Raj Vijayakumar

Responsibilities: Game Design, Art, Coding

Tools: 

• Unity

• Photoshop

• Game Controllers

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About: 

Monkey Ball is a competitive physics-based game in which players can choose to play 1v1 or 2v2. The aim of the game is to predict the trajectory of the ball and be positioned in a place to launch the ball to a teammate or at the goal! The higher the chain combo, the faster the ball moves. This game is played on a game controller, and the player can be controlled using the left analog stick. To launch the ball, the player needs to aim the left analog stick and press the right trigger. 

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The game was built over the course of five days by about 12 people as part of a midterm Design Challenge. We initially started this project by going onto the field and playing different games like dodge ball, catch, flag football, etc. The goal was to deconstruct an existing game and create our version by creating a new set of rules and variables. After we created something we were happy with, we broke down the game's core principles and created a gamified version of it. The digital version allowed us the benefits of randomization algorithms, time freeze, chain combos, score tracking, etc. 

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Takeaways:

This game is one of my favourite projects thus far. It was created in my second year of Game Design and what was great about it was the fact that there was a nice mix of first to third years on our team. One of the things my team did a great job on was creating the scope of the project and executing it with excellent organizational skills and work ethic. They had solid coding, art, design and documentation skills and I was able to further improve my knowledge in both coding and art as a result of working on this.

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One takeaway from this project was the importance of git repositories. When we initially started building the game, our project got corrupted and something went wrong. We couldn't figure out what the issue was, so we loaded up a previous commit. Although a little bit of work was lost, we didn't lose the entire game. Another key takeaway was the importance of being involved in the foundational coding of the project. I was not a strong programmer at the time, so I didn't pay much attention to it. If I had paid attention, it would have helped me learn so much more. I could have learned more from the older students.  

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