Autobiographical Game

Description

The editor to the code is available here

In this game, I toy with the concept of success/failure in a game and juxtaposed this with success or failure in life. What does it mean to win a game if you do not have any stats to go by? There is no visible high score to achieve. Do I win if I run the longest, do I need to overtake everyone on screen? or do I need to try to and keep as many people in the screen with me together? With no data available, we default to wanting to finish the race fastest. By trying to overtake everyone. Assuming they are all opponenents.

The main character in this game doesn't look much too different from everyone else. So what makes the protagonist significant? What makes us significant, if we can be easily confused with a person in a similar track in life as us?

As the game continues, we notice that the game seems to be speeding up and we can no longer keep up with the game as easily as we could in the beginning, the game eventually ends when we are too slow for the game, as we notice people around us still keeping up with the speed.

The End Scene finally gives us some stats about the game, pulling the rug off our feet, and exposing the intended metaphor. The race is our own expectations and the lens through which we perceive life. The people running around us were acquaintances and friends who either ran faster than us or who we left behind. We are given one more stat about the friend who stayed with us the longest, and how they've either left us or we left them.

Design Process

I wanted to make the enitre game in p5.js without importing assets. That way, I could have 60fps animations for everything instead of maybe drawing 10 assets for walking, 10 for jumping etc. So I started with making the stick figure's movements.

After that, I worked on the character's body. I used a class to create the character object with modifyable height, movements, etc.

Finally, I worked on the grey box for the entire game, adding in the game mechanics etc.

Reflection

Credits

I borrowed a piece of code from this implementation of 2 piece joints by Keith Peters