Collision of Realms was a game I designed for my first game design class at Bradley University. We had to design a 2D platformer, but I was too excited to start playing with 3D objects, so I convinced my professor to let me work on a 2.5D game. This was a solo project in which we were each trying to make a small game with about 1 level worth of length, more akin to a "decently dressed" prototype.
I didn't want to go with an ordinary platformer where walking is the player's transportation, as I found this to be "too familiar". Instead, I chose to have movement be based around the player using a tether. This required the addition of extra abilities necessary to make proper use of the tether, such as the ability to increase the strength of and flip gravity. Alongside these, a few extra small abilities seemed interesting to add, being a light "push off", for bursts of speed when near something, and a slam, for sudden downward bursts of movement. These abilities, paired with the tether, allowed for a fairly interesting playstyle based on the redirection of forces using the tether.
I attempted to do my best to design a short tutorial, introducing all of the abilities and providing a decent testing spot. However, I quickly found I'm not the best at explaining mechanics to players in real time, as many players had left a few abilities seemingly underused. In the future, I would pay a little more attention to how I'm testing a player's use of abilities, as well as provide longer testing sections with somewhat more of a lead.
Each of the models was made in Blender, with all textures being generated and baked from Blender's shader nodes, with noise maps being the base of textures. The music for the game was made in FL Studio and designed to set an unnatural atmosphere. It was then rendered and filtered/mastered on Adobe Premiere pro
