After creating my first prototype for this ‘Star Navigation game’ I realised that one mechanic isn’t enough for an entire third year project game. Therefore, I wanted to create another aspect of the game to help supplement that.

What I thought of was to create a platformer game that uses the astronavigation to travel between islands where the player has to complete platforming levels, inspired by the research I did into cultures using astronavigation – more specifically the Polynesian people:

Furthermore, I did a lot of research into platformers in order to create this Unity prototype:

Understanding Platformer Movement

They key takeaways from this research was to use specific aspects of these games in my own prototype:

• Separate jump gravities
• Adjustable acceleration and top speed
• Jump Buffer
• Coyote Jump
• Variable Jump Height
• Interesting movement mechanics

Which resulted in the following Unity prototype:

With this prototype I implemented all of the aspects of platformers that I had researched (Bullet pointed above). However, to get a good-feeling player controller, I had to constantly tweak the variables for the player controller and test it over and over again.
E.g:

• At first, the player character would jump too high if I held space, but barely jumped at all if I just pressed it
• Or the player’s jump would feel too floaty but then they’d slam into the ground once space was let go of

Eventually I tweaked the numbers to an acceptable point and I added further movement abilities that the player can unlock throughout the game, to avoid the gameplay feeling stale.