SilverIsland - Ana Stefan Portfolio

Silver Island RPG You wake up in your cabin in Silver Island's main town, searching for your penguin pal, Aminah. You play as Mochi, a cat who travels to the most distant places in the world. This story takes place in the depths of Antarctica, and your goal is to find your friend with the help of the other penguins. Do you think you've got what it takes to find Aminah?

Solo

5 Months

Game Developer

Unity Engine

itch.io

MY CONTRIBUTIONS

Develop Mochi, the

character you play as

For the player character, I had to develop both the functionality and the art assets. I not only created basic functions such as walking, interacting, attacking, but I also implemented systems like health and economy that have their own scripts. All of the systems had different scripts that were attached to the player. I also created walk and idle animations using Aseprite and implemented them using a state machine.

Mochi In-Game

Part of the Player Script

Develop the Slime Enemy

In creating a challenge, I went for an enemy that presents a threat to the player without causing repeated deaths. The slime enemy, designed with 2 health points, only does damage when the player gets too close. The script includes functions for tracking the player, triggering an attack on collision, and initiating an on death function that randomly spawns a coin, heart, or nothing.

Slime In-Game

Part of the Slime Script

Develop the

penguin locals (NPCs)

I thoroughly enjoyed the creative process of designing penguin NPCs, each having unique sprites and dialogues, serving as guides for the player's journey. To implement them efficiently, I used a parent NPC script from which I created children scripts with individual settings. The parent script handled core functionalities like interaction, displaying the dialogue box, and assigning quests, while the children scripts incorporated specific elements such as sprites, dialogues, and quests for each NPC.

Penguin Quest In-Game

Develop a Quest &

Dialogue System

This was really fun for me because I got to create missions encouraging players to venture out and explore. Each system has its dedicated scripts and UI. The dialogue box features the NPC's name and picture, so the player can get familiar with the locals. However, since I was a beginner at the time, the system was not entirely modular and had bits of hardcoding.

Part of the Quest System

Develop the User Interface

I maintained a straightforward UI design, including the main and pause menus, the HUD, win and lose screens, and the end screen. This setup ensures that players receive essential information during the game and can easily pause or end a session at any time. Scenes with buttons were used to construct the UI menus. Looking back, it is very simplistic, which works for this kind of project, but could have been more consistent.

Create a Level

I had a lot of freedom when creating the level and with no prior experience, there was a lot of trial and error. My vision for the Silver Island consisted of multiple points of interest, including the village and its extension, igloos, the house at the final objective, and a non-goal-oriented lookout point. I utilized tiled assets to arrange these areas, while the houses and background were crafted by hand.

Level Sketch vs Level In-Game

Create Pixel Art Assets

Using Aseprite, I created a multitude of environmental assets (background, houses, paths) and characters (NPCs and player). I immersed myself in pixel art tutorials and references, so I could learn the techniques that allowed me to create most of the game's art assets.

Create a Story

The story was created early on but went through several iterations. I aimed to incorporate a sense of mystery, with one of the main character's friends going missing, providing the player with a clear goal at the beginning of the game. This setup encourages players to complete quests that drive them to explore and advance the narrative. Dialogue writing took place later in development, and I made several adjustments based on playtesting to ensure that players receive sufficient information about the ongoing quest.

Achievements

My primary accomplishment was developing this game within approximately 5 months, despite lacking prior experience except for a few courses on C# and Unity Basics. I take immense pride in this achievement as it signified my start into game development. Despite encountering many challenges, such as bugs and implementation errors leading to project breakdowns, I consistently overcame these obstacles and persisted in the development process. The successful implementation of the quest and dialogue system marked one of my most significant accomplishments, as it was a complex script that played a key role in the project.