Alternative Energy
Intro.
This is my bachelor's thesis for my degree in Design and Development of Video Games, which I finished in July 2019. The purpose of the project is changing the mindset about the use of renewable energy sources throuhg a video game.
Summary of the game
The game will put the player in the main role of the story: the player is a proud mayor of a new city. The mayor can unlock zones giving enough energy to the citizens and doing quests or task. This energy can be obtained with “good” energy or “bad” energy. The good energy is the renewable energy, in our game is represented with windmills and solar panels. The bad energy is the non renewable energy, in our game is represented with coal factories and gas extractors. The goal of the game is getting enough energy but you can do it in a good or bad way. If you city has too much pollution, citizens will die and you lose. But if you maintain the pollution in a good level and the citizens are happy, you will unlock the whole city and win.
Description of my work
Since I was the most experience member of the team, I was the leader of the whole project, meaning I was in charge of the integration of every part in the game. This was my first android game in Unity and I'm very proud of what I accomplished in such a short amount of time. I know the code it's not perfect but all the system I develop were working and I think I develop a very good demo of what I wanted to achieve.
You can see a gameplay of the video game here:
The team
This project was made with a group of 7 students from Hanzehogeschool at the Game Lab program. The roles were:
- Tatiana and Julio: Designers
- Trang and Sander: Artist
- Consta: Programmer
- Andrea (me): Lead programmer
Inspiration
The game is inspired in city builder/simulation games like Cities Skylines, Clash Of Clans and The Simpsons: Tapped Out. In Cities Skylines you can build a city with roads, police stations, monuments, parks, energy, water, etc, and it is really realistic because you can modify the taxes for the citizens, ask for a loan if you do not have enough money, create routes for the public transport, etc, so it is more like a simulation of a real city and the goal is to make your city successful. Clash Of Clans is a tower defense but it was an inspiration for two reasons: it is a game with microtransactions (but you do not need to pay for playing the game) and there are some elements that do not add anything, is only visual. In The Simpsons: Tapped Out there are some quest and activities that the citizens of Springfield need to do and you can build different types of houses and other emblematic buildings but some of them do not add anything new to the city (only visual as Clash Of Clans).