Walking Sim
We started with a concept of a game about the ocean, and end up with playing as a Hermit Crab survival game. The hermit crab has only hard shells on the upper body but remained soft on the other parts of the body, so it needs to find empty shells of other animals to live in. The way of finding an empty shell wouldn’t be easy, cause a hermit crab could mistakenly get into a piece of trash left on the beach, which will eventually cause the death of the hermit crab.
Plastic debris in the ocean can entangle sea creatures unknowingly. it can act as both a barrier and a trap to countless populations. Each year 570,000 hermit crabs die after climbing into plastic debris, confusing it for empty shells.
We hope that player could sense the difficulties of surviving for a hermit crab, and realize what consequences will our unconscious behavior of littering bring to the other members of the nature.
As a player, you may be able to play again, but the hermit crabs can never resurrect.
Things player can do:
1.Find/put on shells
2.Find food
3.Explore the shallows
Things trigger the death end:
1.Can’t find a new shell on time
2.Put on the wrong shell (indirectly)
3.Doesn’t eat for a long time
Interactions between player’s decisions:
* Put on a trash will slow the player down
* Eat too much food will shorten the life of the shell
Instruction demo:
Modeling: Yibo Fu, Crystal Tan
Game Code(including character moving and reacting in the game): Yuqing Liang
UI(including interface visual design and health bar/wear-life bar coding): An Kong
Download
Development log
- Development processMar 10, 2021
- PostmortermMar 10, 2021
Comments
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The game has a really strong concept, and I love seeing things from the crab's point of view. The visuals, and the water sound definitely gets me excited for the summer!
Some things to consider:
1. The bars decrease really fast.
2. Screenshot below, most of the time the space to jump was working fine and at a point, it took me really high up in the sky where I was over-watching the entire scene below, as if I was a flying crab.
Good work :)
I really like the art style of this project, especially the red arrow and the crab claws! It is also a very beautiful view under the water. I think you guys did a great job in doing the health bar and also counting shells!
Hard game for me！and I really like the concept of the game. Also I would like to see a success scene in the game that will make game more complete.
Cool start menu with the flowing water scene! I like that your team animated the underwater creatures. The life of the shell is dropping way too fast, maybe you can adjust that little bit. Great game!
The models in this game are cute, I love the cooperative of color. Also, I love the concept of the game, which tells people to protect the environment.
In this game, picking up trash and reduce health was interesting, which we have to dodge the trash and keep ourselves alive by eating supplies. We cannot only just focus health bar in the game but shelf bar is also important to the crab. Somehow, it could be the challenge in the game by both finding supplies to keep shelf satiation and eating supplies to keep health bar full possibly.
I think your theme is so cute, and the message behind it is really powerful. I really like how you included the summary of findings at the end to remind people of the situation hermit crabs are facing. I also like your environment setup which allows the player to walk from the beach into the water. It makes the whole experience very real and immersive.
One little advise about the audio, I think you can probably make the ambient sound louder. When I start the game, I had to maximize my volume to barely hear the ambient sound, then when I collected the first shell, the sound effect is too loud that it scared the shit out of me hahahaha so I think you can probably balance that a little bit. Now I think the ambient sound just goes from very quiet to completely gone towards the end. Other than that, love your game!
I like how it's somewhat like an exploratory yet survival game because the overall experience ties in well with the message at the end!
Really appreciate the concept and takeaway message!
Actually I don't agree with John - it's more powerful for not having a win scene because endingless survival game is just how the world works. Knowing the fact that it's way harder to keep living than to die adds a layer deeper on the seemingly cute setting.