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Koi Legend
About
In the control of the 'Koi' fish, the player has to use swipe movements to dodge the obstacles and enemies that will appear in the path like rocks, wood logs, frogs, and eagles, which have different behaviors that require the player attention all the time. Beat every level to progress in the story, collect awards like new skins, and unlock the endless mode to try to score points the max you can in the same match.
Screenshot
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Screenshot
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My experience
I really enjoyed work on this project, this one was responsible to make my knowledge about mobile games increase too much, like set up the Android SDK in the Unity project, how to program swipe detections properly, distinguishing if it is a vertical or a horizontal swipe making the swipe movements being very precisive without the sensation of receiving the wrong input.
I got more knowledge about how to optimize the sprite sheets and understanding the importance of their resolutions in the project, making it possible to appear correctly every single sprite in most of all kinds of smartphones, even those ones with lower tech specs.
Also, it was the first project that I received to do like an "order from a customer" who really wanted to do a game that could achieve its purposes. So was the first one that I was alone in the frontline deciding every single mechanic, platform decision, what could be added or cut off, deadlines, contact with the client, and team management.
Mechanics/Features
• Swipe system controls
• Local score system
• Story and Endless game modes
• Different enemies and obstacles
• Secondary hardware mechanics
• Original soundtrack
• Skins to unlock
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Main used engine/softwares/languages:
How it surged the project?
In the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, a close friend called Fernando Bernardo da Silva that is a leader and agent of many divisions of a religion called Buddhism of Nichiren Daishonin here in Brazil, called me to get some help. But before I get there, I have to explain why those divisions exist. Basically, it's to fit better the people of Buddhism in something like groups with the same objectives and mindset.
An example is the woman division, that besides discuss the religion itself, the themes and topics are more close to the woman's life. But that doesn't mean that it's so different from the student's division, the main concept is the same, Buddhism. But some topics are more specifics to that kind of division. Also of course that divisions interact with each other, and the major part of the meetings of this religion is for everyone without treatment of division.
There is where I enter, my friend Fernando didn't know how to got the attention of the student division to tell them the tale of the koi (Chinese carp) with some Buddhism of Nichiren Daishonin adaptations. Because the pandemic made the in-person meetings don't be possible, and through the virtual meetings it was gonna be harder to catch the attention of them and make them understand the moral of the tale.
You can read more about the buddhism of nichiren daishonin in these links:
https://www.sokaglobal.org/
https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soka_Gakkai#Divis%C3%B5es (only pt-br, use a translator)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nichiren_Buddhism
https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/buddhism/subdivisions/nichiren_1.shtml
Brainstorm phase: initial idea
Learning about the tale:
I asked to my friend tell me more about the koi tale to collect more information, I had already heard before, but just to make sure I wanted to know from him and see if there was such a big difference from the versions that I had already read about.
Listening to it, I didn't notice any differences from other versions that I already did know. But remembering better this tale, I started to have so many ideas that how the game could be, a simple and fun game, that could teach about the tale story and being fun, taking the attention of the students without difficulty.
The tale characteristics selection:
After listening to his version, and reading other searched versions that I found on the internet, I started to think out what was the main message that the tale wants to tell us (independent of the version), what kind of obstacles I could represent in-game and what type of game I could create to better adapt this story.
But I not gonna lie, the tale story itself entered my head like a ready script to adapt to a game, of course, some technical features I would have to think about it, because of some problems that I will talk about further.
To do list with initial ideas
To do list with initial ideas
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Development of ideas and choices:
First, I started to think out in the genre of the game, something more close to the casual genre than anything in the first place. A game like the endless runner genre popped in my head, I always remember this type of game by my friends in high school times, the major part of mobile games that did succeed in my classes was those type of games, an endless runner with some arcade features that could score points and compare with other friends.
With this in mind, I started to figure out what kind of enemies and obstacles that I was going to put in the game from the tale story, how many levels would have, and the main mechanic of the game. And for last, which platform the game would be made for?
I had decided on the mobile platform because the number of smartphone users is higher than computer/notebooks users. Also, the familiarity with mobile devices nowadays is something already considered natural from us, something that not all computer owners have.
Level selection screen idea
Level selection screen idea 2
Main menu screen sketch
Level selection screen idea
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The game: Koi Legend
Plot: An old Asian tale tells that those who succeed climb against the current of the waterfall getting at the top of it, overpassing all the obstacles and difficulties in the path proving your determination and courage, will be able to achieve the most beautiful illuminated transformation, turning into a dragon!
Any future plans?
We are with so many ideas for the future of this game, the first step is to collect some feedback and see what is more important to implement in the first place. If you want to stay tuned about any news from the game, you can follow my Instagram account.
For now, I will not create a page only for the project, but you can check this online document where I update every change more related to programming/design questions, and of course, you can see the page of the game on the itch.io!
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