Ancient Worlds

• 

  Opabinia Sample Sprite

• 

  Anomalocaris Sample Sprite

• 

  Demosponge Sample Sprite

• 

  Trilobite Sample Sprite

Inspiration

We were inspired by the Cultural Discoveries Abroad project from the last WHACK as well as the mobile game "Mini Mini Farm." We wanted to create an education-based platform for younger children about prehistory, a topic subject to much scientific inaccuracy in present-day media, and we thought that a game would be the best way to appeal to a younger audience.

What it does

Ancient Worlds is an education-based game that teaches younger students about organisms in the different periods and eras of prehistory as well as significant events such as the Permian extinction that changed the course of evolution. Our game takes the player, who plays as a trilobite, through the Cambrian explosion to the current Cenozoic era, and introduces different organisms present in each time period.

How we built it

We used RPG Maker MV, a game development engine geared towards role-playing-style games, to bring Ancient Worlds to life. Since we wanted the game to have a reasonably cute style so as to appeal to a younger audience, we went with a pixel-art style, which is conveniently the type of aesthetic that RPG Maker specializes in. After applying a blue overlay to the tileset in order to visualize an underwater world, we were thus able to use some default RPG Maker assets for backgrounds and obstacles. We used a combination of Piskel and ibisPaint to create sprites, information panels and other graphics.

Challenges we ran into

Neither of us had used RPG Maker before, so we had to learn it from scratch. One of our members has been previously developing with Unity, and initially was not used to the RPG Maker interface--hence, there was a bit of difficulty navigating the asset system and implementing events. At certain points, we thought that writing dialogue and events in a code script like in Unity would be simpler than learning the ins and outs of RPG Maker events from the beginning, and considered scrapping our progress and starting over with Unity. Eventually, however, we got used to it and were able to produce a project that we're proud of, as well as master a new software.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

This is one of our member's first hackathon, and despite having little experience in coding, she was able to collaborate effectively to create the project. We were also able to create Ancient Worlds very similar to what we initially envisioned for the education-based game, even on limited time, experience, and sleep.

What we learned

We learned how to use RPG Maker and also how to effectively communicate and plan in a time-sensitive project. We also learned that game design is more difficult than we initially believed, but it was still a fun process with much trial and error. Finally, we have a new appreciation for people who make pixel art because it's harder than it looks.

What's next for Ancient Worlds

The next step for Ancient Worlds would be to cover more periods or "levels" of prehistory that we didn't include in the first version such as the Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, etc., or possibly expand into epochs of recent prehistory such as the Eocene, Miocene, or Holocene.

Built With

• rpgmaker