Race Against the Meteorite Storm

I made this game over a weekend as an entry for the 2024 gamedev.tv gamejam.

As the player you’re piloting a rocket to a wormhole when an unexpected meteorite storm happens. You have to dodge the meteorites while the rocket keeps moving forward.

You can play the game at Race against the meteorite storm by benjaminHardy84 (itch.io)

I had several design ideas I didn’t get to implement, and I might update this game in the future. The main game is complete and playable though.

Choosing a scale

I spent quite a while adjusting this. The issue is if the game were too zoomed out then you’d see the meteorites too far in advance and it wouldn’t be tricky to dodge them, but if it were too zoomed in you wouldn’t be able to avoid them at all. It’s a bit like tetris, the challenges needed to be revealed with just enough time to keep the player engaged.

Frequency of meteorites

The meteorites are spawned using Random.Range with a gap of 2-5 seconds between each spawn so the game doesn’t follow an exact pattern. Also, I have placed an increasing number of spawn points as the level progresses so that it becomes harder.

Controls

The game is designed to play like an arcade game, so I only set three keys to control it. The rocket is always moving forward, which makes sense for a rocket launch, and it keeps the game pace moving along. I’ve allowed the player to turn left/right, and given them the option for a boost with the up arrow to help them dodge between meteorites. Being able to go faster makes the game more lively, and it makes the rocket harder to control, so there’s a trade off preventing the player from just holding it down the entire time.

Waypoints and path

One of the concepts of the game is for the player to follow a launch pathway that’s been calculated for them. I’ve implemented this with waypoints for them to pass through, but there’s a lot more potential here.

I made the waypoints spinning blue circles that the player can pass through, and the waypoints disappear when they go through. Currently the game doesn’t count or score them, and it doesn’t prevent the player from doubling back to ‘get all of them’ in a way that wouldn’t make sense for a rocket being launched on a pre-calculated trajectory. These are features I’d like to add. Either stop the rocket from turning around fully, or they vanish when the player goes past them and misses them.

Guiding the player is important to keep them in the gameplay space so they don’t get confused how to play, or in a part of the level where nothing interesting is happening.

Assuming the player will follow the waypoints isn’t something that can be reliably counted on. I’d like to add some kind of pathway with visual indicators which they need to follow, and if they leave it for too long there’s some kind of warning, and then if they keep going a game over outcome. I like the idea of allowing players a few seconds to duck out of the calculated pathway, giving an element of risk, but still ensuring they can’t go too far. This would also provide a logical in-game reason to prevent players from just flying off in to space away from the pathway and asteroids, and it feels so much better than just having some invisible wall they hit.