Hidden Creatures is a University project created for the portfolio module. The game is a puzzle game where small creatures will run and hide from the player, you must position yourself such that all available hiding spots are in view. You can also use scarecrows to cover more area, and mirrors to expose areas round corners.
My Contributions
As a solo project all mechanics in the game were created by myself, all visual/audio assets were taken from online sources.
The creatures determine where is a safe hiding spot, by referencing the positions held in the creature manager. Spots higlighted red are in direct view of either the player, a scarecrow, or the reflection of either in the mirror. The spots in yellow are not in full view of any of these, but based on the position of the player should be a position where the creature can peek round and see the player. The spots in green are not in view of anything and are on the opposite side of a cover object, and thus, fully concealed from the player.
The Mirror makes use of a second camera that tracks the position of the main camara and flips its position ralative to the mirror, it then culls the segments of the image that would show the outside of the mirror, and displays the new image on the mirror object as a texture. With the addition of a sheen across the texture the effect is very convincing.
The creature animations in this game were my first attempt at making animations for a project. Using a mesh I found online, I animated a waddle as a run cycle to create a cute and innocent feel to the creatures. When combined with the bahaviour of running away and peeking round corners at the player, the creatures mimick toddlers in an attempt to have the player empathize with the creatures.
The minimap for the game shows a simplified version of each of the levels, the dots on the minimap correspond with the in-game hiding locations for the creatures. The minimap is made by making use of a second camera pointing down at the map, the second camera is only able to see objects marked with the minimap layer, all these objects are invisible to the main camera.