Curse of the Hodag

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#1

My game is called Curse of the Hodag!

Curse of the Hodag is a classic arcade block breaking game with a slight twist. Dodge turtle shells and snakes flung at you from the mysterious and mischievous hodags. It features two gameplay modes: regular and hardcore. In regular mode, you progress along a map and the game will save your progress between levels. In hardcore mode, you only have 10 lives to make it all the way through the map, achieving as high a score as possible.

All art and music was created by me. Sound effects were found in free Unity assets, which are credited in game. The font I found on dafont and is also credited in game and on the game page.

Post Mortem
Wow, feature creep is a very real thing. This game is still only about 3/5s of what I wanted to do, even after culling the many ideas that came to mind as I was building it.

The art took me a very long time, but was very enjoyable. I’m not an artist, so I spent probably 3 days working on a pixel-art background, which was terrible. So I started over, and this time it took 2 days and was much better, but still terrible. So I started again, ditched the pixel art style, and finally came up with something I actually kind of liked. It took me a full day to finish it. I then created 4 more backgrounds in the same style, all of which only took about two days (it was much easier once I knew what I was doing).

The animation presented another hurdle, and I wrestled with it for a few days before it finally made sense. Part of the issue was that I wanted everything to be automated. So instead of manually placing 3 hodags in a level, I wanted a controller with a “numberOfHodags.” All of this took longer than I’d like to admit to figure out, but I finally got it working well.

The map was a huge issue. Building arrays to cycle through all the buttons so I could automate unlocking levels, again instead of completing it manually. There was a lot of simple logic that once again, took me a very long time to figure out. That and actually compiling the arrays of levels probably took as much time as if I had just scripted out each one separately.

By the end, it was a massive jenga tower and I could feel that the more I poked and prodded, the more likely it was to topple down. I was ready to call it finished, ship it, and start the next project with a mind full of new logic and knowledge. This is why the end screen is so basic. I just didn’t want to spend another week polishing off something that would have looked truly good.

At the end of the day, Curse of the Hodag was a beginner project that took far too long, but I got to learn tons along the way. It won’t win any awards or garnish dozens of players, but my family got to play it and have fun, and that honestly made every second of work worth it.

I can’t wait to do this to myself all over again :slight_smile:

Thanks,

Rob

3 Likes
#2

This is a hell of a game and the time and effort you put into it shows. You managed to put the feeling of a classic arcade game, where there is a lot going on, into it. This is usually not my type as I get confused to where the ball is and loose easily. Yet you managed to balance it out and made it quite pleasant. The mechanics are well done and the extra features challenging.
The only thing here is that the ball sometimes has a hint of a loop, meaning, it sticks in the same back and forth sideways a nodge too long imho.
As for the design - it is according to the game and even if you more likely won’t get a prize for it, you’ve done awesome. The figures are funny and scary, the background suits the theme and the simplicity and delicacy of the border a nice contrast.
I played both regular and hardcore. I noticed in the hardcore that when you lose all your lives, the game continues until you finish the level and in case of losing during this time, you get negative lives. You might want to look into that.
Other than that, super duper job!
cheers and looking forward to your next gaem!

1 Like
#3

Thank you for the phenomenal feedback!

Making the ball easier to follow was a challenge for me. Initially it was a purple color, and I was struggling trying to figure out how to make it fit the game, when I decided to just go with white. The increased contrast made a big difference. Then, learning how to create colored particles to chase the ball made it even a little easier, I thought. I still lose site of it at times.

Yes the looping was very frustrating. I thought it was maybe due to my narrow playfield. I thought about changing the walls to add a bit more angle to reduce that effect. I didn’t like the randomness of changing the velocity by a random amount - although maybe that was just me.

Very good spot on the bug! That should be a very easy fix, thank you so much for pointing that out.

Thank you again for your wonderful review, it means very much to me :slight_smile:

Rob

1 Like
#4

You are welcome:)

1 Like
#5

This is a really nice project, also loved the post-mortem.

The game is pretty enjoyable, it sometimes feels a little unfair due to the amount of things on screen, but other than that the overall experience is really nice.

I did found two bugs.

  • Activating the super ball doesn’t always stop the enemies from throwing things at you.
  • Sometimes the enemies stop throwing things at the player. I think it has something to do with activating the super ball and then lose it, not sure about this.

I suggest you take the time to fix those bugs before moving forward with the course, this gives a lot of coding experience, specially if your code is a little messy.

1 Like
#6

Thank you so much for playing my game! That and the feedback mean a lot.

The screen clutter definitely turned into an issue, but by the time I realized it, I was too close to the end to go back.

Thanks for the info about the bugs as well! I may address them in the future, but I’ve already begun the next project. More than likely, those bugs will just be features at this point.

That’s really good advice though. In my next project, I’ll devote more time to give space to fix bugs.

Thank you again!

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