Have you ever wondered what it’d be like to be a lil ducky floating down a river? Well, that was my goal for this project, with the added flair, fun, and of course the implied deeper meaning too. What I came up with in the end was a mini-game, similar in concept to those you’d find in an arcade. A cute duck placed on a blue background, the goal? Dodge the things floating across the screen. A simple concept using one’s competitiveness and hope for the duck as motivation to play the game.
As for my own motivation, it was just the joy of creating a world and story that kept me excited to continue this project. Once I had my baseline the ideas just kept coming and the project grew and grew. There was a moment where my ideas outgrew my abilities and time bracket and what followed was a lot of disappointment and general negative emotions toward the project. It felt very disheartening to come to terms with the fact that I wasn’t going to be able to accomplish the full extent of my ideas. However, seeing people’s reactions and hearing their feedback and advice helped provoke new positive energy for the project. I felt prideful of the work I had been able to accomplish and decided to just put in what time and skills I did have to make the game as good as I was able.
My process for this project was pure chaos, hope, and betting on good luck. It started with just the idea, a concept I’d been interested in doing for the whole semester. A simple game with basic movement controls and dodging enemies. Then came figuring out ways to add an ecosystem to the game. This led to the development of the game characters, for example: Duck. Creating shapes other than the basic ellipse, rectangle, and triangle is incredibly time-consuming and complex in Processing, so, I decided to utilize my stronger and far more comfortable skills. Using my iPad, the app Procreate, and some TikTok tutorials I began my pixel art journey. I chose pixel art because it is of course the most popular and most seen art style used in arcade games. What spurred the idea of a duck was actually just the newly bought Tamagotchi toy I had recently invested in with a portion of my adult money. Then, because I wanted to add more meaning to the project I decided to have the enemy be various types of trash that I drew up. I wanted this to be a slight towards litter and environmental awareness. The big axe character was an idea I took from my professor, Angela, and I’m very glad I did because I think it adds even more excitement and fun to the game. I also felt that it was a fitting piece of the story. A big axe guy who wants to catch and kill the duck for meat also may have captured the rest of the poor duck’s family. This is why when the game ends the screen reads “Duck Died” because that is the harsh reality of the little Duck’s life. He either died via trash or a scary axe guy. You want the duck to live a long happy life so you must work to keep him alive.
This project started as just a school project but ended as an exciting way to show the art skills I’m more confident in while also applying my newly acquired computer coding skills. The project as a whole truly came to represent my first steps at trying new things in college.
