Hydros
Roots rely on water and soil for their sustenance.
Team projects
01
Theme & Ideation
The theme of GGJ 2023 is roots, which depend on water and earth. Roots draw nutrients from water and earth to grow. After its passage of life, roots return to the earth and morph into dust.
This can also be seen as the cycle of nature. When man uses nature wisely and protects it kindly, nature is often generous in return; when man exploits it disorderly and plunders it roughly, nature's punishment can be merciless. This is a law that cannot be changed.
We named this game Hydros after the god of water. Water and earth are the two main origins of everything in the world. Earth is born to be divided, and water unites earth. Our game is also about ultimately finding the source of life: water.
02
Gameplay design
1. The player presses the WASD key to control the direction of the growth of the rhizome.
2. The player can only control the highlighted area, and the area changes every 2s.
3. If the player does not make any action within 2s, the player automatically defaults to the previous action.
4. The game fails when the player touches a wall, a rock, a spider, a board or an ant.
5.The player needs any of the roots to find the water source to pass the game. The water source is in the cave. Please note that the cave is divided into real and fake water sources, so you need to find the real water source in order to succeed. Otherwise you fail.
6. When the player fails, the game starts again.
Problems encountered
1. At the beginning, we did not have a time limit. Then we found that the game was not difficult enough. So a time limit was added.
2. Later on, we did not have a brightly lit area. But since we had to control four different roots and react quickly, we added the mechanism to only control the roots in the highlighted area.
3. Originally it was just a matter of finding the water source, but then we wanted to add some deception. So, we came up with a real or fake water source.
4. Originally, all four roots had to find the real water source in order to pass the game, but after playing the game, we found it too difficult, so we changed the setting to allow any one of the roots to find the water source to pass the game.
Problems encountered
1. At the beginning, I set a high level, but found that even playing the initial version was very difficult. So I simplified the map a bit.
2. Later, I found that some of the obstacles didn't work and even blocked the player's way, so I changed the size and position of the obstacles.
3. Finally, in trial, my partners found that the four water sources for the final destination was too far away. There was no difference. I modified the location of some of the real water sources.
03
Level design
The level design is a maze of sorts. The scenes follow the player's movements and change. There is a part of the extended map outside the camera. There are also some obstacles in the middle of the path. If you hit an obstacle, you fail. The players start from right in the middle of the scene and their final destinations are all different.
Try to play