The Fall of Daedalus is 2D narrative platformer game, and was a solo project made in 3 weeks using Unity and assets from the Unity Store using C# and Piskel (animating site). The game is a unique retelling of the tale of Icarus through the point of view of his father, Daedalus. The goal of this project was to create a game based off of a myth with several game mechanics including: 3 story scenes, 2 unique platform mini-levels, 10 static animation states, and uses the 2D side scrolling perspective.
You can play the game here:
The Fall of Daedalus Trailer
Game Mechanics
Item Collection, Climbing, Collision with objects/enemies
Interactive Cutscene
Flying, Following, Moving enemies
Narrative Text Scenes
Level One: Tower
Overview of level one.
Level Design
Level one of the game is a vertical structured collection platformer minigame. The player plays as Icarus, and is given 300 seconds to explore the tower, collecting eight candles and six feathers. This is so that the second level is set up for the player to fly with wings made using the materials they collected. These items have been placed throughout the five floors of the tower. Each floor has a different layout, allowing for slightly different maneuvering challenges to reach the collectible items. Originally, I wanted a spiral staircase in the middle of the tower to be more realistic about the structure of the tower, but I felt the presence of one would split the floor in a way that made movement very restricted and less fun. I opted for ladders so that there was more room to explore and make use of the movable objects placed on the floors. The barrels are more lightweight and rotatable, and the columns are more heavy and unable to rotate. The player can move these objects around and jump on so as to reach other platforms. The feathers are all obtainable by going out the window to grab from the bird’s nests on the window sills — though they must time the collection correctly as there are flying birds that can reset the player’s position. There is no “dying” per say in this level, just a time limit. I didn’t want there to be a huge punishing game over, as the focus of this game as a whole is to tell a story, the time limit is more reasonable narrative and gameplay wise.
Level Two: The Sky and The Sea
Overview of level two.
The second level is a flying platformer. The goal is to fly from the top of the tower on the left (thin long gray rectangle), to the island on right (big green rectangle). At the beginning of this level, the camera pans from the player at the top of the tower, to the island on the right, in order to show the player where to go. The player is Daedalus, and is prompted by text to follow Icarus, who begins flying towards the island shortly after the camera animation. There are moving obstacles that the player must avoid (flying birds) and cloud platforms for the player to land on to take breaks (represented as the small green rectangles). The long orange rectangle at the top represents the blazing sun, if the player touches it, they are reset, and the long blue rectangle at the bottom represents the sea, which also resets the player. This is to stay true to the myth of the story. At the halfway point, Icarus will begin ascending towards the sun, and the text on the screen prompts the player to try and stop him. The game is hard coded for Icarus to die, and if the player follows Icarus, they will see him die, and then the text changes to instruct the player to reach the island. When they reach the island, they are loaded into an interactive ending cutscene where the player must manually drag Icarus out of the water onto land.