It started like this. Our original idea was to make a racing game where you can trap the opponent by using devices like switches that close walls on the opponent’s way.

In the end it became much less tactical and much more action-driven. I hope the name Trap Runner did not set your expectations too high, I’d like to update the game with more devices but I’m not sure how much time I will spend after the jam.

The characters are also a bit hard to control as they are running fast through the level, although the Slowdown action can help a little. I wanted to add more elaborate physics features like running faster on a descending slope (currently you just run slower on any slope).

But it was an interesting project as I haven’t been working on 3D games for a while, and Yui, the game/level designer, was very efficient at making assets or using free/cheap ones. I was myself surprised by the beautiful sky! But we also had terrible performance issue with the first build, the main culprit being too many directional lights…

Once more, game design and gameplay programming is the thing I’d like to improve the most on a jam game. I’ll be spending more time on those next time!

A word from Yui:

It was my first time using Unity and good experience learning how to use it. Design-wise, we had the idea of inserting CTF (Capture the Flag) elements to the game to bring more interactions between the runners. I’d like to add that in we update the game.