The Idea
Mt. Stringmore started out as a simple concept: a 2D, one-button auto runner. The character runs forward on its own, and the player has a single button to deal with whatever the mountain throws in the way. With only one input, everything comes down to timing and use of the different game mechanics that are implemented incrementally in each new level, which made the idea easy to pick up but still left plenty of room to, make it challenging.
At first it was little more than that one idea, but it grew well beyond the original pitch. Over the course of the project it turned into a complete game with levels, obstacles, art, and music, while still keeping the one-button simplicity it began with.
The Process
Mt. Stringmore was built by a team in the UBC Game Dev Club and was a project that ran for around a year. I worked on it as a programmer and the primary level designer alongside other programmers, artists and musicians, using Unity2D, Krita and Ableton to bring it together.
During the school year the team met every week and ran the project in an agile style, using a kanban board to track what needed to be done, what was in progress and what was finished. Each meeting also included a round table where everyone showed what they had accomplished over the past week, which kept the whole team up to date and made it easy to spot problems and adjust priorities early.
The Final Product
The finished game is a polished 2D one-button auto runner with 4 levels each in its own unique environment, a myriad obstacles, art and animation sprites and backgrounds, different music for each level, and an overarching story, complete with cutscenes. What started as a quick idea ended up as something the whole team was proud to put out.
The game is available to play for free on itch.io, and the full source code is on GitHub. Working in a large team taught me how to manage multiple branches on GitHub at the same time and the value of making small, consistent progress on my tasks. The project also gave me a chance to dig into Unity's customisable editors and build specialised tools for the game.
