A racing game where players can't see the track and have to rely on pulses of sonar to make things temporarily visible.
I prototyped this game in a week using Lua in Pico-8. Then I polished and iterated on this game and for three weeks using C# in Unity. This is an individual project.
Gameplay:
Players race over the course of two laps. Staying on track makes them go faster, while using sonar pulses slows them down. Both players want to pulse as little as they can, while using the pulses of their opponent to see the track. However, racing without sight risks a very severe penalty for going off track.
Design and Development Details:
I wrote CG shaders for the sonar effects.
I started with the prompt of navigating a maze you can't see. I generated ideas by listing associations and doing quick free-writes, which led to a small poem that led to this game.
I balanced the penalty for pulsing to accommodate both skilled and beginner players:
Players slow down by 20% when they pulse, and they can't accelerate past that speed for a while.
The speed is restricted for longer when the player pulses at a higher speed.
So it's easy to achieve a decent fun speed, but it's much more difficult to go faster, which makes the game fun for both beginner and expert players.