NJUMA
PROGRAMMING
2 weeks
5
Unity
git
Received $2000 as winner of the Lv.99 Game Jam Narrative Award
My Programming Contributions:
-Systems & Game Tools
-Save/Load System
-VFX
Game Concept
"Njuma" was made for the Lv.99 Game Jam 2023 which lasted 10 days. With a team of 5 we tackled the theme "Take a deep breath". The main player takes their final breath and then has to act as an ancestral guardian who's job is to help their decendants pass on into the afterlife.
Ancestral Tree & Save system
When deciding how the save system would work I resorted to Unity's playerprefs system which was a good fit for the purpose of storing save data in integer format between game sessions.
Save Data
The save data is stored in a single integer using 0s and 1s
to indicate what outcome the player got in each level.
0 being the bad outcome and vice versa.
Data Display
The level outcomes are displayed in the form of new branches on a tree and coloring the leaves differently.
To achive this I linked the tree sprites directly to the save system data.
1
0
0
1
Player Experience
From the main menu the player can choose to continue a previous game or restart.
When the game is saving a popup is shown to let the player know.
Game Tools
In terms of game tools I primarily worked on level loaders which made it easy for LD and gameplay to implement smooth level transitions as well as coding a lock system to ensure the player could only progress in a certain order.
Color Changer
I also made a player color shifter to be used whenever we wanted the player to enter a new zone with a different color palette. This only ended up being used once.
Level Loaders
The level loaders themselves was fairly straightforward to code in regards to just changing the level when the player enters the loaders collider box.
However, making a fading transition needed a little extra work as the fade effect needed to persist in-between scenes.
The games main hub doors are also level loaders at their core but instead of a collision the player need to interact with the door.
To solve this I collaborated with my
co-programmer Joe Binns to ensure his interaction system worked with these special level loaders.
Njuma Expansion Update
For the Swedish Game Awards submission we decided to add more content to the game. This was to be done using a secret code system to unlock special dialogue boxes in addition to the main game.
Secret Code System
For the code system I went for a gamepad accessible system where the player navigates a grid of letters to enter the code.
I also made the art/UI for this.
Dialogue Boxes
The dialogue boxes needed to be customizable in terms of color & pauses on request of designers. The boxes also makes use of a typewriter approach where each letter is printed one at a time. I achieved this using a string processing script to read special symbols as pauses/line breaks/color changes.
VFX Coding
Collaborating with designer Ella Lopez I helped expand the capabilities of the Unity Particle System using code. This was done to get an effect when leaves falling from the tree hit the water as shown here.
