Overview
The game “Mod City” was developed for the “Semester Games Jam” during the summer semester of 2020. This game jam was completely online due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The topic of this jam was “Modification”, a quite versatile and interesting theme. Our team of 8 decided to build a game around game modding, the twist being that only the right combination of mods allow the player to beat the game. Mods can be selected from a “curated” list in the main menu, the rest of the game is a normal 2D platformer in a cyberpunk setting. An interesting twist is the fact, that save points persist even when going back to the main menu, which allows the player to quickly switch out mods during a run.
My tasks in this project were mainly implementing the mod system and setting up the rendering pipeline. The mod system is scriptable object based and everything in the game, from the character to the sounds, was modable. Even though this system proofed to be challenging to implement properly in such a short period of time, it did work out nicely and our team was able to create quite a few (mostly) decent mods to make the game interesting. Since our artists were only familiar with 2D art, the choice of Unitys’ universal render pipeline was natural. Everything in the game is hand-drawn and we spent a decent amount placing and animating lights to make the world feel alive.
Impressions
Final Words
This project was challenging due to it being carried out entirely online, but after a few communication issues in the beginning the team quickly managed to delegate tasks and the teams’ organization was surprisingly good. The final product is definitely something to be proud of, the game looks amazing and plays nicely, too. Even though most mods were implemented rather late in the process, mostly everything worked out well and the game being both beatable and challenging.
Overall the game was well received, coming in just a little bit short of the podium in fourth place. The game can be found both on GitHub and on Itch.io, were it can directly be played as well! Optionally, there is also a download link for Windows provided bellow, as WebGL might not work too well in some browsers.