The Sandbox Game Maker — Creating Your First Game
The Sandbox Game Maker is finally available for you to start creating your own game experiences, and we want to make sure you got some tips to start creating your games, either if you want to check out what you can create in the Sandbox’s playable metaverse, or participate in our Game Jams with exciting prizes!
Getting Started
When creating your first experience you will be able to choose whether you want to start from scratch (an empty themed canvas), a template with ASSETS already built into the LAND, and the size of your playable experience.
LAND Size
Your LAND is the piece of the Sandbox’s metaverse which size are 96 blocks depth, 96 wide, and 128 of height, that you’ll be able to edit and design game experiences, the current sizes available during the Game Maker’s alpha state are 1x1, 1x2 and 2x2.
This is one of the most important steps when creating a game since bigger experiences with a simple theme behind it, such as a parkour experience, for example, could feel unnecessarily large compared to the size of the LAND if chosen anything bigger than 1x1, while an immersive adventure experience with plenty of gameplay may fell short in a small terrain. It all depends on the game that you will be creating and how much gameplay you can design around your LAND.
Themes
This option will allow you to start from scratch, you’ll be able to select one theme that determines the blocks of terrain of your LAND. The available themes are Lake, Desert, Nether, Meadow, Antarctica, and Jungle Islands.
You can decide which theme you want to select for your game, as well as the size of your LAND by clicking the “Create New +” button in the top left section of the Game Maker.
Templates
Templates are filled with assets and gameplay elements that will allow you to experience the possibilities of the Sandbox Game Maker. There are currently 3 templates that you can use which have plenty of ASSETS and a defined theme, that you can also edit to design your own experience without starting from scratch.
These templates can be found on the templates section of the game maker.
Gameplay Elements
While the design of your game can be entirely up to you, there are some elements that will definitely enhance the gameplay experience of your games, and there are plenty of great features within the Game Maker that you can master to come up with immersive games that anyone can enjoy.
Rules & Objectives
Knowing what your game is about is very important for players that just entered your experience, some basic instructions, title, and backstory of your game can be added to be displayed as soon as you start playing. This will not only provide essential information that you may want players to know but will also allow you to set objectives and a description for it, such as having to find a key, collect some materials, face some enemies, and anything that you want to add.
You can find this option at the top bar when editing your game by clicking on the button “Rules”, here you’ll have the option to add:
- The number of ASSETS and their rarities of your game.
- Title and description of the game.
- A title and description of the game’s objective that you want to apply.
- The type of objective (whether if its a time objective, a counter for defeating enemies, or gathering more)
- Display a victory screen when the objectives have been completed.
NPCs
Non-Playable characters are a key factor when it comes to making your games look alive. While you can add plenty of ASSETS for buildings, decorations, and more, NPCs are the ones responsible to make your experience lively while completing quests, defeating enemies, and collecting rewards.
Any character or creature that you can find on our marketplace can be NPCs that can react in different ways when interacting with them thanks to the Game Maker’s behaviors and components.
You’ll be able to choose which type of NPCs you want to add to your game by selecting any character, and changing its behavior. The current behaviors available on the Game Maker are:
- Ally Fighter
- Citizen
- Farmer
- Bird
Once selected one of the options above, you’ll be able to customize the behavior of the NPCs, such as the range they can walk, speed, and items they can interact with (such as a plant the farmer NPC can collect). Besides selecting the type of behavior you want, you can also choose components for your NPCs, such as the Speaker component, that will display a short text when interacting or being close to it.
Quests
Besides the behaviors that will transform your ASSETs into NPCs that provide your games some lively ambiance, you can also add not only characters but pretty much any ASSET that you want a quest behavior.
Quests, as you may imagine, are a very important element of any game, and it can be set by an NPC, an item such as a book that you as a player can find on the game, or any other ASSET that you find relevant for your game.
By setting the behavior “Question” to a character, you’ll be able to prove a short text, a name for the NPC, and two text options that players will be able to select. When selecting one of the two text options you can trigger a message that other ASSETs can be triggered by, such as a door if you choose the right option.
The message that a quest can broadcast can also be used with the Rules feature to show a title, description, and a small window that displays the completion of the quest.
Enemies & Mobs
Not every single non-playable character needs to be friendly in your games. Enemies are also very important when it comes to adding gameplay elements to an experience and you can currency select the following ones:
- Ground Predator
- Ground Prey
- Enemy Fighter
It’s very important that you take the time to customize these behaviors, since not every creature should interact with players exactly the same. Let’s use a wolf, for example, it makes sense if a wolf has relatively low health, average attack damage, and high speed in relation to the avatar, however, a troll should be expected to have forceful damage, low speed, and massive health.
If two very different mobs share the same stats, the experience will fall below what one is expected to encounter when facing these enemies. You can customize your mob’s:
- Attack Speed
- Patrol Speed
- Range Zone
- Chase Speed
- Attach Placement Speed (The number of blocks traveled per second by the ASSET while positioning to attack)
- Health
Avatar
Your Avatar, the main character of your game, is not exempt from customization. Just like any other NPCs or enemy mobs, you can customize its stats, and depending on what type of game you are creating, it may be worth taking a look at the options you have available.
A parkour experience filled with obstacles that our main character will encounter is a good experience to customize your stats since the speed and the force of your jumps will come in handy.
You can customize:
- Run Speed
- Sprint Speed
- Jump Force
- Attack Damage
- Attack Speed
- Health
Collectables
Persuading players to look around the map for items in order to complete a quest may be a good idea if you want them to explore your LAND and encounter any gameplay elements that you may have added to create an immersive experience.
Any ASSET can be assigned the component of a collectible or pickable object, and although it may be the usual, you don’t need to set a quest in order to tell the players to collect an item or pick it up and place it somewhere else, you can trigger an objective as soon as you collect or pick up any ASSET thanks to the component.
Doors & Switches
Functioning doors and gates are key gameplay elements that will improve the player’s experience. Either if it’s after completing a quest, talking to an NPC, or just simply collecting a key, a door opening represents progress in a game that allows players to continue with the history or complete the game.
There are many ways you can customize your doors within the Game Maker, so we recommend to take a look at the video above and experiment with the options that you have on your ASSETS behaviors and conditions. Bear in mind that avatar required actions will create a message that objects such as doors can receive in order to trigger the open animation, such as quests option when talking to an NPC, kill a specific mob, or collecting items.
Final tips
Finally, although may sound a bit cliche, we highly recommend hop into our Discord server and ask around. The Sandbox Game Maker, although easy to understand and has plenty of option to create what you want, it’s new, and if you don’t have experience with it, what’s better than to ask those who have been creating experiences since the very beginning of the Alpha.
So be sure to check out our Discord, where other players talk and discuss their creation, and tune in our weekly streams, where we showcase news about the Game Maker and answer the questions that you may have.
