Soot

An arcade-style game for PC developed in 2 weeks with no external assets as an intro to game design in ICS 485

C# Unity 2024-02

---

Overview

Soot is a game that features a creature called a Soot Sprite as seen in a certain Japanese animated movie. Our character lives in a dark space under the floor with its brethren, and they want some light in their life! The player controlling the Soot Sprite must brave the furnace, dodging coal and flames to grab glowing star candies to bring back to its friends.

Rules:

• The arrow keys can be used to move left, right, and jump
• If you get hit by either the coal or flames, you will lose
• If you get 10 star candies, you will win

The goal of our first project in ICS 485 (Video Game Design) was to learn the tools necessary for our big project later in the semester, including Unity, C#, and Audacity. We were given freedom to make whatever type of game we desired, as long as it was realistic for our short time window and followed the requirements. The specifications were as follows:

• Ability to move a character with a keyboard or game controller
• Obstacles for the player to avoid
• Objects that appear on the screen for the character to collect
• Create audio and visual feedback when interacting with obstacles and objects
• All visual assets must be made with cubes and from scratch
• All audio assets must be made yourself

Asset Info:

• All sprites were made by myself, using a pixel art maker online
• The background audio for crackling flames was made by crinkling a plastic toy
• The Soot Sprite’s sad sound and two happy sounds were made using my own voice
• Audio files were edited using Audacity

Future Improvements

I think in the future it would be fun to expand it to a longer platformer game where the soot sprite explores the furnace to get more glowing candies, as the setting is based on one of my favorite movies ever, and I find it very charming.

Source: KaileeHung/Soot