Simple Space: 2D game design and development

Abstract

Nowadays, video-game industry is one of the biggest and fastest growing around, providing jobs to many people and having a very big market. From the 1950s until now, many different video-game genres were created suiting different people tastes. Among them, Shoot ’em up games mainly consist of a player trying to complete the game while evading different obstacles which can include enemies, environmental objects, or different types of projectiles. During my whole life, I have spent countless hours playing a great variety of video-games. I was always interested in developing one by myself, which led me to consider making this project: a 2D video-game in shoot ’em up genre, which I have named Simple Space. By making Simple Space, I have learned how the video-games can be designed and developed by a single person. This process includes the usage of different tools for graphic and audio design such as Inkscape, Audacity and Bfxr, as well as the Unity engine for combining them into a seamlessly working game. Using Inkscape, I have designed a variety of graphic objects for this game which include different space-ships made of simple geometrical figures, a big and complicated Boss ship and many miscellaneous objects used in level design and user interface. Regarding Audacity and Bfxr, they were used to create sound effects that give the player an audio feedback when its ship gets damaged or an enemy ships explode. With respect to Unity, I have used it to design and develop a single working level with a careful crafted game logic, different particle effects and a complete menu system. For this purpose, I have utilized many different game creation tools that Unity offers in combination with the graphical and sound effects created before. Additionally, I have used a special software called Color Oracle to take into an account how people with colorblindness disability will be able to enjoy the game. I have also considered the ability to play the game on older computer systems by benchmarking and testing the game with tools such as MSI Afterburner. As a result, I have obtained a fully working game, gained a lot of experience and feel more motivated than ever before in continuing making games.