Unreal Engine Side Scroller Prototype Game

Unreal Engine Side Scroller prototype Game

The Game in Brief

Made using UE4, this small solo prototype project was made in a week (from around the 6th – 15th of February 2020). The theme of the game was the dream of a little girl who wishes to befriend slimes. The overall game therefore was meant to look like a topsy-turvy castle inhabited by slimes.

The pink slimes in when walked into cause damage, however bouncing on them does nothing. On the other hand, the blue slimes allow flight for upto 5 seconds and the blue flowers heal the damage caused by the pink slime.

Acquire a key near the top of the level and you will be able to find your way out of the game and level through a pink slime door like creature.

gameplay video & downloadable game file

Below on the left is the gameplay video of the prototype version of this Side Scroller Game. On the right, when you click on the “download the game” image, your download will start automatically. Wait for the zip file to download, then unzip it and immediately inside the first folder just open the “SideScrollerRPG icon” and the game will run!

Just to confirm, yes, the video above has no sound!

let’s break it down!

I’ll start with the level itself, from the blocks to the materials and assets used. I started by using the Unreal Engine default Side Scroller Project, after which I edited the elements to suit my needs.

Let me start by presenting to you the most complicated asset in the game. As you can see on the right, this complicated asset was a formidable enemy to create and place.

Yes, the cube.

Ahem, let me elaborate. The cube is this wonderful block that you can use to test events, blueprints material, shaders (materials), textures and so much more. The painful formidable part is trying to create a level that actually works and is not annoying (or seemingly pointless) to navigate by using these cubes.

Here’s one of the slimes I created for the prototype game level. The pink slime has 2 collision boxes, a square box which decides whether the player character takes damage and the circular collision box, from where the character just bounces off. The arrows show the direction in which the player character is expected to bounce to. Above on the right you’ll see the blueprint for the slime’s movement. I was tempted to create an animation for it till I realized I had to create a separate skeleton for it and then animate based on that, which is why I left it at the gloopy material I created for the slime instead.

Some of the simple actors I created for the prototype game. They both just have one collision box for triggering events.

The flower was made by combining six spheres (the petals), 2 cylinders (the stem) and one more sphere (the flower center). When the player character runs into the flower, it triggers an event to increase health an calls on an event dispatcher so that the increase in health is updated and reflects in game.

For the key, the collision event to is set to destroy the actor, while the level blueprint checks this. When the actor is destroyed, the game allows you to exit the level by walking through the slime door.

This was a fun block to set up. The moving platform detects where the large square collision box is to move towards it, while the small square collision box acts as a trigger for the player character to step on.

some of the most ridiculous things i did to make the level

The wall in the background is a group of 30-40 landscape pieces. Why would I do that you ask?

Well, I needed the bricks in the background to be of a certain size and I couldn’t figure out how to adjust that by using (or creating) the materials, so I went with the convenient method of sizing one small landscape piece to the brick size I needed then copied it and grouped it. Yes, I need to find a more efficient way of achieving this next time.

what’s next?

Well, this was mostly an experimental prototype, and I’m not particularly pleased with the flow of the level that I designed, since one part gets almost completely ignored. If there are any updates to this prototype, you’ll see it here, but unless I make a model on blender for a little girl, I don’t think you’ll see it here.