About
In "Well, Death Happens", the goal is simple: get from the start of the level to the Flag that signifies the end of the level.
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The only thing that the Player has access to is platform movement & the games core mechanic: when you die you create a "Corpse", this "Corpse" can be used as a platform to get over hazardous sections in the game's levels. However, the supply of "Corpses" is limited.
If the Player uses up all of their "Corpses", they have to start over from the beginning. So use your "Deaths" wisely...
Background
My personal goal with this project was to learn the ins & outs of Godot & create a game with relatively simple features/mechanics that I could implement on my own.
RESPONSIBILITIES
Game Design
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Core Mechanic
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Movement
Scripting
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Coding movement & core mechanic
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Implementing State Machine
Game Design
​Core Mechanic
Usually in games, Death is definitive, when you die, you either respawn or the game is over. I asked the question: "How can you make Death more useful?"
Movement
The core inspiration for the game's movement is inspired by "Super Meat Boy": a platformer with very polished controls.
Core Mechanic
Asking the question
"How to make Death more useful?" was the foundational question during the duration of this project. For this project (this prototype) I wanted to keep the overall scope of the project "fairly" simple & adding mechanics that supported the core mechanic.
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Taking some inspiration from "Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero?" where the Player starts with limited amount of "lives", the Player starts with a limited amount of so called "Corpses". When that limited supply of "Corpses" runs out, the game is over.
Movement
Inspiration & Laying the Foundation
As stated earlier, "Super Meat Boy" was the main source of inspiration for the movement of the game.
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But because I was very unfamiliar with the Godot editor & with the GDscript language, I needed to find a source to lay the foundation.
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The team behind GDQuest: a team that methodically teaches you how to best use Godot helped my in laying the foundation for this prototype.
Scripting
​Coding movement & core mechanic
Using GDQuest's tutorials as support, implementing the basic movement was easy enough.
Implementing the Core Mechanic, however was more of a challenge. It wouldn't have been possible without the help from the GDQuest Team & Community!
​Implementing State Machine
For the prototype, implementing something called a "State Machine" was used to switch between different states the player character can be in.