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The Game
Punchtopus is an arcade-style alt.ctrl game that was developed in a five-day game jam called "Design Week" with randomly assigned teams. Players must match the fish appearing on screen to the one the octopus is holding and hit it on time to score points.
Narration and editing by myself.
Team & Roles
Abby Norris (Myself) - Project Lead / Game Design / Unity Generalist
Rose - Programming
Josh - Programming / Game Design
Elora - Technical Design / Artist
Layla - Artist / Game Design
Eva - Artist
The Design
Since our team only had 5 days to create an alt.ctrl game - something most of us had never attempted before - as well as having a significant lack of seasoned programmers, we opted to keep our idea simple. Our main inspirations were games like Whack-A-Mole, or generally any physical classic arcade game, as they are straightforward, simple to program, and very much alternate in their controllers.
Below is the initial concept I created during our ideation phase, as well as our final design, which was also fleshed out by me. To come to this design, I took all the physical factors (hitting, moving, reflex-based) that my team and I enjoyed from my original concept, and combined it with a fish theme that had been prevalent throughout multiple of our team members' initial concepts. (Click to enlarge)
Initial Concept
Final Concept
Throughout the 5 days of this project, I took on the role of Project Manager, or something of the sort, in order to help guide my team to success. This involved completing the mandatory daily milestone presentations, presenting our daily milestones, working on resolving scope creep as well as general issues, concepting mechanics for the project, and lending help in all areas of development when I could.
Overall, I could not have asked for a better team to lead. We worked tirelessly to create a memorable, inviting controller for our game. Some work in progress photos are included below to show our process.
What was Gained
Our whole team went into this short project with no experience in alt.ctrl games whatsoever, and I believe we all left with not only knowledge on the genre, but also a love for it. Punchtopus is dear to my heart, as it really was a passion project for our whole team. I am also incredibly proud of our ability to scope correctly for the allotted time and skill of our team members, which is something I will try to take to every project from now on.
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