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A bright light in dark times
In ACTIAS, you dive into the tiny, magical world of a little moth named Selene. You’ll jump and run across giant gears, helping her escape a dark, mysterious clock tower. With her magical powers, Selene can control the gears around her, but only if she has enough Luvis, a glowing energy that keeps her going. Luvis is rare, though. You’ll need to find scattered light sources to recharge it or risk losing your grip on the tower’s strange mechanisms.
Engine: Unity
Platform: PC (Keyboard & Gamepad)
Extent: Vertical Slice, 11 weeks
Year of launch: 2023
Average session: ~ 25 mins
Genre: Puzzle, Plattformer
Language: C#
Short Summary
ACTIAS
Puzzle Platformer
Play as moth and escape from clock tower
Use gears to navigate upwards
Controlling gears costs resource
Resource is replenishable at certain spots
My Responsibilities
Sole Programmer
Game Design
Project Management
Sound Design
Quality Assurance
Learnings Programming
Unity, C#
Coroutines
Profiler
Serialization
Prefabs
Lambda
Linq
Learnings Game Design
Ideation
Prototyping
Level Design
Organization with Kanban and Eisenhower Matrix
Content
Game Design
The most interesting parts of our design process.
For our puzzles a main part of the game was, being able to control, move and rotate certain gears with a light resource. This made for some interesting concepts and interactions.
In the beginning it was difficult to imagine what kinds of puzzles we could make with gears. But as we met almost every day and discussed, planned and prototyped multiple ideas and concepts, we got on track quickly.
The aim of the game is getting all the way up to a tower. We hardly saw playtesters lay down the controller until they had reached this goal, no matter how long it took them.
In creating ACTIAS we tried out many methods of prototyping our game, such as a stop motion video, a board game version, many scribbles and multiple digital prototypes. We kept going until we had our concepts and mechanics fully figured out.
To evaluate how interesting the mechanics we thought up could interact with each other we used a Matrix and gave points for the extent in which the mechanics worked well together. Then we gave some of the most interesting concepts to each person and we each drew up many scribbles to find possible applications.
To make the ideas from our scribbles come ot life in one full level, we each brought some of the gear parts as cutouts. Combining all of these we put together a giant analog version of our level, which was later implemented in the engine 1:1.
When all the ideas were fleshed out and our level design was done, we dove into production and worked hard and continuously to meet the self-set deadline.
Technical Aspects
The key technical aspects of ACTIAS.
Prototyping and Testing: I kicked things off by building prototypes to test how energy systems, movement and gear mechanics worked together. This iterative process helped shape the core gameplay and also gave us a clearer picture of what else we needed to add.
Precise Gear System: One of the game’s key features is a fully code-driven gear system. It handles rotation based on things like speed, direction and tooth count, no physics needed. It kept everything smooth and predictable.
Efficient Collaboration: We used GitLab and GitHub Desktop to keep the project organized. It made version control easy and kept everyone on the same page.
Dynamic Gear Selection: Gears could be picked and cycled through based on proximity, making the system feel intuitive. Even gears following Bezier curves were controlled with the same inputs, something that took careful planning to get right.
Advanced Object Logic: We built flexible movement logic to support a range of object behaviors, which was essential for interactive puzzles and responsive gameplay.
Game Systems: Singletons like the GameManager and RotationManager handled the game’s core systems. We kept performance tight by profiling regularly in Unity.
Polish and UX: In the final stretch, we focused on fixing bugs and improving the overall feel based on feedback. Smooth tweens, haptics and screen shake were added to improve feedback effects.
What was good about this project?
Creative pre-production and innovative methods used
For our first game, the game flows really well and all mechanics are intuitive
The game's atmosphere is very good
Great feedback when turning gears: rumble, screen shake, sounds and many gears reacting in the background, giving a feeling of empowerment
What could have been better in this project?
Code structure must be improved: With better structure, we could build infinite levels
Too high scope
Wall jump needs improvement
Finding the way in the level was intuitive, but still tough for some people
I want to thank the coaches Prof. Susanne Brandhorst, Prof. Thomas Bremer and Timo Falcke for their valuable insights and feedback.
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