Rootscape

Rootscape is a 2D arcade infinite side-scroller Gamepad. Developed in February 2023, it puts you in the shoes of a young child who steals a mystical root from a magic forest and then has to survive the attacks from its ghosts and spirits. The team behind the game was made up of Anthony Safatli, Mack Tapp, Lucy Woods and myself. The game is available on its official Global Game Jam page or on its GitHub page

Game Description

A child stole a magical root and is getting haunted by ghosts. Help him escape!

The recommended commands for the game are as follows:

• [w] [a] [s] [d] keys to move
• [c] to dash
• [spacebar] to attack

Gallery

Game Development

Rootscape was my team and I’s submission to the 2023 Global Game Jam, our first Game Jam, and for some of us, our first game ever. We ended up doing a 2D side-scroller after understanding that our original idea was too big for the time we had. We were inspired by games like Hades and Scott Pilgrim vs the World.

We used Unity to develop our game, which was a first for me. I find there was a bit of a learning curve, but I had a lot of fun with it. We also used Aseprite to design our assets and I composed a song for the game using FL Studio.

I think our biggest challenge is that we were all inexperienced in game development, but also in programming in general. We all had only done one semester of university, so we still were not super comfortable with a lot of programming concepts, some we still hadn’t learn that we would’ve needed.

We spent a least half of the game jam doing research on how to program our game and watching tutorials on youtube on the features we wanted. But we ended up with something we can be proud of!

Final Thoughts

I learned so much with that game. Amongst other things: the unity engine, OOP, how to draw sprites, and how to organize a project with multiple people. Even though we had so much difficulty to finish our game (which I would argue is the fun part), I had a blast participating and am looking forward to my next ones!