Sisyphus: A Gravity Defying Platformer Game
Introduction
Within my time at Cornell University getting my undergraduate degree in Computer Science, I was able to take part in a course centered around Game Design. Before this point, I actually did not have much experience playing conventional computer games so it was a very eye opening experience. In this beginner course, we were split into 12 teams and collaboratively developed and tested our prototypes against each other. My team was made up of two designers and six programmers (including myself) who all came from very diverse programming backgrounds. Overall, it was an amazing learning experience being able to work with all of them to create our game, Sisyphus.
Conception of Sisyphus
When we first began our brainstorming sessions, we knew we wanted to make something unique. Frustratingly enough, the most common feedback we received during the multiple iterations of game concepts was that the game was just like another that had already existed.
So, how did we get around that? Well, we pulled in some of our personal interests. Some of us were major Greek myth fans (anyone else go through that phase?), but we knew that Hades, a game from Supergiant Games might be a little too close for comfort. Another member really loved Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy, a personal project of Bennett Foddy, where the player has to strategically control their actions to move throughout a difficult map.
Awesome, we thought. Let’s create something along the lines of these games. Sisyphus was a myth that we felt fit both criteria. He’s forever cursed to push a rock up a hill? Greek myth? Check. Opportunity for a hellish map? Check.
In comes again the concern: how were we going to make it unique? I just listed two games that were similar in concept and they are definitely not the only ones out there. After careful deliberation, we added another game mechanic that forces players to strategically move through the map whilst controlling two separate, but frustratingly connected, entities. Yep, we’re going to chain Sisyphus to the rock.
How to Play
The controls as noted above takes the common WASD keys but adds a twist. Since the rock can be controlled by the player as well as Sisyphus, we had to find different ways to interact with the two entities.
- WASD — move Sisyphus across the map.
- Mouse — click and drag across the screen to launch the rock. The player is able to control the direction and amount of force used to launch the rock (which then drags Sisyphus along with it).
- Space — freeze the rock in its position for a period of time.
- E — enter seer mode and use WASD to move the camera around the map.
Enemies and Obstacles
Of course, every game must have its own form of enemies or obstacles for the player to defeat or maneuver around. We decided to play into the Greek themes and add monsters that we thought would be found in different areas of the Greek map.
The fire and spike obstacles are actually the same within the code with the sprite being the only difference. Their purpose was to block areas of the map to encourage players to go the path that we, as level developers, hoped for.
The flaming skull is similar to the fire and spike obstacles, but it could move across platforms and thus provide a bit more difficulty in platforming moves the player could safely make.
The death cap and phoenix were the only killable enemies in the game. Enemies could be killed by proficiently squashing them with Sisyphus’ rock. When the player came in the range of the enemy, the death cap would emit a cloud of poisonous spores whereas the phoenix would shoot fiery projectiles at the player.
The beam obstacle was the one I had worked on. Instead of working on a detection range, the beam would periodically shoot out a laser that would immediately incinerate Sisyphus.
Another area that I had worked on within the field of enemies was the collision effects. It was difficult to get this area right as I wanted to get the response of the enemies to feel as if it were truly being smacked by the giant rock that it was in game.
What were difficulties we faced?
We worked in an agile methodology with two week sprint cycles that allowed us to playtest amongst our peers and receive feedback from the class and professors before kickstarting the tasks for the next cycle. One thing we realized was that while our game was extremely fun to think up and create, as developers we had a skewed idea of how translatable the mechanics were to play testers. Tutorial levels were difficult to design in such a way that clearly separated the mechanic we wanted to teach. Our regretful solution was to create a text blur that would pop up in the tutorial levels with hints on how to proceed.
What I learned
Overall, the experience pushed me to my limits in what I could accomplish in a short amount of time. Along with working in larger teams and learning the communicative and collaborative skills necessary to operate in such a team, I got experience in what it’s like to write up documentation and give presentations to a client rather than a peer.
