Evil Eye

Description of Project

Evil Eye was a project I developed for an in-studio game jam under the theme "Fear the Light." The game jam was designed for our team (mostly me) to learn both C# and Unity Engine. Our game features a legally distinct dark lord trying to herd his army of goblins through a barren wasteland in preparation for an upcoming battle. Players must use their Evil Gaze to shepherd goblins around lava and through locked gates towards an exit without burning them or sending too many of them to their deaths.

Designer and Artist

goblin and the evil dark lord (not Sauron)

Designed and developed mechanics and created pixel art assets for the project. My focus was mostly on designing the Eye mechanic, what we called the "Gaze" and implementing UI features such as the main menu and win screen. I was also in charge of developing the ways the goblins would interact with the Gaze. The speed at which goblins ran from the eye, how long they would run for, and how long it took for the Gaze to melt through the goblins were my main focus for the project. I also worked on designing the levels around our implemented mechanics.

The Evil Eye

The main focus of the game is the Evil Eye that the player controls. I came up with the idea based on the theme provided to us: "Fear the Light." My inspiration came from the image of Frodo in the Lord of the Rings hiding away from the Eye of Sauron. The Eyes follows the player's cursor with some delay.

The main features of the eye are that it scares away nearby goblins and it kills them if the player hovers over them for too long. I added in the goblins dying to the eye for a few reasons. It gave the player some in-world reason for why goblins would run away from the eye, it prevented the player from "helicoptering" over goblins to taxi them to the goal, and it made maneivering the eye a little more tense.

Initially, there was a large delay when the Eye would follow the player's cursor. We removed this feature because playtesting showed that it made the eye too frustrating to control. Since managing the goblins was already a stressor on the player, we decided to remove most of the delay from the movement of the eye. There's still a slight delay to give the eye a little weight while it moves.

Goblins

It was important that the goblins in the game felt like little critters and not like floating game objects. We added in some behavioral traits to make the goblins feel more like characters and not like game objects.

Even while the eye is not near the goblins, they'll move around on their own. While moving they'll also shake a little to simulate the feeling of movement.

Goblin Fear - When goblins are approached by the Eye, they'll run away for a short while. To make the goblins feel a little more chaotic, they'll keep running for a little bit after leaving the Eye's range. They'll also start moving on their own more frequently to simulate being startled.

We wanted to add some flocking behavior to the goblins to make herding them a bit easier. However, this feature proved too complicated to do with the time we were given. The goblins all move independently from one another which can cause some issues when the player is moving them through tighter areas. If we had the time, we would haver liked to implement the flocking behavior to make herding the goblins more intuitive and fun.

Design Goals

Goal 1 - Create the feeling of an exhausted Dark Lord

Goal 2 - Make Goblins that feel like Goblins