Tournamental

Tournamental was a bare-bones tile game that I had to spice up with some mechanics. I added multiple mechanics and made 3 levels for the game. At the bottom of the page, there will be a link to the game's itch.io page if you'd like to try it for yourself, enjoy!

First Week: Planning

In the first week, I had to analyze the game and plan my additions. At base, the game had movement, a reset button, moveable boxes, a win square, and an interact button. I was also given some builds of the game that had mechanics already implemented. In these builds, I found the slide tile, tiles that slide you in a specific direction, and pits that could be filled with boxes. I decided to add these to my project to give me more to work with. I wanted to find something that built on these mechanics while also making the player think. That's when it hit me! In Super Mario 3D World there is a powerup that duplicates the player. I thought it would be interesting if the player had to think about two player characters instead of one. Not only the dangers of either player falling into a pit but also how the characters must interact to help each other reach the end. This became my mechanic for the project.

Second Week:

Prototyping

The second week was all about designing my mechanic and test level. The mechanic itself was simple. I couldn't get the second player to spawn properly at first but I was able to work my way around it using a stationary actor, getting it in the manager blueprint, and setting its current tile to where I wanted it to spawn. The second pawn's movement is tied to the base pawn's movement, which resulted in a bug that allowed the player to get the two pawns off-sync by putting one of the pawns in an area where it couldn't move and the other one could still move freely. Instead of fixing this, I made it a feature. Not because I couldn't fix it but because I thought it made the game more interesting. Being able to get the pawns off-sync allowed for more player choices and more interesting puzzles. This video here goes more depth on how this mechanic works and showcases the level I designed to show it.

Third Week: Finalize Design

The third week had me and my peers collaborating together by choosing a classmate's mechanic and implementing it into your game. I had chosen a lever mechanic that my classmate used to spawn boxes. But, I decided to make it able to do just about anything using custom events. I landed on two uses for the lever;

1. Lowering down walls to open new paths.

2. Changing the direction of slide tiles.

Doing this created interesting puzzles for the player to solve, such as with the third level in the game. Featuring multiple levers that the player must press with one pawn to allow the other pawn to move boxes into designated spots. This video here dives deeper into the level mechanic and how it works.

Takeaways

This project was very interesting to work on and allowed me to thoroughly test my skills. Creating the Split Player Mechanic from scratch was a challenge, but I was able to learn a lot about UE5's advanced input system and how characters interact with each other. Overall, I think I learned a lot and had a lot of fun working on and completing the project. Here is the itch.io link if you'd like to play the game for yourself!