystal : unlocks the dash, allows access to new areas

• Pink crystal : Allows you to switch from the basic projectile to the "explosive". It is useful for unlocking a shortcut

Level design :

For the level design, I was constrained by the engine, I could not give inclinations to the platforms.

The first step was to define the character's metrics, distance and height jump, movement speed, air control and his box collision.

Then I made several paper sketches using the tiles as a scale. I also created a legend to find myself in the different interactions.

The second step was to test the levels with placeholders to see if everything was in order before final assembly. (Sorry, I haven't taken pictures of this step).

Finally, after many iterations and tests, I know that my levels are ready, I have used the software "Tiled" to join my different tiles.

Enemies :

All enemies were created on photoshop and animate with adobe
animate.

• The blue mush, cause damage if he catches you.

• The green mush, release a gas above him if you are too close.

• The crystal mush, launches projectiles.
   

                             

Post mortem :

Looking back, I would have liked to focus more on the 3Cs, because the controls are rigid and the character lacks finesse in his movements.

My lack of iterations on the mechanics makes the core gameplay too simplistic, I would have liked to have a more singular mechanic.

On the other hand, I'm quite satisfied with the level design part because the process what I used allowed me to test and improve the levels very quickly.

Worker : Solo project
Technologies : Phaser 3 (JavaScript)
Production time : 2 months