Their story, in their words…
The choice to develop a game named “Deepwood” that was made in Unity was mine. Initially, my main goal was to develop the world that would be possible to explore and play and not only to have an impression of a game environment. It is fascinating to imagine that someday the world I created will turn out to be a real game. But while creating it, I found out that developing a game is not like imagining it. This process required more time than I had initially anticipated, and quite a lot of the additional time was wasted due to the difficulties I did not expect to face.
Firstly, it turned out to be quite a challenge to integrate all elements of the game together. Scene transitions, terrains, buttons, and game management script were the elements I spent quite a lot of time on, and the reason why I spent much time on them was not that the individual elements were hard to understand but rather that I needed to make them work with other components. Quite a frustrating experience was when one component was working perfectly in one scene but then stopped working in another.
There certainly were times when I felt that I was at a standstill. In some cases, I could spend a lot of time working on solutions while not being sure whether I am closer to solving the issue. The temptation was strong to assume that I complicated things for myself by choosing such an assignment. However, these were the most beneficial moments during the entire process. As I developed my project, I could not always trust the tutorials in order to solve the problems. In case a tutorial helped me with adding a feature into my game, it was still unable to explain to me why this particular feature fails in my game.
Another significant change that I have observed is related to my reaction to problems. During the beginning of the course, when something was not working, I used to get frustrated immediately. However, as the project progressed, my reaction to failure changed and I learned to accept it as a natural part of the process. I started analysing why something was not working, what was going on in the code and what was the reason for this behaviour. Although in many cases I did not find an answer straight away, I was more determined not to stop until I found it. When I finally succeeded, I felt much happier since I had understood the problem myself.
Something else that surprised me was just how much of the process of creating the game involved testing and making little tweaks instead of creating something brand new. With my original view of the project, I thought I would spend most of my time creating the world and the cool things within it. What ended up happening though was that there were many times where I spent my time ensuring that nothing broke when I changed some other part of the project. Little changes might cause issues in places I didn’t expect, which meant that sometimes going back was necessary before moving forward.
Even though the process was quite frustrating, I really enjoyed the satisfaction of watching my project slowly come together. There was a definite change when comparing the game at the start of its development with what it became towards the end. Those parts which had been just concepts in my mind before were now working before my eyes. Even simple things such as being able to switch scenes or having a button work as it was supposed to seemed like an accomplishment because I knew how many times, I had tried unsuccessfully to get them to do so.
All in all, “Deepwood” taught me much more than just the practical use of Unity. I developed my patience, gained independence and confidence in resolving issues that were not clear at first glance. I also found out that most of the time, the process does not go as planned. The best part is when something goes wrong and you have to figure out how to continue.
Perhaps even more than anything else, I had the opportunity to feel what it is like to take an idea which began inside my own mind and to turn it into something that other people can actually use. This, perhaps more than anything, has been the most fulfilling part of the project. “Deepwood” may not be the most ideal product, and there are plenty of things that I would change if I had more time to work on it, but I am proud of it because it is a product that I have built and worked through myself.
See below 2 short clips of some levels gameplay:
