Icy Impact Game

Digital

Tools and Tech: Unity and C#, Bosca Ceoil, Procreate, Audacity, Youtube Audio Library

Icy Impact is a reflex-based game where you play as a flaming skull trying to avoid malicious ice creatures. It was created as an exploration into the Unity editor and C# scripting. While the premise is simple, that left room to emphasize the atmosphere from the sounds and scenery to the player character’s idle state.

Project Process

Flame skull

I started out trying to come up with an interesting character and iterated through several ideas. However this character emerged would inform how the evil creatures would turn out. A light getting snuffed out became the theme.

initial sketches animation breakdown

These were the different pieces used for the animation. To give the sense that the primary mover is the skull, the skull and the flame needed to be separate so that I could apply the keyframes to each element. They move similarly but at slightly different times, so when the skull moves the flames follow.

heart

I settled on the flaming skull because it was quirky, a simple character to animate, and probably the most legible of the designs. To further make him more interesting I added the curl to his eye, which I then wanted to apply throughout the scene for design consistency.

Blue enemies

To contrast with the skull's cuteness and simplicity, I wanted to create some mean, more complex creatures that might not like a little stranger coming to their land. The original creatures were purple, however that did not register as "icy", so I ventured through other color variations until settling on the light blue ones--they appeared frigid and could stand out against the eerie mint background. They spawn and scale up/down in size randomly, and gradually increase their speed the longer they are avoided.

In addition to the visual assets, I had a blast creating the background music with Bosca Ceoil and recording various sound effects that I then edited with Audacity. My favorite sound in the entire game is the death rattle that is just a simple, modified click of the tongue.

© 2022 Miranda Bashore. All Rights Reserved.