Rebirth of a Planet
| Rebirth of a Planet | |
|---|---|
| Studio | SMALL Studios |
| Plattform | Windows, macOS |
| Spiel-Engine | Unity |
| Genre | Action Adventure, Walking Simulator |
| Sprache | Englisch |
Rollen und Aufgaben im Team
| Name | Responsibility |
|---|---|
| Magdalena Elender | 3D Art |
| Alexander Hödlmoser | Programming, UI |
| Sarah Michelitsch | Level Design, Story |
| Leonie Sametinger | Sound Design |
| Lisa Wohlschlager | Game Design, Projekt Management |
Vision Statement
Pluto's fight to gain back his place as a planet in the solar system.
Game Mechanics
Rebirth of a planet is a single player adventure walking simulator game, where the main mechanic is to evade moving meteoroids that come towards the player. The planet can move horizontally and can also jump a certain height. Additionaly, there are simple fight mechanics. The 5 moons of Pluto (Styx, Kerberus, Charon, Hydra and Nix) float around it and can be used as a healing tool or offensive mechanism. If the player chooses to use the moons as an offensive mechanism, the moon will serve as a rock, that can be thrown towards a solid planet like Mars or Venus, by aiming with the mouse. Alternatively the player can also throw ice balls from it's ice volcanos, freezing the gas planets (Saturn, Jupiter, Neptune). Once it is frozen, the planet is vulnerable to the moon rock attacks, resulting in the planet taking damage.
The moon actions cannot be used without limits. Once an action like healing or attacking is used, a cooldown timer will start, after which the moon count will recharge again.
Level Design
The player (Pluto) is in a circular orbit around the sun and it is his goal to reach the earth. He has to dodge some asteroids flying through the solar system. In order to keep Pluto from reaching Earth and doing any harm, other planets in the solar system get in its way at certain times and try to drive it away. A distinction is made between gas giants and solid bodies, with Pluto bombarding the gas giants with ice and the solid bodies with its moons and thus defeating them. The earth serves as the final boss.
Story
Once upon a time there was a tiny planet, a little guy, at the edge of the universe minding its own business. That was until Planet Earth came along, yelling and complaining about Pluto’s pathetic size. Planet Earth floated into the council of planets and said: “Pluto is so small! Smaller than my moon! Why is that thing even considered a planet?” After some arguing, the sun was plagued with a massive headache. “Alright then, so be it. Pluto must be stripped of its status as a planet if it makes you guys be quiet.”
And so, it happened.
Pluto cried for days but on day seven Pluto got angry and decided to get its revenge on the other planets.
So, it went on warfare with the others, but its goal was to destroy earth.
Finally, after a long and draining battle, Pluto managed to defeat the planets.
Pluto demanded one thing.
“After what the Earth did to me, I want its place in the solar system,” it said.
The sun was devastated.
“So be it, if you will finally stop making noise.”
And so, the little planet took Earth’s spot and was respected amongst the other planets from now on.
User Interface
In-game HUD
The head-up-display features a health bar, the current available moon charges with a circular cooldown bar, as well as the ice attack cooldown bar.
Because this is a pretty short game, the few important actions are displayed as button prompts at the bottom, so that the player always knows who to perform those actions, without having to look everything up in a sub-menu.
The pause menu serves as a way to get some more information about what the game is about and what to do, it also features a Quit button to get back to the main menu.
The pause window is transparent. The scene in the background will get dimmed and slightly blurred.
After planet is beaten
After a planet receives enough damage, it will stop standing in Pluto's way. A message prompt will display that this particular planet respects Pluto as a planet again.
Dialog
At certain points in the game, the other planets will talk to Pluto. The dialog will be purely text-based, displayed inside a speech bubble.
Asset Liste
- Meteoroids as obstacles (will be flying around), 3D
- Solar system as the game environment
- Sun as light source, 3D
- Pluto = player, 3D
- 5 Pluto-moons that hover around it, 3D
- Earth as Pluto’s target/enemy, 3D
- The other planets of our solar system, divided into gas planets and solid planets 3D
- UI Elements (ex.: health bar), 2D
- Background music/atmo
- Attack sound effects -> different for rock attack or ice attack
- Heal sound effect
- Hit feedback sound effect