Progeny of Ra
Game Summary
Progeny of Ra is a 2D platformer game created by the team Ultra5. The player takes on the role of Cliupatra as she explores the Great Pyramid, collects relics, and travels back and forth between the present and the past to solve environmental puzzles
Info
Game: Progeny of Ra
Engine: Unity
Development Time: 13 weeks (September – November, 2022)
Team Size: 5
Screenshots
Design Goals
Time Travel
One of our core pillars for Progeny of Ra was time travel. So, my focus was on creating a puzzle that utilized this feature effectively. To accomplish this I placed different elements of the environmental puzzles in the past and present.
Egyptian Mythology
Another one of our core pillars was Egyptian Mythology. So, our main character is a demi-god named Cliupatra. Her father is Ra, the god of the sun. She is trying to restore his strength by finding a special artifact in the Great Pyramid.
Environmental Puzzles
The level I created for this game was the fifth and final one, so I aimed to incorporate all of the previously introduced mechanics. As a result, my level features cage, ball, and spike traps. The player can get past these obstacles by time traveling, using moving platforms, or using the traps themselves.
Maps
Post Mortem
What Went Well
- Our team communicated well with one another and we were always respectful towards one another. I contributed to this by always listening to what my team members had to say before saying what I thought
- I was able to learn Unity quickly and make first-pass code for certain functions before handing it off to the programmers to be polished
What Went Wrong
- Because of the way our team allocated tasks, this was the only level I made in the game when I could potentially have made more. I ended up doing more work on various little tasks that popped up in the middle of development
- Some of the elements of my level don’t have a true purpose because of features that ended up being cut towards the end of development. I was unable to adjust the level for these changes
- Since we were a small team, there often seemed to be more tasks than we could handle. In an effort to help, I ended up taking on too many things. This led to things being rushed and/or missing elements
What I Learned
- I learned that it is important to let others take some of the workload
- I learned the proper pipeline for using Unity with Perforce and how to properly communicate with the team about what was being pushed, when it was being pushed, and when everyone should pull the latest version of the project
- I learned the importance of Kleenex testing as several flaws in my level were revealed during playtest sessions