Preliminary Doneness

About:

This is the "submission" build for my participation in KenneyJam 2017, the theme being "It's Not a Bug, It's a Feature".  All assets... Art, sound & fonts are from Kenney as per the jam rules.  I've not used 2D much in a while, so I spent far too long just getting Unity to import the pixel art without "smoothing" it into a blur and leaving gaps on the edges. Apart from that early fussing and a few interruptions, it went reasonably smoothly.  A first! (And finished, to boot!)

Thinking on the theme, I decided fairly early to follow Jeff Goldblum's lead in the movie Independence Day, and the "bugs" were in alien systems, which were "features" if you're the one trying to break their stuff.  Continuing on the movie theme of "randomly typing to do things", I thought it would be fun to make it a sort of Typing Tutor game, and in keeping to concept, the words are mostly computer-related terms or actual programming language snippets. There's a lot more detail and polish I'd have liked to add, but I managed to keep it lean and achievable. After all, the point is not only to start something, but to finish it.

Problems:

• The font I chose is fairly readable, but it still loses some readability on code-related things like asterisks *, braces {} and pipes |. Also, if you're not a programmer, you may not even use pipes or know where they are. It's not a 1, it's not a capital i.
• The actual word list is fairly long and varied for something I needed to compile in a time-crunch, but it could have a lot added to it. Might be nice to have a non-nerd word list for the normal folks. "The aliens will explode if you type the word 'banana'!"
• Occasionally, enemies are spawned too close to each other and their word balloons are obscured. I added a quick fudging to make it less likely, but it still happens intermittently. Also, some near the top edge can have problems. I think I've limited them from words going off the top edge, but have not tested enough to be sure.
• Sounds could use more work. In trying to guarantee crossing the finish line, the whole game was silent until the last couple of hours of the time limit. They were thrown in at the last minute and it shows.
• No correcting abilities! If you mess up, you have to hit enter and just try over. That can be super-frustrating if you've been living off backspace for over 30 years of fumbling.
• In the same area, hitting enter after you're done typing the word is non-obvious. Needs better (or at least "some") instructions!
• I had zero opportunity to try the MacOS version. Unity has done fine with more complicated things than this, but it's still a question mark on my own list. Related: No time to try a WebGL version either.

Conclusion:

I'm pretty happy with how far I got, and still have things I'd like the game to have, so I will poke at it again after a break. If you have any problems with it (especially something not already listed above) leave me a note and I'll see what I can do about it.