Death Sphere is a game developed as part of an academic assignment that explores spatial awareness and strategic decision-making in a limited time frame. Players navigate a spherical environment, capturing spectral twins while avoiding collisions.
Death Sphere greets players with an intuitive main menu.
The instructions panel offer clear rules, allowing players to jump right into the action.
Players begin at the centre of the sphere, tasked with finding and capturing twin ghosts as quickly as possible.
A green overlay signifies a successful capture, providing positive feedback to the player.
A red overlay indicates a speed reduction due to collisions with surfaces.
From left to right - Time elapsed since the game started, total ghosts captured, a ranked table showing the times of the last three captures, and buttons for restarting or returning to the main menu.
An external view of the Death Sphere.
Death Sphere welcomes players with a menu that provides concise instructions for gameplay, ensuring players jump right into the action. Upon accepting the challenge, players are randomly assigned one of four unique characters to control. This element of variety adds a layer of replayability, encouraging players to explore and master the game with each character.
The game takes a unique approach to character progression. Each time a player successfully captures a twin ghost, their character undergoes a random transformation. This dynamic system injects an element of strategic decision-making. Players must adapt their approach based on the new character's capabilities, adding depth and replayability to the experience.
To provide clear player feedback, Death Sphere utilises a colour-coded visual system. A green overlay signifies a successful capture, reinforcing positive actions. Conversely, colliding with any surface results in a red overlay and a temporary speed reduction, encouraging players to maintain swift and precise movements throughout the game.
This game was developed for PC platforms using the Unity3D engine. All the assets were sourced from the Unity Asset Store.
While this project was an individual assignment, I received valuable guidance from the course instructor. Their feedback and insights were instrumental in refining the game's mechanics and ensuring a smooth gameplay experience. However, I independently managed all aspects of development while actively engaging with tutorials and learning resources.
Designing engaging gameplay within a spherical setting required a custom shader to manipulate the sphere's mesh normals, as well as innovative solutions for camera placement, character movement, and collision detection. I also implemented the Object Pool Design Pattern to enhance performance, reusing game objects (characters) instead of frequently creating and destroying them, reducing memory allocation and garbage collection overhead. Finally, communicating player feedback through visual cues was crucial for ensuring intuitive gameplay.
Creating Death Sphere wasn't just about making a fun game but also a valuable technical learning experience. The spherical environment and game mechanics presented significant challenges that required innovative solutions. Additionally, I enhanced my project management skills by independently overseeing the development process and incorporating valuable feedback to produce a successful final product.