Game 1: Cube Run

For my first tutorial, I completed Brackey’s “How to Make a Video Game” series. It’s a series of videos that led to the creation of a game I ended up calling “Cube Run”. The game consists of the player, a cube, that speeds down a platform. In order to win, the player must avoid the obstacles that appear on the platform.

Here's a speed run of the game:

What went well

Overall, this whole tutorial went smoothly. Since it was my first tutorial for Unity, I knew absolutely nothing about making video games. I’m a bit surprised that it ended up going as well as it did. When I started the tutorial, I was absolutely addicted. It was reading week at school (the week before finals week) and I couldn’t keep my mind on my studies. I ended up deciding to power through almost the entirety of the tutorial, finishing the whole game in around 9 hours.

What went wrong

After showing my game to friends, I noticed a bug come up twice. I’m not sure what causes this bug yet, having only seen it twice. The distance counter at the top of the game will read “NAN” and the game will freeze. It’ll require further investigation to find out why this is happening.

After showing this game to a lot of my friends, I realized that the way Cube Run is now is very difficult for those unfamiliar with video games. The keys to move left (“A) and right (“D”) to avoid obstacles right now are incredibly sensitive. Even with just a tap, the cube will shoot off to the side. In order to avoid falling off the level platform, I would have to counterbalance the left and right movement by tapping on opposite direction. My video game friends had little trouble adjusting to the sensitivity of the left and right movement keys.

What I learned

This video basically consists of my entire foundational knowledge of Unity. Outside of learning most of what I know about Unity right now from this tutorial, I did learn a thing or two about study habits and productivity. Since I couldn’t keep my mind on my studies while working through this tutorial, I was not making any progress in my academics. Lesson learned - when you’re not being productive, take a break and come back to it after.

What to come back to

In order to make the game more accessible for everyone, I would like to lower the sensitivity of the movement. Also, the levels get too hard, too fast. I hope to add more easy levels at the beginning of the game.

To really polish it up, the game would need sound to accompany it. I’ve also thought about making it so the cube could jump when the user hit “space bar”. Then I could make the walls different heights so the user would be able to jump over some walls, but not others.

Check out Brackey's channel here. I look forward to completing more of his tutorials in the future.