I made 2023 my year to prototype games in Unity, with a goal of completing 12 prototypes. I completed that goal with less than a week to spare.
They’re not all available, but here’s what I published online (Warning: these are all protoypes, with high levels of jankiness. You’ve been warned.)
- Pillar Breaker – A simple demo of first-person controls, asset importing, and physics.
- Train Station – 3rd person movement, animation, and environmental collision set at the Hamilton, NJ train station.
- Line Simulator – Simple grid-based movement, simulating waiting in line. Riveting, I know.
- Flight Simulator – Simulating the experience of airline travel, from the perspective of a passenger. This extends Line Simulator, but with more interactions and dialog.
- Planet Runner – An experiment with importing and controlling models and animations from Mixamo, alongside more complex movement controls and world interactions.
- Squish – More involved shading and scenery design, based on the fishing pier in Edmonds, WA.
- Squid – Controlling a custom model and animation, alongside some more lighting and rendering experiments.
- Jigging – A relatively complete prototype of a game about jigging (fishing) for squid in Puget Sound.
- Grid Game – A turn-based tactical combat game, which uses grids and A* pathfinding for movement.
- TurnBasedBattler – a prototype for a turn-based RPG which uses Blackjack as a base for conflict resolution instead of dice rolls.
I mentioned in my last post that this was a strategic effort to learn a new skill. Not that I’m going to be jumping into full-time game dev anytime soon, nor am I planning to become a developer, but it gave me a concrete goal to reach while integrating the skills I already have.
The biggest skills I learned? How to consume developer documentation, and how to balance building “fast” versus building “good” for a prototype.