Another Life

Another Life was a solo project created for the 8th annual Leeble Jam hosted on Itch.io over the course of a month.

The prompt was “Another Life”.

CONCEPTION

When the prompt was first revealed, I originally wanted to play with the idea of reincarnation: have the player swap between different types of plants, animals and other living beings to beat the level. However, the problem I ended up running into with that was the end goal. Were they trying to reach enlightenment? Would a sandbox be more enjoyable? Did the player have to die to reincarnate into something else? 

Too many questions and not enough time.

After abandoning reincarnation, I eventually settled on utilizing multi-tasking mechanics to simulate daydreaming. The idea of having two separate games connected using a single control soon emerged, and after that, it was time to figure out how to make it a reality.

CREATION

Figuring out how to achieve enemy navigation and a “split screen” effect in Unity took nearly two weeks, but once that was finished, everything else quickly fell into place. It was also my first time delving into pixel art and Unity tilemaps, but both proved easy to learn in the time that I had left. Fun fact: the reason the player character is a broom is partially because I wanted to be as inclusive as possible, but also because I didn’t want to animate a whole person. Same goes for the hooded patrons!

With the jam period nearing a close, the majority of my efforts went into making sure the transitions from the “real” world to dual game modes were as seamless as possible. My biggest obstacles was that when the screen began to split, the Unity canvas would resize itself, meaning all the UI would move as well. The “thought bubble” that separates both games was affected the most by the transition, so that meant manually coding it to un-resize, a process which I’m still surprised to have pulled off.

Looking back, I’m glad to have taken the time to create this project, as it not only taught me how to better utilize Unity, but introduced me to the world of game jams that I continue to explore.