Tree

Tree is a 2D transverse RPG casual puzzle platformer for single player. It is a demo work my team finished during ByteDance Lightyear University Game Development 48-hour Challenge under given theme 20XX. This work won the first prize in Beijing Division, national second prize, and the best gameplay award.

Designers

Yuning Yang: New York University, Joint Major of Mathematics and Computer Science; Team Leader, Mechanics Design, Visual Design, Textual Introduction, Video Editing
Xiang Ji: China Agriculture University, Food Science; Programming (with Pixel Game Maker MV), Mechanics Design
Qingyao Zhu: The Pennsylvania State University, Data Science and Mathematics; Level Map Design, Presentation Speaker, Miscellaneous
Zihan Zhou: Berklee College of Music, Composition; Background Music Production

Teamwork

Tree was the first time that my teammates and I involved in an actual game development process. Due to the particularity of the competition, my teammates and I thought a lot about how to make a complete demo in line with the theme within the limited time. At the beginning we had a very ambitious plan A, but after discussion, we gave it up because it was too complicated to finish, and the plan B we implemented had a much clearer structure, though the final demo was quite different from its original idea.

This experience displayed to me the big gap between designing and implementation during game development. Concept variation, technical difficulties, all sorts of problems would suddenly come out and complicate the process. As the leader, I also need to communicate and determine the final plan as soon as possible. Sometimes we have to compromise, but sometimes a collision of ideas leads to a more sparkling solution. I hope that in the future when I cooperate with others, I can keep my original design intention while communicate with my partners patiently and calmly, and realize our sparks of collision in the final work through repetitive compromise and perfection.

Video

Demo Video

or https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1bG4y1f72T/

Theme and Intention

The given theme in the competition is 20XX. If we don’t set a time limit on 20XX, it represents the whole twenty-first century. Now we stand at the point of 2021 and look into the 80 years in the future. Our minds are full of imagination, and we hope to interpret these infinite possibilities of human fate through a relatively dynamic process. So we designed this game called Tree. The growth of trees often represents the continuation of life and is a measure of the health of the earth’s ecological environment, which could possibly determines how far we are from the end of human destiny. Through the interaction between players and the trees they planted in the game, we want to display the many different ways of how humans can get along with the ecological environment in the future with the rapid development of technology, and the possible destinies we may reach.

Game Mechanics

The player moves to the end of the current space-time (level) by controlling the movement and jumping of the little man.

As players progress, they can choose to collect different items (oxygen and carbon dioxide), which will trigger different effects such as trees/chimneys that allow players to reach the level end through different paths.

After reaching the end of the current space-time (level), the system will generate the environment of the next space-time according to the number and type of items collected by the player during the journey.

Highlights

When it seems impossible to get to the next platform along any existing path, if the player chooses to plant a tree, there may appear additional platforms so that players can continue their journey.

If player chooses to build a chimney, the presence of the chimney will destroy surrounding platforms and the little man wouldn’t be able to stand on those platforms. In this case, players need to find alternative paths. And in our map design, players will be forced to build more chimneys, learning that once pollution starts it is difficult to fully eliminate its influence.

While we place the carbon dioxides in a way that made players easier and faster to reach the star, we still hope our players can complete the level in a healthy way by planting trees so that we can have a better living environment in 20XX.

Visual Design

Created by Procreate.
Backgrounds for different maps (with different levels of pollution):