Odysslime

Odysslime is a puzzle exploration game where you play as the King Slime and are tasked with saving your Slimelings and restoring your fallen kingdom! Go from island to island and solve puzzles by possessing your slimes and using their unique abilities!

Controls:

Story: 

The once-peaceful Kingdom of Ooze resided inside of a volcano, where small orblike creatures lead happy lives in the warm, dark environment of their caves. Until, after over 100 years of prosperity, the volcano erupted. The slimes were caught completely unprepared, and both the Super Slimes (who draw power from the elements) and the common Slimelings alike scattered and fled all across the island as chunks of it began to break off and split. The King Slime’s calls to remain calm were useless. In the chaos, he is struck by a falling rock, and everything goes black. 

The King Slime wakes up some time later, disoriented and alone, on a strange island that must have broken off from the original. But he has a clear mission: to find his Slimelings and restore his kingdom.

Gameplay:

In Odysslime, you explore, solve puzzles, and save slimelings across 5 different islands in the Ooze Archipelago. Your sole objective is to save your Slimelings citizens scattered across the island and return them to your kingdom. To accomplish this hefty task, you play as the King Slime, and must command your Super Slimes and use their unique abilities to solve puzzles and unlock new areas of the island to discover Slimelings.

Odysslime Post Mortem: 

What Went Right?

• Our team really excelled in our cooperation and communication with each other. We were all very responsive, we helped each other out when we had problems or questions, and we consistently kept each other up to date on our progress. Furthermore, our team meetings were very productive for discussing the upcoming week and any current issues with the game that needed to be addressed. This level of teamwork is because we previously participated in 2 game jams together, so we had already established expectations and workflow.
• Another thing we did right was getting everyone involved in the design process, and making sure we all enjoyed the game we were working on. Whether it was mechanics, story, or visuals, we had fun pitching new ideas and bringing them to life in the game. This passion made working on the game more enjoyable, while also making the game better. We were able to achieve this by giving everyone a lot of freedom in their respective roles.
• Some more specific in-game example of what we did right include:
  • All of Odysslime’s art matched well, making the game visually appealing and cohesive.
  • The environment of every island was unique and interesting, this made exploring the islands more entertaining.
  • Introducing each slime 1-by-1 gave the players enough time to learn about each of the Super Slime abilities without feeling overwhelmed. 
  • Making sure that each island had obstacles tailored to its corresponding Super Slime allowed for players to get the basics down before trying to solve more complex puzzles in later islands that required the use of multiple Super Slimes.

What Went Wrong?

• One thing we would change if we could restart would be to flesh out all of Odysslime’s mechanisms and puzzle mechanics in the design document. The puzzles are the only real challenge of the game, so it’s very important that these puzzles are engaging and have the right amount of difficulty. If we would have planned out a majority of the puzzles in the design document, it would also give our programmers plenty of time to implement them and be accounted for in the schedule. Additionally, it would make the quality of the puzzles and gameplay even better and more thought out. Instead, our designers came up with puzzle ideas and gave our programmers puzzle mechanism specifications during the development process.
• Another problem was falling behind schedule. This is because some tasks took longer than expected and as we got closer to the end of the semester we had less time due to other classes increasing their workload. To fix this problem we all had to crunch in the last week, leaving little time for playtesting. We also solved this problem by reserving the final week as a buffer to finish stuff up.
• Additionally, a problem we ran into during development was that designing the later levels was very hard to do when the programmers were still in the process of implementing the new slimes. This is because playtesting wasn’t possible until the programmers finished that island’s Super Slime or mechanism. Instead, we should have started with 1 designer Inferno (1st level) and 1 designer on Frostbite Island (2nd level) since the first two Super Slimes (Bomb and Ice Slime) were mostly finished from the game jam. If we scheduled our work in this way, it would have made designing easier and the game would probably have turned out better too.

What Changes Were Made and Why?

• We stuck very close to the design document and didn’t cut anything. Although, there were a few things we changed during development:
  • One of these changes was to the island design. We completely changed the layout of the first two islands to fit the puzzle better. In addition, we scrapped the level design maps in the design document and expanded greatly on them in the actual game. These changes were mainly because the level designs were only a rough draft and not very in-depth and planned out.
  • Another big one was to the King and mostly his movement. Previously, if the King Slime got too far away from his slime followers, his movement would be restricted. We initially used this because we didn’t want the King to skip any puzzles and fly wherever he wanted to. But after playtesting and realizing some flaws in this design, we decided to make the King’s movement completely unrestricted and instead make his slime followers stop following when too far away from the King. Although the King could now go wherever he wanted to, it would still be in the players best interest to stay with their slime followers in order to bring the Slimelings to the end of the island (which is the objective of the game).
• The other changes were to responsibilities and delegating tasks. Some important ones include: Von getting all of the sound, cannon, and programming related animation tasks, Eyan and Von splitting work on all the mechanisms, Josue getting all trophy room design tasks, and Jayce and Layton splitting Ooze Island. This was due to numerous factors such as tasks taking longer than expected, teammates having more tasks than others, and teammates being busier than others outside of class.

What Did We Learn?

• The biggest takeaway from this project was the importance of teamwork and synergy. It is 100 times easier to make a great game when you and your teammates enjoy working with each other and enjoy the game they are making. And in this project I believe we did just that! I think we achieved this by making sure everyone had the opportunity to be involved in the design process, and also being open to new ideas during development.
• We also learned how to work in conjunction with others. Whether it was by communicating what we needed from others to finish our own tasks, working on the same feature or island together, or simply avoiding merge conflicts when working on the same scene in github. This improved our communication skills and gave us valuable experience of being on a team.
• Finally, we all pushed ourselves to learn new things related to our roles. Our programmers learned about NavMesh, UI, animations, and events. Our Designers learned about terrain, designing puzzles, and communicating with our programmers and artists to incorporate everything into the Islands. And our artist learned about modeling, rigging, animating, and visual effects.

Credits:

Eyan Martucci - Team Leader and Programmer 

Von Caparas - Programmer and Sound

Josue Bracamontes - Game and Production Artist

Jayce Cochell - Level Designer and Writer

Layton Borunda - Level Designer