Ok, I admit, I never was a big gamer and only a few computer games really caught me. However, there was a time when I spend weeks of my life virtually flying around with the Microsoft Flight Simulator. That was in the 90s and landscape was a bunch of lines, land was green, water was dark blue, cities were gray areas and at night white dots pretended to be cars in the streets. This was already PC time and of course it was years after The Great Giana Sisters became a highlight of my life the 80s.
Before that there was not much of gaming at all. Maybe someone remembers “AFO” on the CBM 8032 we had in my dad’s office…
Fast Forward: Winter 2024
I kind of like Games, I only do not really play them too much. But making one was on my Bucket list for quite a while. Said, done!
This last season I started “Cristmas on River” and it came along quite nice.
Simple Storyline
Santa Claus had a crash and lost all the presents in a river. Lucky for him, you happen to be none of those summertime coffee sailors known from the bay. So you start tacking around the ice patches and frozen rocks to pick up the floating gifts and deliver them back to him. – And yes, that sounds easier than I made it…
“Chrtistmas on River” is a 2.5D top down endless runner game, where you have to manage to stay within the banks, collect the gifts, deliver them, don’t crash on rocks or run aground and finally keep an eye on those nasty Orcas that want to nibble on your rudder.
How it started
The idea was to make something not too complex for the first game. Do not aim for a 900+ hour AAA Game but also nit quite a Tic Tac Toe complexity. First step: I needed a boat and a boat controller.
The boat was made for a proof of concept in Blender. I wanted it to be able to react on the user input and reflect the angle of wind. I also made a bunch of kardinal and lateral seamarks to warn the user of shallows. For the Engine i decided to use is Unity just because I know it a bit and I am quite confident in C# and the dotnet world. My PlayerController at first only needed to maintain a basic speed, allow left and right steering and detect colisions of all kinds. Today it reacts to the wind, limits the manouverability and demands a bit of sailng skill from the play to tack across the river.
From here the game developed a bit of it’s own story, more difficulties, Landscape, snow, wind changes … The basic game play is ready, the graphics are on their way but need a bit of polishing and of course there is music like you haven’t heared it since Tetris on a Game Boy.
Currently I am working on the backend, leaderboard and a special competition mode. But also finetune and make new tiles for keeping it visually attractive.
Release in Fall 2025
Since this is still a spare time project I aim to release “Christmas on Water” in late 2025 for the appropriate seasonal flair. Beta versions should be out in September and you can register from mid summer on if you like playing wintery games in shorts already.
What do you think?