Intro

As an engineer and 3D designer, my first attempt to enter game development was through such programs as Maya and Blender.

Quite fast I realized that if I want to learn the whole path of game development from start to end, focusing only on creating of 3D models would not be allowed it. That’s why I have switched to studying Unreal Engine and Unity. I have completed numerous on-platform courses in order to make myself familiar with those game engines.

It became quite clear that single-handedly it would not be possible to create some big PC game. So I have decided that first I need to learn something more “simple” – and my choice fell on Hyper Casual games.

In 2021 I enrolled in courses describing the of development Hyper Casual games. Here I should send my regards to Igor Zverev – our teacher at that school, his lessons were extremely valuable and helpful. Giving us an opportunity to learn how to make games not only from a technical perspective but also learn to see it as a business product.

Game Prototype Description

Vaccine Lab – was one of my first test ideas on the course.
It was 2021 year with Covid storming outside, so I guess the time and events around gave me this idea.

The references were numerous games where customers ordered food and by completing several simple mini-games we cooked their orders.
I have decided to use a similar approach but for developing a medicine.

First mini-game

Here we have a glass under a microscope. We can see multiple “good” blue cells and several orange “bad” virus cells. The objective – catch all virus cells.

I have learned how to make a chaotic movement of objects and their reaction to player actions.

Second mini-game

For second stage I wanted to use an idea of games water sorting puzzle, but add there realistic water bahaviour.

Unfortanttely I couldn’t solved the issue with mixing of color on a border between two colors.

Third mini-game

In the third stage, a player needs to rotate the test tube rotor by pressing on the screen and keeping the spin rotation speed within limits.

Fourth mini-game

At stage four a player needs to defeat the virus by inserting vaccine cells on the field.

Here I have learned how to teach vaccine cells to find the nearest to them virus cells and follow them. By the idea after a collision between vaccine and virus cells, the last one should be “cured” and change the color.

Summary

As you may see the gameplay wasn’t breathtaking at all, so after testing a prototype with others I have decided to abandon this idea and move forward to a new one.

Nevertheless, this project gave me valuable lessons both in researching the references for potentially valuable ideas and improving my skills in working with Unity and making code on C#.